I have a hard time believing the new theories that fat is not that bad and sugar is the evil. I used to have a diet with plenty of beef and pork meat. Then I went to live for a couple of months in Singapore, and there I ate noodles. LOADS of them, because I loved them. The result was that I lost a lot of weight.
In my experience what gets me fat is meat, and what makes me lose weight is eating less meat and more pasta and rice. But I suppose it varies per person.
It isn't glucose or lactose that make you fat, it is the presence of fructose or sucrose in the absence of water soluble fibre that fuck up your insulin levels because you don't have the lipids to resist the shock.
Beef is incredibly energy dense, and yes it can lead to weight gain, but most people have their beef with sugary tomato paste / ketchup and a side of Coca Cola.
Noodles are actually very simple to make: Flour, touch of salt, and an egg. No fructose or sucrose. So of course you weren't getting fat because your insulin levels were still in check and you weren't craving too many calories per day. Also, I don't know about Singapore, but in North America sugar is added all over the place. Even something simple like BBQ sauce has more sugar per serving than something like an apple or a banana. And again, no water soluble fibre.
In my case I never ate much coke or ketchup, neither after nor before going to Singapore. I'm from Spain and the most typical way to have beef is together with homemade fries.
I suppose the kind of carbohydrates is everything: noodles and cereal good, sucrose bad... so that makes me wonder if the studies mentioned in the article might be too US-centric. Probably many Americans could lose weight by replacing the sugary coke and ketchup with more fat, so "high fat, low carb" may be a good advice for them. But in Spain where coke and ketchup aren't so widespread (some people have them, of course, but probably not even 10% as much as in the US) most people would do better to replace their fatty beef with carbs in noodle, pasta or rice form...
In my experience what gets me fat is meat, and what makes me lose weight is eating less meat and more pasta and rice. But I suppose it varies per person.