7:54 – Sugar Intake Breakdown: Where It Comes From
9:20 – Why This Diet Works for Me (Not Everyone)
10:48 – Key Takeaways: Individualized Nutrition
12:13 – Final Thoughts & Conclusion
Transcript +
I have a confession to make. I am a sugar addict. This video is a follow-up of two previous videos I’ve done talking about my lipid profile and my blood glucose values after being on a high sugar pro metabolic diet for almost 10 years to this point. So in this video, what I’m gonna show you is my body composition.
So let’s jump in. All right, so first things first, the document is in Spanish because I’m in Latin America. I got the scan here in Latin America and what we can see. If we come over to the top here is we have my height, so I’m about six foot two, 190 centimeters. We can see my age, I’m actually 30, and then the date this was done was December 3rd, 2024.
So this was just two months ago that I had this scan done. When we look here, we can see my total body weight is 86 kilos, which is about 190 pounds. My muscle mass is about a hundred pounds. And then my fat mass at 8.2 kilos. So 8.2 times 2.2 is about 18 pounds. And then if we look over here, we go one column down, we can see my body fat percentage.
So my body fat percentage is 9.5% with the bioelectrical impotence, uh, scan here. Now the next thing I wanna bring over here is given my lean body mass. Or, or given my fat mass and my total body weight. You can see my lean body mass is 78 kilos, so 78 times 2.2 gives us 172 pounds. So my total weight is 190 pounds.
I have 172 of those pounds is lean body mass. Which is, uh, muscle tissue, bones, organs, all these types of components. And then I have about 18 pounds of fat mass on a high sugar diet. Typically, what’s discussed by people like Dr. Robert Lustig is that it would cause a, an accumulation of visceral fat and fatty liver.
So you’ve already seen my liver values on this previous video. I’m gonna link both videos below into description, but now you can actually see a measurement. Uh, estimate, rough estimate because bial impotent scanning is not perfect of my visceral fat mass. And what we can see is the median here on this scale is 10, and I’m at a three.
So I have a very low visceral fat mass by these standards. So essentially what we’re seeing altogether is that I have 9.5% body fat. I have a total lean body mass of 78 kilos or 172 pounds, and I have a total fat mass of about 18 pounds. So I’m pretty lean overall. The next thing we can see is they give us a nice breakdown of the body composition altogether.
So essentially what we can see is the amount of muscle mass I have for each arm. For each leg and in my torso. And over here we can see my fat mass for each arm, for each leg and in my torso. And we can see in my fat mass all together on my abdomen. I have 4.2 kilos. Which is about nine pounds of fat on my total abdomen with 0.1 kilo for each arm and only about 1.3 kilo for each leg.
So my fat mass is, I have just a small amount on the, on the abdomen altogether. So this is after eating a high sugar diet, somewhere between 300 to 500 grams of carbs a day for close to 10 years.
So what I want to do now is I want to just take a quick run through of what my diet looks like in Chronometer and how, and, and to discuss how I’m actually able to maintain my body fat percentage at this level despite eating the amount of calories, carbohydrates, uh, protein fats and things like this. So you can see here my basal metabolic rate is about 2056 calories per day.
So this is the amount of energy that I would need. If I was in a coma and I wasn’t eating, I was at complete rest. To maintain my current body weight, my current, uh, body composition, and you can see 2050 calories. I have it estimated in my own calculations around, uh, 2100 calories. So this is pretty much on par with what I’ve estimated using different formulas.
Just a quick note to add. Before we get into chronometer and, and I wanna say this ’cause I know it’s gonna come up in the comments, bioelectrical impotent scanning is not perfect. The bioelectrical impotent scanning is, has some margin of error. It’s not as good as a DEXA scan or an MRI or anything like this, but it can give you a decent estimate of what’s going on and considering where my numbers are at, even if there was a decent margin of error, it would still put my body fat percentage pretty low.
And also just from a visual perspective, my body fat percentage is on the low end, and I also don’t really have much visceral fat. I have like a 30 inch waist right now. So essentially I would say it’s giving us a decent indicator of where my body composition is. And now what I want to do is show you how I’m actually maintaining this and what I’m doing to achieve this on a regular basis from a dietary perspective at least.
Because the major piece here that is concerning for a lot of people is that I eat a high amount of carbs. So this is an example day of eating for me. And yeah, I have some supplements in here. Just some basic micronutrient stuff. But essentially if we come down here and we look at my calories and macros, I have about 3,500 calories, uh, in the day.
And then I have proteins about 174 grams. My carbs, I’ve been averaging somewhere to between 400 to four 50, and we can even take a random day, let’s say back in December, let’s go to the third. On the third I was 171 grams of of protein, 447 grams of carbs, and then a hundred grams of fat. And even if we wanna look all the way back in June, we take a example day.
I have 171 grams of protein, 414 grams of carbs, and 80 grams of fat. I’ve been tracking my dietary intake chronometer pretty religiously. Um, for years now, so I get a sense of where things like what diets work for me. Agronomy is a, a really valuable tool. It’s something I incorporate when I work with clients and I work in the course.
