The Truth About Carbs – They aren’t as BAD as you thought
Wednesday, December 10th, 2008Our bodies were built to thrive on eating carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are one of three necessary nutrients that supply fuel to the body, along with proteins and fats. The earliest recorded sources of food are fruit and vegetables. They supply the energy the body needs for the brain, central nervous system and muscles. The truth about carbs is that the human brain depends solely on carbohydrates for its energy. Low-carb diets can appear to give you short-term weight loss, but can have some severe dangers when you are removing the main energy source for your brain.
All fruit and vegetables contain carbohydrates. There are different types that each do different things for our bodies. Simple carbohydrates (sugar, fruit), Complex carbohydrates (vegetables, starches), and Indigestible carbohydrates (fibre). The simple carbs break down quickly and give us quick energy from glucose. The complex carbs break down more slowly and enter the bloodstream gradually to provide energy longer. Fibre doesn’t break down, and stimulates the bodies waste removal functions.
Too many simple carbohydrates, eg. sugary sweet drinks, and you can cause blood sugar spikes that will trigger the release of excess insulin. This can increase your appetite and with that the risk of excess fat storage.
Complex carbohydrates take longer to break down and digest. They enter the blood stream gradually and trigger only a moderate rise in insulin levels. This allows the appetite to stabilize and results in fewer carbohydrates being stored as fat.
Indigestible carbohydrates are important to keep the body working well, moving the nutrients through and to eliminate the wastes and toxins.
When the intake of carbohydrates are severely restricted, the body cannot burn fat in the correct way, and begins to prepare the body for famine conditions. The carbs that normally combine with fat fragments to be used as energy aren’t available so protein is used instead. Protein should be being used to build new cells, tissues, enzymes, hormones, and antibodies and assist with the regulation of fluid balance.
People trying low-carb diets often report feelings of nausea, headaches, dizziness, fatigue, bad breath, and dehydration. These are caused by the lack of protein energy available and the accumulation of ketones, the bodies way of protecting you when you are starving.
Your carbohydrate supply from fruit and vegetables also supply your body with water. If you are not consuming them, then you can suffer from dehydration and with the lack of fiber, constipation can result.
Energy levels can drop so low that fitness and performance levels can suffer. It’s not surprising to find out that a normal workout routine is too hard and exercise of any sort exhausts you.
So what is the real Truth About Carbs? Why is there so much hype telling you that carbs are bad? It’s all to do with the type of food that you are eating. Processed carbohydrates have most of their food value stripped, together with their fibre content.
So it basically makes the processed foods ALL simple carbohydrates. As we eat the french fries, processed cereals, white bread, white sugar, fast foods, and packaged quick snacks we are letting a flood of carbohydrate calories hit our systems. Instead of the trickle we would get if we ate the original product that still contains the fibre, vitamins and minerals, the nutrients our bodies need from carbohydrates.
The answer is not to reduce your carb intake, it’s to change the types of carbs that you eat. Fill up your shopping trolley, and plate with fresh fruits and vegetables, whole dried legumes, whole grain cereals and natural wheat products.
Keep the processed foods to a minimum, the occasional burger while out won’t cause you to put on heaps of weight, but your body will love it when you understand the truth about carbs and stick to a healthy, long-term eating plan.
To make it easy to plan your shopping to include the foods that you need to feel great, full of energy and to lose fat and keep it off, click here to check out Strip that Fat Diet Generator. It’s the best thing I’ve found for helping me plan my eating with good carbs.
















