Shocking Carb Truths!
Learn the shocking reality about carbs and weight gain
If you have some unwanted fat on your body you are probably overeating on carbs
Shocking Carb Truths!
Carbohydrates are for sure the most abused and misunderstood of our 3 macronutrient categories, protein carbs and fats.
Today I’m going to answer some of the most common questions about carbs and shed some light on some shocking truths!
Some of the questions are:
Are there really Bad Carbs vs. Good Carbs?
How do Carbs affect weight gain?
Should I be Going Low or No Carb?
How many carbs should I be eating per day?
How do you Measure Carbs & know if you’re eating the right amount?
It’s pretty clear to see that there’s a lot of confusion about carbs, a lot of love for them 🙂 I feel ya, I love carbs too. Unfortunately they are one of the biggest contributors to unwanted fat gain.
Carbs are awesome, but they must be respected & understood…and EARNED!
So let’s dive into these questions:
Are there Bad Carbs vs. Good Carbs?
I want to say no.. but that would only be true if we were talking exclusively about whole natural foods like bananas, potatoes, and rice. But in this world we live in there are lots of processed foods high in carbs that I would actually consider “BAD carbs”. Let’s just say all man-made processed high carb foods fall into this category. The main problem with eating these processed carbs like cereal, bagels, pasta, candy, and soda, is that they are not balanced with any vitamins, minerals, fiber, or any of the nutrients that would normally help your body regulate and process the carbohydrates. So the thing that makes them bad is the way our body reacts when they are eaten. Having too much of these kinds of foods in your diet can lead to diabetes, obesity, skin disorders, cognitive dysfunction, heart disease and a whole bunch of other not-fun outcomes.
How do Carbs affect weight gain?
Processed foods are missing the balance that nature creates in foods. The lack of fiber makes it very hard to eat these kinds of “bad carbs” in the recommended portion sizes. When you eat natural carbs like an apple for example, you’re very likely to be satisfied with one or maybe two apples at the most… but when you pop open a bag of chips it’s almost impossible to stop at just 12 chips or whatever the portion recommendation is. Make it easier on yourself to control your portion sizes by choosing whole foods that you’re less likely to over-eat.
Weight gain from too many carbohydrate rich foods is caused by the insulin response. You body produces insulin after eating to help process the sugars broken down in the metabolism process. This is normal and healthy but when your liver receives more sugars then it can handle it starts storing them as fat. When eating processed foods it’s easier to get too much too fast. You can take a look at the glycemic index to get an idea of how processed foods have much higher densities of sugar versus even high sugar natural foods like fruit.
Some starchy foods are even higher on the glycemic index than sugary or sweet tasting foods are, for example whole wheat bread and rice cakes rank higher than grapefruit or pears.
Even carrot juice is very high on the glycemic index.
Check out our blog post on Live Lean TV.com to read more about this index and see a list of foods ranked as low medium or high. Foods higher on this index are more likely to cause weight gain because of how they affect your body’s insulin response. When foods are too quickly converted into sugar in the blood stream and then NOT used for energy it causes fat storage.
To set your body up to naturally burn off excess fat, you want to aim for balance in all of your meals and keep your blood sugar as steady as possible. Pairing higher glycemic foods with fats and proteins is a good way to achieve that balance, but avoiding the highest glycemic items is by far the best strategy to avoid unwanted fat gain.
Should you be Going Low or No Carb?
MOST people who are looking to lose weight are likely overdoing the carbs and under-eating vegetables and protein. So if this is you, then yes! you should lower the amount of carbs in your diet. That doesn’t mean you should eliminate them completely.
It’s pretty much impossible to be “No-Carb” as even protein rich foods have some amount of carbs.
We recommend you decide on the amount of carbs you want by calculating the percentage of your diet you wish to be carbs. It makes no sense to decide on any number of grams of carbs per day if you don’t also have balance between fats and proteins. The macro balance we most recommend to clients is 40-20-40, but of course this can vary for different body types & metabolisms.
How many carbs should I be eating per day?
To give you an idea, if you were to eat 2000 calories per day and you wanted to follow a ratio of 40-20-40, then you would have 200g P, 100g C and 89g F.
In general MOST people tend to see better results with a higher amount of protein and the lowest amount of carbs. I recommend you keep them somewhere between 20-40% of your diet, which for a 2000 cal diet would be between 100-200 grams of carbs per day. That’s still quite a bit of carbs if you are eating whole natural foods!
How do you Measure Carbs?
Great question! If you are going to get a good handle on how many carbs you are eating then you should know how to measure them! Like I mentioned in my last video about a Simple Trick for Easy Weight Loss, using a food scale is the best way to get accurate measurements of the foods you eat. We just got a fancy new food scale, link below if you want to pick up the same one. Here’s how it works:
– Want to measure them raw because cooking affects the weight but not the nutrition content.
Once you know the weight of the food you can figure out the carb grams by searching a database like our Meal Planner Software.
You can download this for $15 bucks on our website LiveLeanTV.com.
You can use this software to plan your full days worth of meals which will help you determine how many grams of carbs you should be having at each meal to reach your goals.
If you are overweight or even just have that last little bit of fat to lose then I have a hunch that you might be overdoing it on carbs. I encourage you to take 1 week or even just 1 day to truly measure the foods that you are eating and find out the shocking truth.
Knowledge is power and once you know the reason for your unwanted fat storage you can make the decisions & take the actions to correct it.
Hope this video helped you out. Share this vid with a friend who might also benefit from this info and I’ll see you guys next Thursday! Thanks for reading and KEEP Living Lean!
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Great information! Thank you.