The FastDay Forum

Just watched Dr Oz who had a "transformation specialist" (eh? - a diet & fitness , body builder person) Chris Powell who discussed his successes with his clients ("pupils" he called them)
Basic premise was the 5 meals a day with switching between Hi-carb and Low-carb food choice days.
By the way Chris seemed passionate, dedicated, highly motivated and very pleasant.

Chris says when you consume carbs insulin goes up and drives it into the muscles and a thermostatic conversion happens in the liver thus if you don't consume carbs thermostatic conversion doesn't occur and metabolic rate goes down.
Therefore Chris says we are "messing with the thermostat" in our body.
So in the hi-carb day he proposes a carb + protein portion (low fats) + free veg 3 meals and 2 snacks (sound familiar?) And Breakfast was stressed as an absolute must.

The premise is that a Hi-carb breakfast will flip "the switch" (in our body) to Fat burning mode for the rest of the day - where is this sodding switch? I want to be flipping all day long
Anyway he goes on to say "it's boosting metabolism, building muscle - Flip The Switch - burn FAT - Boost, Burn. - hmmmm then the audience chanted Boost, Burn - ah they saw the light!
After Hi-Carb Low-carb alternate days the 7th day is a go out and eat what you would like BUT don't bring this type of food into the house.

The show then brought on some people who were his successes.

I'm not sure about the theory he proposes however many of you are more knowledgable and people are always asking about carbs everywhere so I thought it was interesting to discuss these theories.
Not the 5 meals a day option but the carb theories.

[carorees]

It makes absolutely no sense that a high carb breakfast would switch you into fat burning...it has to switch you out of fat burning! During fasting/low carb the glycogen stores get depleted. As they decrease, the fat burning increases until you are mainly burning fat and enter ketosis (the holy grail for low carb dieters). When you eat carbs again, first your glycogen stores are replenished, then you switch out of fat burning and use the glycogen.

I can imagine that a spike of carbs might affect thermogenesis as it could prompt a return from a famine situation in which the body is conserving energy. But it must result in switching out of fat burning.

I always go low carb on fast days and medium/high carb on feed days. It might contribute to my success I suppose. Scientifically I think his theory is flaky!

A high carb breakfast will switch the body to storing fat for a couple of hours, surely ? I burn about 70 cals an hour so if I eat 400 cals of cereal, milk, toast and jam there's a lot of cals to be put away for later.

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/97/4/677.abstract found that in young women a high protein breakfast (reduced carbs - 40 vs 65% with fat at 20% in both cases) led to less snacking than a low protein or skipped breakfast.

Not a clue about the food but I love Chris Powell!

I like his programme on tv. Once there was someone giving one of his "clients" a really hard time whilst he was exercising and basically, he told the guys to stop filming and went and gave the idiot a fairly extensive piece of his mind.

Interesting, but it has to be at least partly wrong.
Depending on your insulin "baseline", your insulin level will rise and tell different cells to store some of the "blood sugar" to keep blood sugar levels down, because it harms us (a lot) if it's too high.
Since we have fat cells, muscle cells and liver cells that in any person can have different levels of insulin resistance (meaning some need a higher dose to "wake up"), the results will wary.
What you want to happen:
Your have muscle cells that need energy (you worked or worked out) to react on the blood sugar and grab it and store the glycogen for the next time you need to run/work. Yay! you will not get any fatter.
What you don't want to happen:
Your muscles are either full or more resistant to the insulin level than you fat cells, the carbs go into the fat cells, and you get fatter!

Disclaimer: This is my own simplified version of Gary Taubes and I might be wrong.

Different kinds of foods "provoke" the insulin level differently and they are categorised as such in the Glycemic Index - (Wiki here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycemic_index)
If you go hi-carb, low carb, it will also matter a great deal which carbs we are talking about. I also suspect the people on the show did exercise?

Just want to add some personal experience with Chris Powell's "theories" about dieting.

Last July, I started his "Choose More, Lose More" program. His premise is that you need to keep eating frequently to "increase your metabolism" . The variation I chose (Turbo) called for relatively low carb for 3 weeks and then a high carb week then repeat. You are told to eat 5 times a day (3 meals, 2 snacks) and to have 2 servings of low carb veggies with EVERY meal - that was 10 cups of greens,etc. every day!!! It was very challenging to follow. He also had a 9 minute exercise program to do 5 days a week, which was actually quite good and had some HIT elements in it.
After 3 weeks of low carb, I lost 4 pounds . Then after the high carb week, I gained 2 of them back . That was 2 pounds lost in 4 weeks of a complicated regime.

Then a colleague returning from a holiday home to England mentioned that "everyone" there was on 5:2 and losing lots of weight. So I started 5:2 and lost 6.5 pounds in the next 4 weeks on a very SIMPLE plan...and haven't looked back.

I know it is only my experience, but with some of the reading I have done about nutrition, the ideas that "eating frequently " and "carb cycling" increase your metabolism are bogus.

@Marie2mil to my mind high carbs means high insulin levels means high fat storage! So I wouldn't do that programme.In fact I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.