What goes around comes around.

That's a trite cliche, but when it comes to truly understanding the most effective dieting strategies, it happens to be accurate.In the late-1980s, for instance, I read an article in a bodybuilding magazine about a professional middleweight (about half the weight of the stereotypical 6-foot-5-inch, 300-pound musclehead) and what he ate after an intense workout when he needed to add muscle. That steak was his staple protein source did not surprise me.That he had a huge bowl of ice cream before he ever took a bite of beef did.But his reasoning was sound. It's why I advise you to limit your consumption of simple carbohydrates.In most cases, simple carbs don't truly satisfy your hunger. In fact, if eaten in abundance, 60 to 90 minutes later they create the same hunger they were supposed to sate.How so? Simple carbs digest into glucose so quickly that your blood glucose level elevates rapidly. In response, your body produces the hormone designed to transport blood glucose and other nutrients from the bloodstream to the muscle cells.Insulin.But in a typical eating situation, the hunger you feel probably comes from brain work and you don't need glycogen - what glucose stored in the muscles is called. Because your muscles are already or nearly filled, they reject most or all of the glucose and any other nutrients that insulin has escorted. In response, insulin takes it all to the storage area for unneeded or unwanted energy.Your fat stores.If this occurs with any regularity, weight gain results.But if the ingestion of simple carbs is in response to hunger from a loss of muscle glycogen resulting from an intense workout and meat is also consumed, the muscle cells - now in real need of energy - accept it all: the glucose and the amino acids (broken-down protein) that insulin has escorted. In short, the usually bad-for-you simple carbs allow the muscles not only to get fed quicker, but also to get repaired and grow.But this is only true for the 30-minute-or-so interval immediately after the workout known as the glycogen window.Muscle building occurs, ironically, because intense lifting produces micro-tears in the muscles. If there are enough amino acids left over after repairs are done, the body will add more muscle atop the tears to keep the tearing from happening again. It's what why proper nutrition is essential if your workout goal is adding muscle.Obviously, today's bodybuilders can learn from the eating pattern used by some bodybuilders about 30 years ago, but more importantly, the overweight and the diabetic can, too.They can learn to do the opposite.They can make sure to eat protein-based foods before the ones that contain simple carbohydrates to accomplish the opposite: reduce blood sugar levels.Imagine taking a meal of chicken breast, steamed broccoli with butter, ciabatta bread, a lettuce and tomato salad with low-fat dressing, and orange juice and feeding it to people who are overweight and/or diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. As long as you measure the meal to provide no more than the needed amount of calories, you would probably think this meal would improve their health.Think again.When researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City did the same in a laboratory setting, they found the timing of the protein-heavy and the carb-heavy foods in the meal made a significant difference in the after-meal blood sugar levels. After a 12-hour fast to get a baseline blood sugar reading, the subjects in the study first ate the carb-heavy items in the aforementioned meal, the bread and the OJ. Then, after a 15-minute break, they ate the remainder, mostly protein and complex carbs, along with a moderate amount of fat.Blood sugar samples were taken 30, 60, and 120 minutes afterwards.One week later, the same foods were fed to the same people after the same 12-hour fast. Only this time the bread and the OJ - the foods that are close to pure simple carbohydrates - were eaten 15 minutes after the other foods.Now the blood sugar samples taken 30, 60, and 120 minutes later were significantly different. And these tests demonstrated how the simple-carbs-first meal actually hurt overall health.Sixty minutes after the simple-carbs-first meal, blood glucose levels were 37 percent higher than 60 minutes after the simple-carbs-last meal. Just as importantly, eating the simple carbs first caused more insulin to be secreted.Remember, during testing the amount of food and the types remained the same. The only difference was the order in which they were eaten.In essence, the study performed at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City and published in Diabetes Care in 2015 merely confirms what many bodybuilders figured out about 30 years ago.For more eating tips that follow the what-goes-around-comes-around theme, read next week's column.