Have you banished bread from your diet? Given up on fruit for good? Can you even remember the last time you had a bowl of pasta? For many women, a carb-free diet, or as close to it as they can get, has become a way of life. We’ve all heard the rumors: to optimize the fat burning process, carbs should be gone for good. In fact, you might even feel like just looking at carbs makes the pounds pile onto your hips. Right?
If you’ve avoided carbs for as long as you can remember, it’s time to bring some of them back to your diet. Here’s why. But first, a short lesson on good carbs versus bad carbs…
Good VS. Bad Carbs
Let’s face the facts, not all carbs are healthy for you. Understanding the good versus bad carbohydrates is key to adding them back to your diet properly.
What are Bad Carbs?
Ever heard the term “Bread Butt”? Cookies, cakes, crackers, bread and so on are not going to be providing you much in the way of health boosting benefits. In fact, these carbohydrates can actually lead to symptoms such as brain fog, fatigue, gastrointestinal distress, weight gain, poor vision, concentration troubles, diabetes, and can also increase your risk of autoimmune diseases as well. If you want to learn more about that, I recommend a book called Grain Brain.
Gluten intolerance is a very common condition for many people and occurs when you consume anything that contains wheat, rye, or barley. Although you can test for it, the tests notoriously give false negatives, so the best way to tell if you have a gluten sensitivity is to eliminate gluten from your diet completely for two months to see how you feel. Many people feel a night-vs-day difference and haven’t looked back.
What are Good Carbs?
Instead of breads, wheat and sugary carbs, put the focus on naturally occurring good carbohydrates. Bananas, berries, broccoli, sweet potatoes, carrots, peppers, apples – all of these are highly nutritious must-haves in your diet protocol. They’ll provide antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, and fiber – important elements for good health.
In addition to that, getting your high energy forms of carbohydrates from sweet potatoes and yams along with brown rice, and quinoa will provide the energy you need to do your workout session.
Carbs and Your Metabolism
First things first, you’ve likely heard the term ‘metabolism’ tossed around a few times. Your metabolism is essentially the rate in which your body is going to burn up body fat. The faster your metabolism is, the sooner you’re going to be sporting that lean, sexy body you’re after.
What most women don’t know though is that those low carb diets are disastrous to their metabolic rate.
Basically, the minute you go super low carb (less than 100 grams per day would count as very low carb), is the minute your body begins to slow down its metabolic rate. Carbohydrates are the body’s preferred source of fuel. While you can use dietary fat as a fuel source if you have to – your body would rather use carbs if it can. As such, when carbs are gone from the picture, your body starts to conserve fuel. Your body will realize that the energy it wants just isn’t in and for all it’s concerned, starvation isn’t too far off.
If your metabolism is slower and you burn fewer calories over the course of the day, that means you’ll stay alive longer in the face of starvation. Remember, your body doesn’t care you just want to fit into your skinny jeans. It cares that you stay alive, thus it’s going to work against you here.
Carbs and Your Workout Performance
Next, also note that a very low carb diet is going to be very bad for all intense exercise performance. If you plan on doing strength training (which you most definitely should be if fat loss is your goal) or sprint training for cardio, you need carbs. Without carbs, you simply can’t do this exercise at the intensity level you need to. While the body can burn fat at lower intensity levels, for intense exercise, carbs are the only source of energy you can use. So if you remove carbs, you’ll be removing exercise. Not a wise game plan if looking good naked is your goal.
Carbs And H-U-N-G-E-R
Your carbohydrate intake is directly correlated to a hormone called leptin in the body, which is produced by your fat cells and monitors incoming energy levels. When energy levels drop (due to lack of carbs), fat cells stop producing as much leptin. This sends you in a tailspin for the worse. You’ll feel ongoing hunger that’s so strong you simply cannot ignore it. You’re going to feel so tired all you want to do is lay on the couch – and skip your workouts. Not only tired and hungry, but you’re going to feel miserable, and you might even start to feel depressed.
If you’ve been on this carb reduced diet for a while, you certainly understand hunger. In fact, you might be hungry right now as you read this.
Doesn’t sound so pleasant, does it? But that’s precisely what you have in store for you if you opt for a very low carb diet plan. You might even be experiencing some of these symptoms right now.
