The Saturday Standard — Vol. 19

Saturday, September 12, 2026

As always, coffee first, fellas — and let's address a huge misconception in body composition and weight management.

The Research

High carb vs low carb

The question every man has asked me at some point is should they eat low carb or high carb?

The honest answer — that many men don't seem to like — is that when calories are matched and protein is matched, it barely matters. And the internet gurus and influencers selling you the opposite are selling you a whole lot of nothing.

The strictest test we have.

Kevin Hall's team at the NIH locked 19 adults with obesity into a metabolic ward — no access to outside food, every calorie weighed, daily exercise controlled. Each man and woman did both diets in random order: a 30% calorie cut achieved either by slashing carbohydrate or by slashing fat, matched for total energy.

This is as controlled as human nutrition research gets. Nobody is misreporting what they ate, because they couldn't.

Carbohydrate restriction did what the low-carb lovers say it does — fat oxidation went up and stayed up. Fat oxidation is simply how much fat your body is burning for fuel, so on paper that looks like a win.

But measured body fat loss was 53 g/day on carb restriction versus 89 g/day on fat restriction. The metabolic advantage ran the opposite direction from the marketing.

(Hall KD, et al. Cell Metab. 2015 Sep 1;22(3):427-436. PMID: 26278052)

Before anyone reaches for that as a win for low-fat: the same paper's modeling predicted that over longer periods, isocaloric (same calories regardless of macronutrient distribution) diets across a wide range of carb and fat content produce only small differences in body fat. Six days in a chamber is not your life. The authors said as much themselves — adherence, not macronutrient ratio, is what actually determines outcomes in the real world.

So what happens in the real world.

In 2018, Stanford ran 609 adults, aged 18 to 50, for a full twelve months through differing macronutrient balances. Healthy low-fat versus healthy low-carbohydrate — both groups coached toward real food, both told to push their assigned macronutrient as low as they could sustain.

Twelve-month weight change: −5.3 kg on low-fat, −6.0 kg on low-carb. The between-group difference was not statistically significant.

(Gardner CD, et al. JAMA. 2018;319(7):667-679. doi:10.1001/jama.2018.0245)

And my favorite part of this research — researchers had pre-specified that genotype pattern and insulin secretion would predict who thrived on which diet. In simple terms, there are genes specifically tied to carb and fat metabolism. Some people have "better" fat vs carb metabolism, and the assumption made was that there should be a difference between those with favorable genetics toward either side.

Neither predicted anything. No diet-genotype interaction. No diet-insulin interaction.

So when someone tells you they've got a test that will reveal whether you're a "carb type" or a "fat type" — the largest trial designed specifically to find that effect looked hard and came up pretty empty.

What actually matters.

Calories set the baseline. Protein protects your lean mass and keeps your body strong. Once those two are handled, the split between carbohydrate and fat is a preference question, not a physiology question.

Which means the right answer is the one you'll still be doing in eighteen months. If you feel better with rice and potatoes, eat them. If you feel better with meat and eggs and green things, do that. Both work. Neither is magic.

The variance in that Stanford trial is worth addressing. Within each group, individual twelve-month results ranged from a loss of 30 kg to a gain of 10 kg — and the spread was similar on both diets. Same coaching, same curriculum, same twenty-two group sessions. Wildly different outcomes.

Whatever separated those people, it wasn't their macros.

(Range reported in Gardner CD, et al. JAMA. 2018;319(7):667-679, and discussed in Guo J, et al. Cell Rep Med. 2022;3(12):100831)

This should make you feel better about your diet overall. It creates flexibility — and for the average man busy with work, life, marriage, kids, and a favorite college football team actively creating a mental health crisis, flexibility is a big win.

Unless you are drunk on the Kool-Aid of high vs low carb or fat. In that case, well, sorry to burst your bubble, but it doesn't make a big difference.

The research is clear that what matters most is as follows:

1. Eat within your caloric needs.
2. Eat 0.7–1 g/lb bodyweight per day of protein.
3. Carbs and fats can make up the rest of your caloric needs as you see fit.

One caveat on point three. There are essential fatty acids — linoleic acid and alpha-linolenic acid, which are your omega-6 and omega-3 — that your body cannot manufacture. They have to come in through food. Same story with the essential amino acids, which is half the reason point two exists.

There is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate. In theory, a man can live without dietary carbs; his body will make the glucose it needs from other sources. He cannot live without fat.

So when you're filling out the rest of your calories, understand the asymmetry. Carbs are genuinely optional. Fat is not. Don't drive it to the floor because some influencer told you to.

If you can do this, you are going to succeed. Yes, you should eat vegetables. Yes, you shouldn't crush your calories in cheesecake and snacks.

But no matter what, if you stay within your caloric needs and get enough protein, you are going to do just fine.

Don't blame the carbs.

A quick exception.

Ketogenic diets have a legitimate medical use in drug-resistant epilepsy. That's decades old and it's standard care. There's early interest in keto as an adjunct in some cancers, but the evidence is still early and being worked through.

Worth Remembering

Men often think that neglect is a neutral effort. That doing nothing will net nothing. The garden disagrees. You don't get to skip the harvest by neglecting the garden. What you put down will produce good or bad. Neutral is a myth.

Most of what's growing in your head right now, you allowed in — from a feed, from a podcast, from ad-targeting, from your buddy who drinks too much, from whoever was loudest. That's the weed-seed. And it's going to bear fruit that will ultimately poison you if you aren't careful.

Guard your mind.

Try This Week

At every meal, eat your protein first. All of it. Then your vegetables. Then your carbohydrate.

Do it in that order. Nothing enters the body before protein does.

This is one of the easiest ways I have found for men to lose some weight, dial in protein, and get their diet under control. Keep it simple.

From the Bookshelf

The Bound and the Broken — Ryan Cahill

I am a fantasy fiction nerd, which to anyone who knows me is no surprise. I love the worlds of Tolkien and Middle Earth, dragons, wolves, and stuff some people deem "nerdy." Which I take as a compliment.

Good fiction — like that found in many fantasy series — is unbeatable. The human condition is best depicted in these kinds of works — the struggles, the ability to overcome your vices or to become victim to them. The downfall and rise of the hero. The behind the scenes characters who sacrifice for the greater good. That the world is not fair and we have to choose to push forward anyway in the relentless pursuit of using our gifts to bless others.

This series is one of my absolute favorites, and one I recommend to all of my "nerdy" compadres. And a stark white dragon throwing off purple fire is just cool as hell.

Closing Thought

In my Bible study this past week, the pastor spoke about the difference between reputation and character. We debated all of it — the nuances of how those with great character tend to have a good reputation, but also how many with a great reputation are putting off a facade, while behind closed doors there is nothing but grime.

Someone in the group used the example of a dirty coffee mug. On the outside it may look pristine and nice. On the inside, it is nothing but filth.

Make sure that your outside matches your inside. In general, when you tend to your soul and make it as pure and honest as you can, the outer will reflect that.

Clean the inside of the cup first, boys. Although for a while you may fool the world, eventually the rot will find its way out.

That is all for this week, fellas.