The 'Clean' vs 'Dirty' debate!

[nate225]

An interesting round table discussion on the merits / cons of both:

http://www.elitefts.com/documents/dirty ... n_diet.htm

I'm sure others here will have their views on whats best for them?

[mr natural]

I think clean works alot better for me, just going off cals is like measuring body fat loss by weight only. Hi GI carbs are more likely to be stored even on low cal intake, protein to fat to carb ratio's could be all out of wack encouraging muscle loss rather than fat loss. To many variables for my liking. my five cents worth anyway.

I eat dirty most of the year round and it definatly doesn't work for me :wink:

[musclenz]

Layne Norton: No, there is no reason one can’t have white rice, white bread, or the like when trying to lose fat. Most people are so concerned about the glycemic index of these foods that they don’t realize the glycemic index is only measured when a carb source is eaten by itself. If you combine the carb source with a protein, fat, and fiber found in a complete meal, the glycemic index is essentially blunted and washed out by the other foods. So if you want white rice, you can have it as long as you have some veggies and steak or chicken with it.

I find this rather interesting. Does not sound quite right to me. Any "nutritionists" like to comment

[ThePman]

He's right. Digestion is affected by what you eat. Eating fat and/or protein with carbs will slow the digestion down and affect how it impacts blood sugar (and thus insulin, ghrelin, and everything else) levels.

[NZPT]

agree with layne, i preffer white rice in contest prep.

i prefer a clean approach as long as im hitting my numbers, but to go Super low GI on everything i dont think is nessacary for the mentioned reason by Layne Norton, and id prob go crazi just having really low GI foods :grin:

[rose]

To me it highlights the differences between men and women, i.e. what men can get away with and get great results from, women often can't/don't. A lot of the things that work for guys often have a negative impact on a woman's health and/or goals.

The chick at the end raised a couple of good points:

If all you care about is attaining a certain look without any thought to what your long term health outcomes will be, the micronutrient and preservative-free quality of your food likely doesn’t matter.

When we think of processed foods, we often think of baked goods, frozen prepared meals, pressed juices, deli meats, and most packaged items. However, many foods we consume for physique enhancing properties are also processed, such as whey protein and other concentrated protein sources or supplements. Yet many bodybuilders and physique athletes still maintain good health and ideal body composition with these foods. So perhaps our definition of “clean/unprocessed” and “unclean/processed” foods needs to be more clear and instead refer to ingredients that are more likely to have negative health and body composition effects such as trans fatty acids, chemical preservatives and colors, high fructose corn syrup, and highly refined flours.

There's dirty, and then there's junk. I've never had great results eating junk so I don't touch it as it takes too long to reverse the negative effects and I can't be fucked with the downtime anymore. For most people maybe it's not a problem.

And yes musclenz, high GI becomes lower GI when combined with protein, fat or another low GI food. It's the pitfall of looking at the GI of individual foods and excluding them on that basis.

[Chillicat]

I prefer a relatively clean approach, for several reasons. There's the gender aspect that Rose pointed out - us girls just don't seem to be able to get away with as much as you boys!

But there are other health considerations for me which come before the bb-focus as these issues are relevent whether or not I lift weights and want to have a muscly body. One is my hypoglycemia problems, which pretty much disappear with a relatively clean diet. Other health issues too have improved with a shift to cleaner eating, so for me it's a no brainer.

[startinfromscratch]

the P.H boys concluded awhile back that cheeseburgers are highly anabolic. i tend to agree. burgers are to me like crack to a crack fiend