Tom Tanner wrote:
Rudi,
        You are absolutely correct. DO NOT drop any complex carbs especially
in your case(hardgainer). If you were to checkout Parillo.com and Charles
Bass(CBass.com) you will see that nobody is advocating stopping complex
'starchy' carbs.

        You seem to be well informed as it is anyway with what you are doing
now. I've made the best gains(and fat losses) without even giving up
desert(snickers bar or whatever) the way so many on this site seem to
advocate. This is non-sense. It's basically calories-in, calories-out, and
trying to eat healthy food without giving up the proper amount of sweets.

regards,
Tom


It certainly is possible to get good strength results and to stay lean eating
so-called complex carbohydrates and sweets, given adequate exercise.  However,
these are high glycemic foods in general and stoking the furnace higher does not
eliminate all the negative effects.  Jim Kick, the long distance runner who died
many years ago in his early 50s, is one great example of this notion.  He ran
and ran because his father died in his 40s of heart disease.  He assumed,
correctly, that he possessed the genetic constitution that would lead him to
early cardiovascular disease as well (most likely a tendency toward high insulin
response).  However, he did not know that diet can modulate the effect of genes
and that exercise alone cannot.  He got 6 or 7 more years than his father,
presumably because of his running.  But, I assume he consumed a diet similar to
what most people in western cultures consume - loaded with high glycemic foods
that jack up the insulin response and precipitate gobs of negative effects, many
of them having to do with vascular and cardiac risks.  Another example is a
close friend of mine who suffered a heart attack in middle age.  He was
generally very healthy.  He ate little or no red meat, few sweets, moderate
amounts of fish, and lots of supposedly wholesome whole grain and bread products
(following the establishment dietary guidelines).  He might have died but
luckily is left with minor heart damage, because he received treatment within
the first hour of the attack.

These, of course, are anecdotes and don't prove the argument.  But, I believe
they dramatically illustrate what empirical studies show.  I believe it is a
mistake to think that one can just burn off the bad stuff in the internal
furnace.  The bad stuff takes a toll, whether or not one exercises away the
caloric load.  I wouldn't recommend indulging in bread, pasta, grains, legumes,
or sweets at all and certainly not more than once a week or once a month.

     - Robert.