Are You a Carboholic? Why Cutting Carbs Is So Tough<br />Since insulin levels after meals are determined largely by the carbohydrates we eat — particularly easily digestible grains<br />and starches, known as high glycemic index carbohydrates, as well as sugars like sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup — diets based on this approach specifically target these carbohydrates.<br />This effect of insulin on fat and carbohydrate metabolism offers an explanation for why these same carbohydrates, as Dr. Ludwig says,<br />are typically the foods we crave most; why a little “slip,” as addiction specialists would call it, could so easily lead to a binge.<br />Elevate insulin levels even a little, says Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco,<br />and the body switches over from burning fat for fuel to burning carbohydrates, by necessity.<br />High insulin drives carb-craving.”<br />The result is that even a bite or a taste of carbohydrate-rich foods can stimulate insulin<br />and create a hunger — a craving — for even more carbohydrates.<br />It’s been known since the 1960s that insulin signals fat cells to accumulate fat,<br />while telling the other cells in our body to burn carbohydrates for fuel.<br />“Once you’re exposed to a little carbohydrate, and you get an insulin rise from it,<br />that forces energy into fat cells and that deprives your other cells of the energy they would otherwise have utilized — in essence, starvation.
