It has become commonplace in recent years to consider carbohydrate to be "the villain" in weight gain. As is often the case, this is partly true and partly false and wholly incomplete.

The truth about carbohydrate is that too much carbohydrate provides too many Calories and probably also has certain negative effects on blood glucose and insulin levels.

Despite this however, the body must still have a minimum amount of carbohydrate (as glucose) to stay alive.

Although the brain and nervous system normally want the most glucose, these organs can get along without it in a pinch.

But that's not true for certain blood cells and other types of cells. They must have a steady supply of glucose, because without it they'll quickly die.

For this reason, glucose is so important that your body will begin to make the glucose it needs for these cells out of muscle protein if it doesn't get enough carbohydrate from food. But, even though it can do this, this is a stressful emergency reaction (called ketosis), which also makes you miserable with hunger, cravings, and many other unpleasant sensations.

Obviously, dieting would be much more successful if we could avoid all that. Fortunately we can.

The premise of this series of articles is that when your body runs low on any nutrient it needs to stay healthy, it naturally triggers hunger to make you go get it some more of that nutrient.

But if you habitually eat foods that have too little of whatever you're running low on, together with too many Calories, this reaction is going to make you get fat.

Fortunately you can lose the weight again by simply reversing the process. To do so, you learn to eat things that have lots of what your body needs but not many Calories.

When you succeed at this your body has no reason to trigger hunger and food cravings even when you're eating very few Calories and it's burning excess fat (stored Calories) to make up for this.

This reaction is as true for carbohydrate as it is for each of the other nutrients. If you eat too little carbohydrate, your body will trigger hunger because it needs a minimum amount of glucose every day to supply the cells that can't use anything else.

If you eat too much carbohydrate, you'll get fat because too much carbohydrate has both too many Calories and also has the aforementioned negative effects on blood glucose and insulin levels.

So how much is "enough but not too much"? That amount is probably highly variable depending on your lifestyle. A stressful "go-go" day can require a lot of carbohydrate while a relaxed day probably won't.

However, most scientists put the minimum amount of carbohydrate that most people will need in the range of 50-100 grams per day (which is 200-400 Calories from carbohydrate). This is the amount that prevents your body from starting to make glucose out of muscle protein.

Since most food labels list the amount of carbohydrate in the food you eat, tracking and controlling amounts is not difficult.

Try to eat in the range of 400 Calories from carbohydrate per day. This will usually prevent the hunger and cravings that are triggered by too little glucose.

There are several other nutrients that also trigger hunger and cravings when you get too little of them - and which must therefore also be managed similarly.

We have already discussed several of these other nutrients in previous articles in this series. We will discuss another very important one in the next article.

-Anderson A. Anonymous, M.D., Ph.D.- Copyright © 2000 Hamilton/Wolcott Publishing

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"Dr. A." is a nutrition researcher who has deliberately chosen to publish anonymously.

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