And so basically I’m maintaining my body weight. I’ve been maintaining it for months with this caloric setup. Now, how am I able to do that? Well, first things first. My caloric intake is dictated by my energy levels and my lean body mass. So we already saw my lean body mass was sitting around around 78 kilos per day.
And so that put my basal metabolic rate at about 2100 calories and I’m quite active. So if I take my 2100 calories and put it by activity multiplier, it puts of the active, which would be a 1.63 times activity multiplier. And these multipliers are inside my course on Nutrition Blueprint that you could check out on my site@mikevape.com.
And basically that puts me about 3,400 calories per day to maintain my weight. So how am I determining that I’m quite active? Well, I’m working out between four to six times per week with weight training. So basically I do a bodybuilding esque workout, uh, where I’m weight training. I have a certain amount of volume.
I’m reaching a certain intensity four to six times per week that’s allowing me to maintain a higher lean muscle mass, and that’s also allows me to have a higher caloric intake. Plus also has my carbon intake and my fat intake up high. Now, the next thing that would be interesting to see here, or the next thing that’s interesting to see here is that my carbon intake of 440 grams, we have 486 here, but you see 43 grams of fiber.
I. It is actually 365 grams of that, or probably more ’cause some of the components aren’t, um, listed inside the chronometer database at 365 grams of sugar where there’s 132 grams of fructose and 77 grams of sucrose. So half of that is gonna be fructose, which would put me at about 160, 170 grams. Of fructose per day.
So at the moment I’m maintaining roughly 9.5% body fat with a lean mass of 78 kilograms, eating 160 to 170 grams of fructose a day with an exceptionally low visceral fat. So I don’t have a lot of fat on my abdomen, on my liver, around my organs. So it’s, you know, this is something that flies in the face of what we’re seeing from.
Different low carb advocates saying that fructose or carbohydrates gonna make you fat, or insulin resistant or diabetic, or things like this, which again, I’ve showed my blood glucose values, I’ve showed my lipid panel, and now I’m showing my body composition. The other thing I’ll show here is that I don’t necessarily have a super low saturated fat intake.
I have 35 or 36 grams of saturated fat in the diet. So despite having a relatively decent saturated fat intake and having a high fructose intake, by all means in my diet. I’m actually maintaining a lean physique and normal blood glucose regulation, as well as a relatively normal lipid profile. What I wanna show here is my sources of sugars, and this is super important, my sources of sugars in my diet.
We have pineapple juice, papaya, cantaloupe, and then I have some St. Dal four jam here because I was having a hard time hitting my caloric intake with my training volume. We can see all of my. Carbohydrate intake 300 and roughly 390 grams of it is coming from fruits, almost entirely fruits. The St DFO jam is a jam that is just concentrated fruit juice with fruit pulp, and then some pectin.
So there’s not any added sugars present. The only added sugars I have present are coming from dark chocolate, so the reason I’m able to get away with this. Is because I am eating whole Foods to a large extent. The only foods that are, that are on here that are not Whole Foods is this jam that I’m eating.
And even then it’s fruit juice concentrate with some fruit, uh, puree present in it and some pectin. So with that, and I guess you could say there’s some, there’s some added sugar in the chocolate, but with that, I’m able to do this not by pounding granulated sugar, not by eating cotton candy, drinking coke or anything like this, but by relying heavily on fruits in my diet and the reason that I’m doing this much sugar.
It’s not because I like trying to be flippant about it, but I have a harder time digesting starch. Since I had my surgery when I was in high school, um, I had a surgery that, uh, has drastically affected my digestion, so I do much better with sugars. This is the diet that I’m running to maintain my body composition at the 9% body fat.
Now, just because I’m eating 440 grams of sugar a day does not mean that I am. Making a recommendation for everybody to follow exactly what I’m doing. The diet has to be personalized to the individual. This diet is, I’ve built out and personalized to myself over time, which is why I’ve kept such a high amount of tracking, or I’ve tracked so religiously over the years to figure out what works for me.
After trying a variety of different diets, so essentially the reason that this is working for me, the reason I’m able to stay saline and keep a high muscle mass is one I’m training and then two, I have my caloric intake and my macronutrient intake heavily dialed in. Based on very specific principles so that I can reach my particular outcomes so that I can actually stay lean and keep a higher muscle mass with this dietary set up without having digestive issues.
So this is what I have set up inside my program, and this is what I’m doing with clients on a regular basis, is I’m helping them to take distilled principles and apply them to their personal context to figure out what’s gonna work best for them. For some people they may not do as well with sugars. They may do better with starches or other people may do completely fine with having quite a bit of fruit sugars in their diet.
There’s a lot of individuality with this. All I wanted to do is number one, show that the things that I talk about, I am doing myself and show evidence that at least for me, I haven’t found that I have gotten obese. Diabetic have a fatty liver or have metabolic dysfunction from running a diet like this.
