Carbohydrates: are they good? Are they bad?

The simplest way to put this is carbohydrates are the preferred energy source for your body. Most people think that fat is, but unfortunately it has the most concentrated energy source.

It is not the best and most efficient energy source, it simply the one that is in abundance.


As we mentioned earlier in the book your body can use either fat or carbohydrates to create ATP for muscle contraction. Glycogen that is stored in your muscles is carbohydrates, and is only stored in limited amounts, about 400g of glycogen can be stored in the muscles, and approximately 100 g in the liver.

Carbohydrates are a more efficient fuel for your body to burn. It is often mistaken that fats are more efficient for fuel your body uses, but the truth of the matter is that fat is just a denser source of energy, carbs are the preferred choice.

 

So what carbs do we need and what should we eat?

Quite simply there are a number of different types of Carbs out there.

·      Simple and complex

·      Starchy and fibrous

·      Natural and refined.

I would like to talk a little about each of these, so that you may understand a little better what to chose when you are eating.

Simple and Complex Carbs

Simple carbohydrates contain a single sugar molecule, also known as monosaccharides, or they contain 2 sugar molecules, called disaccharides. Monosaccharides include fructose, glucose and galactose. The 2 that you will know about in this book are, glucose (blood sugar) and fructose (fruit sugar). Glucose is found naturally in food, and the body can produce it by breaking down complex carbs. You will find fructose in fruit.

When we talk about eating too much sugar, which also includes eating fruit. The problem with eating too much sugar or fruit during the day is its effect on your insulin levels.

Because glucose is broken down so easily, the amount of sugar in your blood stream increases quite quickly when you have this fruit. And for example, if you have a fruit juice, which usually contain at least 2-3 teaspoons of sugar, your insulin levels will spike to combat that sugar effect. The insulin is used to remove the sugar from your bloodstream and into the cells to be used for energy. When this happens, the amount of insulin used to remove the sugar is a lot higher than usual.

The result is that the sugar is removed quickly, but the insulin levels stay high. This can activate fat storage enzymes and promotes movement of fat in the bloodstream for storage.

Complex Carbs (polysaccharides)

There are two different types of complex carbs.

Starchy and fibrous.

Why are the complex? Quite simply, the chemical molecular structure of these polysaccharides is very complex. Easy right? What that means is that, these complex carbs take a lot longer to break down than your average simple carb we talked about earlier.

How does this help?
Well instead of releasing a mass amount of insulin in to the body at once to combat the sugars in your body, insulin is released slowly as it is needed, as the body breaks down the complex carb.

Starchy carbs
Starchy carbs are found in foods such as potatoes, cereals breads, rice pasta, beans oats wheat and grains. Your body can completely digest and consequently absorb all of the caloric energy in starches.

 

Fibrous carbs

I am sure that you are all aware of fibre. Doctors saying eat more fibre, products like Metamucil that helps to regulate your digestive track. Well fibrous carbs are those that are not digestible. They pass directly through the digestive track without completely being absorbed of all its energy.

You might think that this is not a good thing though right? Wrong!

Fibrous carbs are those that help to promote a health digestion and elimination from your body. They speed up the transit time of digestion and help to keep your body healthy on the inside, protecting you from such nasties as colon cancer.

Fibrous carbs are not very calorie dense, meaning that they don’t have a lot of calories. You can eat fibrous carbs till the cows come home and be completely safe that you are not overeating them in a way that will encourage weight gain.

So remember, starchy carbs in moderation, and fibrous carbs as much as you want. And overall, complex carbs should make up a major part of your diet, and not the simple carbs that we have just looked at.

At table at the end of this eBook will highlight all of the foods in their respective headings.

Refined V Natural

Something that you must become an expert at is label reading on your food products. You need to know the difference between refined and natural, and how they can affect the overall weight loss you may or may not achieve.

When checking a label on foods, you must go that little bit deeper and read the label.

Something that says 100% fat free or low fat could be almost 100% refined sugar. Refined sugars have no nutritional value, and 100% calorie value. This is just as bad as eating fat. Why? Remember we just said that your body digests sugar really quickly? When you introduce refined sugar into your blood stream, it peaks out your insulin levels. Then when it is all digested the amount of insulin left tells the body to start storing everything else in the fat stores.

To catch out these refined sugars in the label you will find under the ingredients heading words like corn syrup, rice, sucrose, glucose syrup, brown sugar etc. These are all different varieties of refined sugar and something you should avoid. Another thing is that the ingredients listed on the labels of products are usually in order from largest to smallest. Something at the start of the list will invariably be high in the percentage content that something at the bottom of the list. If you keep an eye on these things, you will surely start to notice the effects.