Hi, this is Monica Reinagel, the nutrition diva, and in this week's

podcast we're going to be talking about whether athletes need to avoid grains.

And now on with our show, which was suggested by an email that I recently received.

Nutrition Diva listener, Hype, writes,

I'm an athlete and a coach who trains two to three sessions per day

and participate in both Sprint and endurance sports. I mainly follow a grain-free diet because I've heard

that grains can pack on fat. The problem is that I am always hungry. I eat lean protein, vegetables, and about six to ten servings of

fruit per day, but even when I eat the number of calories I'm supposed to have, I'm just

having a hard time feeling full without grains. Do grains have

some sort of special property that makes you feel full and could I add some grains without

gaining fat? Thanks so much for your question hype.

Whenever I hear someone say,

eating grains causes you to gain fat,

I'm always waiting for the second half of that sentence because without that the statement kind of makes no sense.

For example, you might say eating grains will cause you to gain fat if it leads you to eat too many calories. Or maybe

eating grains will cause you to gain fat if it leads to chronically high blood

sugar.

But all by itself, the blanket assertion that grains lead to fat gain

is ridiculous. There's nothing about the calories

or the carbohydrates in a grain that predestinate to be converted into body fat.

Context is everything.

And by the way, I talked a lot more about this idea that certain calories or foods are more

...