What Are Carbs and Fat?
There are three main sources of energy: carbohydrates, protein, and fat. Carbohydrates provide 4 calories per gram, whereas protein provides 4 calories per gram and fat provides 9 calories per gram. To lose weight, you need to create a caloric deficit by eating fewer calories than your body needs to maintain its weight. On the surface, it seems that cutting carbs is the best way to go because they provide less energy than fat does.
How Do They Affect Weight Loss?
Carbohydrates provide four calories per gram, while fats and proteins each provide nine calories per gram. So as you can see, fats are the worst for weight loss because they contain more calories per gram. However, these numbers aren't the whole story. Carbohydrates also have a higher glycemic index than fat does which means that they cause your blood sugar to go up quickly and then crash down soon after. This high/low cycle can lead to increased hunger, cravings, and overeating which is bad news when it comes to weight loss.
The Bottom Line
There is not a clear-cut answer to this question. It really depends on your body and how it responds to certain foods. For instance, some people can eat healthy carbs like whole grains without the weight gaining side effects others experience. The same goes for fat, with some people losing weight with high levels of fat in their diets while others gain weight. If you're trying to lose weight, it's best to experiment and see what works best for you. In the end, making healthier food choices is better than eating less-healthy food choices no matter which macronutrient they come from.
This debate dates back to the 1970s, when the "diet-heart hypothesisTrusted Source" was first presented and North Americans were urged to follow a very low-fat diet in order to control their cholesterol levels. We now understand that not all cholesterol is harmful, saturated fat may not be the sole cause of heart disease as long believed, and that choosing low-fat food items does not always equate to making a healthy decision.
Research efforts to ascertain any "metabolic benefit" to a low-carb versus low-fat diet were prompted by this "macronutrient war."
The outcomes? In general, those on low carb diets lost more weight in the near term, but other studies that monitored participants for a longer period of time revealed that the effects started to wane as people started eating more carbs around the 24-month point. Changes in other health indicators, such as cholesterol, were not noticeably different between the two groups.
An analysis of 32 different controlled diet trials conducted in 2017 shows that there is no benefit to energy expenditure or weight reduction by consuming a low-carb diet when protein and calorie intake are regulated.
In the end, calorie restriction is the key to weight management.
While it is true that calories from different foods give different micronutrients and affect your body's biological processes in different ways, it is a fundamental misconception of the principles of thermodynamics to claim that one source of calories leads to more weight gain than another.
In comparison to fats, carbohydrates have 4 calories per gramme. Even though fat has a higher caloric density than lean tissue, this does not automatically imply that it will lead to weight gain. Context is everything in nutrition.
It's truly all about math when it comes to diets and weight loss, though. Weight gain is likely to occur if you consume more calories than your body requires or routinely expends over time. And the opposite is probably going to happen if you consistently consume fewer calories than your body requires. Since everyone responds to physical exercise differently, it can be challenging to determine how many calories you are actually consuming against how much energy you are actually using.
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