Bless you if high fiber or "low-glycemic" carbs work for you as the majority of your calories. If you think in those terms then you will understand that I found "glycemic load" to be the most important factor; that is, the amount of non-fiber carbohydrate per meal was the single biggest effects producer I found in all my experiments. What I'm saying is that it didn't matter whether I ate bowls of broccoli or drank maple syrup out of the bottle, if the non-fiber carbohydrate number per meal was the same, I got the same result. I have nothing against fiber and low-glycemic carbs; indeed, most of my carb sources have a lot of fiber, but the problem of too much carbohydrate is not solved by substituting high fiber foods for refined foods unless it reduces the glycemic load because glycemic index only matters if the glycemic load is too high anyway. And if you eat real food, you can easily get the Daily Value for fiber (if that is what you want) with only 20% of calories from carbs, instead of the Daily Value's exorbitant 60% of calories from carbs (suggesting that the real purpose of a "low fat" public policy is to sell refined sugar and starch).
Hey, I love carbs, and I think limiting carbs is a big drag. I would love to buy into the idea that fruits and vegetables and whole grains are good carbs and I could eat a lot of them, and refined sugar and starch are bad carbs. But that is not what my experimentation showed. The health benefits I saw tracked exactly to non-fiber carb grams per meal, and it didn't make the slightest difference whether they were good carbs or bad carbs. After you puzzle over every hangnail, pimple, joint symptom, backache, headache, depressed mood, etc., as I did and discover that 99% of the problems are simply too much carbohydrate, I think you too will wonder who are these morons that keep pushing low-fat, which is just a euphemism for too much carbohydrate. And I am not talking about a slight reduction--I had to limit non-fiber carb most of the time to 24 grams per meal (72 grams per day) to see the maximum benefit.
The carb optimum is very narrow. Just a few grams too little and mood is poor and muscles do not work right. Just a few grams too many and the problems of too much carbohydrate start. We are awash in carbohydrates so that differences in carbohydrate level seem inconsequential unless they are extreme. It is only by holding a non-fiber carb number per meal long enough at high and low levels to demonstrate to yourself the symptoms of too much and too little carbohydrate, and then slowly exploring the space between the extremes, that you can find the carbohydrate optimum. The best guidance I can give is to get the carbs as low as possible and to begin some effective chromium supplementation. The result should be an unpleasantly sober mood and muscles which do not feel particularly strong or have much endurance. Then slowly raise the non-fiber carb number per meal and feel both mood and muscle performance gradually improve until the optimum is reached. The first symptom I get when I go above the optimum is a eustachian tube congestion that I can hear when I swallow.
An additional approach to consider is to have a high-carb meal every few days. A level of non-fiber carb intake which is excessive when spread evenly through all meals may be invigorating when concentrated in single meals within a predominantly low-carb plan. My preference is for very high-glycemic "bad" carbs to get good glycogen replenishment; low-glycemic "good" carbs do not give either the muscle performance or mood boost which makes carb cycling really pay off. And, instead of mostly starch in the "good" carbs, which breaks down to only glucose, having some fructose in the "bad" carbs in the form of sucrose permits better replenishment of liver glycogen and therefore a sustained elevated mood. I determined my plan by finding the largest amount of non-fiber carb I could eat comfortably in a single meal (250 grams) and then found how often I could eat that meal while maintaining insulin sensitivity (every three days). If one has high-carb meals too often there is no advantage--it just becomes a high-carb plan, with the fatigue, inflammation, or depression that can mark insulin resistance. Treat carbohydrate with the respect it deserves as a dangerous high-test fuel for creative intensity and exuberance. The dual aspects of optimal carbohydrate nutrition--promptly refilling glycogen reserves in muscles and liver without overfilling, and keeping low-carb meals low but not too low--affect mood more strongly than any other manipulation of nutrients.
The mainstream nutrition establishment wants you to be fearful of experimenting with reduced carbohydrate and increased fat in your meals. Whether this is because they themselves have never been curious enough to try it, or because they are paid to keep the starch and sugar purveyors prosperous, I don't know. Or maybe they are just wackos who think meat and fat are slightly poisonous, but starch is God's Good Food. Whenever these low-fat pinheads are confronted with research that refutes their ideology, they declare the findings "another piece of the puzzle" and go on as before, advocating stingy protein and fat portions while treating carbohydrate as wholly benign, even though the only scientifically defensible position is that it is not beneficial to substitute carbohydrate for fat or protein in order to prevent chronic health problems. And to those low-carb advocates who claim that one will become adapted after a time on a very low-carb diet, I say yes, you will become adapted--to physical plodding, to an unsatisfactory mood, and to a dull mind.
There is no minimum daily requirement for dietary carbohydrate. There is no medicine (aside from injectable insulin) that reduces blood sugar as effectively as simply avoiding dietary carbohydrate. There is no nutrient more intimately connected to spontaneous verve than dietary carbohydrate. So if you experiment and find the level of dietary carbohydrate at which you do well and feel your best, what do you care what the "experts" think?