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!
Some carbs are also good sources of fiber, and stopping on consuming them will not good for the digestion, especially when you consume animal proteins which can make you constipated.
Commit to exercising regularly. The progress of losing weight may be slower but it’s healthier.
Skimping on carb can only make one lethargic.
It’s not recommended for people to have depression to try this. The best way to lose weight is to just exercise and eat a balanced diet.
Recent headlines links absence of bread, rice, and pasta in the diet to an increased risk of premature death…
Come to think of it, it’s basic knowledge that you need carbs to have fuel to use for your body functions. Removing it or lessening it will cause you to have less fuel to burn. I don’t think our body knows where to get other fuel sources so it’s solution is to store it instead.
Our body thinks that dieting is starvation. Restricting food intake makes us want it more, and our body will resist any weight loss attempt and will gear self for survival.
I don’t really do intense workouts but when I started doing the low carb diet, I was having problems during my morning jog. I felt like I didn’t have enough strength to do my usual jog and I was really puzzled. It scared me because I might faint if I pushed harder. Others even say that your body burns the fats for energy which is why low carb diets are efficient. But I don’t think that has a scientific basis at all and it’s very alarming when you feel exhausted immediately after a few minutes of working out.
Refined carbohydrates come loaded with saturated fat, salt and added sugar. It is also often void of fiber. Foods composing these kinds of stuff is not enough to fill us up for long, so we tend to eat more and more, adding more processed carbs that our body can take.
Cook your own meals and portion them properly. Others add more protein on their meals in order to make them feel more full while still eating enough carbs.