Adding carbs back into your diet is going to help to boost your Leptin production up higher, allowing you to sidestep all of these problems.
Carbs and Your Brain
Finally, the last reason that you must eat carbs is for your mental health. Ever feel slightly ‘foggy brained’ after using a low carb diet? It’s not just your imagination. Using low carb diets does make your brain run slower and can cause problems with memory, basic functioning and going about your day.
Why? Because your brain requires 100 grams of carbohydrates per day otherwise it starts to switch to an alternate source of fuel called ketone bodies. The brain’s primary source of fuel is glucose, just like the muscles during intense exercise, so it needs so much of this on a daily basis to function properly.
If you value your mental health, getting more carbs in is important.
While some women are impacted by this to a slightly lower degree, most will notice a marked change in how they feel when on a low carb diet. Further, you’ll also increase your risk of depressive-like feelings while on low carb diets because your brain won’t be releasing as much serotonin, which is the feel good brain chemical that is released upon eating carbohydrates. So if you feel sad after using a low carb diet, it’s not your mind playing tricks. There’s actually a scientific reason you aren’t as happy as usual.
Hopefully now you can see why it’s so critical that you are adding carbs back into your diet. This doesn’t mean you should go crazy with them – around 150 grams per day tends to be a sweet spot for most active women and still allows for enough calories to meet your dietary fat and protein needs as well. So eat that apple without guilt or even treat yourself to some mashed sweet potatoes. It’ll do your mind, body, and mood some good!
What puzzles me is that why a lot of people testify about how effective low carb diets are? They claim that all it did for their body is nothing but good. Or are we just really quick to dismiss the truth behind these diets? Like for example, in a Facebook group about low carb diets, they say that it doesn’t make your face look sick and sunken and it gives you that healthy kind of glow instead. Not only that, but they show the before and after results of their weight loss and it becomes really inspiring for others. But the question is, is it really good for your body?
I was so close to trying this diet, good thing I read this first. The way it looks, it doesn’t seem to be a long term diet just like a lot of people think.
I’m not sure how I can measure my carbohydrate intake though so I’m not sure if I’m going too low. So far, it’s the low carb diet that has helped me lose weight.
Stop measuring your carbs, instead, get it from a source that’s good.
I agree with the comment above. It says in this article that low carb diets can be bad for you, so it’s best to just get it from a healthier source instead of breads, cookies, etc.
So, that’s why I felt like I was lacking in energy and I’m not feeling all fired up even though I knew I was losing weight already and I could fit in my old clothes. I think I would like to value my mental health over my weight. I could always just exercise instead of going on a low carb diet. Also, I should just stick to good carbs instead of going for the bad carbs. While eating a balanced diet doesn’t necessarily equate to weight loss, your body will thank you for giving it the right nutrition.
I hate how brown rice tastes. Quinoa is so much better. Brown rice feels so gritty to eat unlike quinoa.☹️
What we should do is to eliminate our intake of processed carbs and added sugar that can cause a spike in insulin, which usually overestimates, forcing blood sugar to drop, leaving us more hungry and irritable. And over time it can lead to inflammation, insulin resistance, pre-diabetes, and eventually diabetes.
This is a very informative addition for the article. Thanks!
It’s crazy how even fruits also have carbohydrates. Which basically means that no matter what we do, we have an intake of carbs.
I remembered my aunt who complains a lot about getting bigger and fatter as the years pass. She eats 1 gallon of ice cream whenever she watches TV on weekends. And she doesn’t even share!
I think you should help her.
That is a very unhealthy habit, even if she does it once a week.
Breaking down protein and fat takes longer than breaking down glucose from carbs. And when you also don’t get that dopamine from delicious carbs, you’ll get a bit moody.
I think when you’re trying to lose weight, it’s important that you list down the food that you eat every day and analyze what needs to be lessened. For example, I know that I eat a lot of sweets every after meals. My desserts are a very importantpart of my life so I knew that if I was gaining weight, it was because of the sugar. So what I did was to try and substitute my desserts into something that’s healthier. I ate fruits instead and after a week or so of substituting, I felt like I didn’t even need chocolates, cakes, etc., anymore. However, I do feel the need to indulge sometimes and I do reward myself with it.
This might work well for me since I really don’t like dieting that is in a form of starving myself.