If anything, I’ve been able to maintain a high lean muscle mass, a low body fat percentage, and have normal blood glucose values, a normal lipid panel while running a diet like this that has a high amount of sugar. But again, this is also from fruit. I’m not plowing coke or anything like this all day long, so just something to keep in mind.
I wanna put this nuance here. Because I know in the comments view and say, well, you think that everybody should eat high amounts of sugar. It’s, no. I think everybody should have a diet that is set up specifically to them based on sound principles, which again, is what I discussed in my one-to-one consulting and also in my program, which you can check out in the links below.
For years, carbohydrates have been demonized as the primary culprit behind obesity, diabetes, metabolic dysfunction, and fatty liver disease. But what if that narrative is flawed? What if, with proper context and an understanding of energy balance, carbs could actually support a lean and healthy body?
I’ve been on a high-carbohydrate (mainly sugars), pro-metabolic diet for nearly a decade, and I recently underwent a bioelectrical impedance scan to assess my body composition. The results? A resounding counterargument to the anti-carb rhetoric.
My Bioelectrical Impedance Scan Results: A Decade on Carbs, No Signs of Metabolic Dysfunction
My scan, taken in December 2024, provides key insights into my health after consuming between 300 to 500 grams of carbohydrates, mainly in the form of sugars, daily for the past ten years. Here are the highlights:
Visceral Fat Level: 3 (on a scale where 10 is considered the median). This is exceptionally low, despite the claim that high-carb diets cause visceral fat accumulation.
Body Fat Percentage: 9.5%, a lean and athletic range, demonstrating that high carbohydrate intake hasn’t led to excess fat storage, particularly metabolically dangerous visceral fat.
Lean Body Mass: 78 kg (172 lbs), indicating significant muscle retention.
Total Fat Mass: 8.2 kg (18 lbs), showing that despite a high caloric intake, my body composition remains optimized towards a higher lean muscle mass and a lower fat mass.
Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR): 2056 kcal/day at complete rest, which aligns with estimations based on my lean mass. If we add in activity my intake goes up to 3100kcal/ day.
Breaking the “Carbs Cause Obesity” Myth
One of the biggest claims against carbohydrates is that they inevitably lead to fat gain and metabolic dysfunction. This is especially a claim made about fructose. However, my data tells a different story. My low visceral fat, healthy weight, and metabolic rate indicate that carbs are not the issue—context and energy balance are. What makes this scenario even more shocking, given the current anti-carb narrative, is that the vast majority of my carbohydrate intake is coming from sugars, which includes around 150 to 170g of fructose per day. We’ll take a look at my dietary breakdown in the next section.
Quality Matters: Whole Food Carbs vs. Processed Junk
It’s important to note that my carbohydrate sources are primarily from whole foods. My daily intake consists largely of fruit (pineapple juice, papaya, cantaloupe), with minimal processed sugar. The only exceptions are a natural no-sugar added fruit jam and dark chocolate, which still fall within a nutrient-dense diet.
This distinction is crucial. The negative effects often attributed to carbs stem from excessive intake of refined sugars and ultra-processed foods, not natural, fiber-rich sources like fruit. You can see a breakdown of my carb sources in a meal below:
The Role of Energy Balance and Activity
I maintain a structured workout routine, training 4 to 6 times a week with weightlifting. This high level of activity supports my ability to consume and utilize carbohydrates efficiently. My caloric intake of approximately 3500 kcal per day, with 400-450g of carbs, is tailored to my needs, reinforcing the idea that individualization matters. If my training volume was to decrease or increase I would then adjust my caloric intake, largely by adjusting my carb and fat intake. I tend to keep my protein intake stable to support my muscle mass, liver function, and satiety.
You can see a breakdown of my macronutrient intake below:
If you need help determining your intake based on your activity level and weight, please check out my free Nutrition Blueprint mini course. It will guide you in determining your macronutrient needs, caloric intake, and fiber consumption to support your health and fitness goals.
Carbs and Metabolic Health: The Bigger Picture
Many low-carb advocates argue that high carbohydrate consumption leads to insulin resistance and diabetes. However, my previous blood tests (available in prior videos that you can find here) show optimal glucose, insulin, hemoglobin A1c, and lipid markers. This supports the argument that carbohydrate intake, when paired with an active lifestyle and whole food sources, does not inherently lead to metabolic issues.
Final Thoughts: Context is Everything
My case challenges the oversimplified message that carbs are the enemy. My decade-long high-carb dietary experiment has not resulted in obesity, diabetes, fatty liver, or metabolic dysfunction. Instead, I maintain a lean physique, strong metabolic function, and excellent body composition.
The takeaway? Carbs, when consumed in the right context, are not the problem. Rather than fearing carbs, we should focus on understanding how to strategically incorporate carbohydrates, including sugars in an overall balanced diet tailored to individual our needs, goals, and contexts. If you need help strategically incorporating carbohydrates into a tailored nutrition plan, you can reach me here.
