Understanding the Effects of Carbs and Sugar

From Ultra Metabolism:

When most Americans think of carbs, they think of bread, pasta, and sugar. These are carbs, but there is much much more than that.

Our diet mostly consists of meat, poultry, eggs, dairy, fish, beans, seeds, and nuts. Carbohydrates are everything else and are the biggest food group we eat. Of course we can't function without carbohydrates and they have specialized chemicals that keep us healthy and turn up our metabolism. But again, just as there are types of fat, the same goes with the types of carbs.

EAT good carbs: vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, nuts, and seeds. "If you want to be healthy and thin for the rest of your life, you absolutely must eat these good carbs."

STAY AWAY from the "white menaces": white flour, white sugar, or variants of these, and most kinds of breads, pasta, and cereal you find in the local grocery store.

"When carbs are processed, many of their important phytonutrient properties are stripped from them. This is one of the reasons processed carbs are so bad for you: they are basically empty calories. They are empty of vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients."

Basically what he says is that carbohydrates are also the way we get another major source which is sugar. If sugar enters our body by itself, i.e. soda, it is bad because it enters to our blood stream quickly and increases our insulin and we crave more sugar to balance out our insulin levels. This in turn creates weight gain. If the sugar enters our bodies accompanied with fiber, minerals, vitamins, and phytonutrients, (i.e. beans, and found in whole, unprocessed foods), they are beneficial to our bodies by helping us fight off extra weight and keep it off. That is why we want to eat the good carbs.

What carbs should we eat and which ones should we stay away from?

Good Carbs

• Vegetables
• Fruits
• Beans
• Nuts
• Sees
• Olive oil
• Whole grains
• Teas
• Herbs and spices
• Just remember that carbs should come from whole, unprocessed plant foods!
  

Bad Carbs

• Flour or flour products
• Refined grains (white rice)
  
• Sugar in any form
• Processed foods
• Junk food
• Large starchy potatoes
  

For the reason explained above, if you eat the bad carbs, or as he calls high glycemic load or low in phytonutrients (which are what carbs are for) then your body will process that sugar and everything else you eat with that meal so quickly that it will get stored as fat. Although if you eat the good carbs, it doesn't get the sugar into your blood stream as fast because of the balance of fiber and protein. That is why you should always have a few almonds with an apple so that your blood sugar levels don't jump up, which increases insulin, and then weight gain.

"If you've been eating mountains of highly processed foods such as candies and crackers and decide to switch to whole, real unprocessed foods such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, nuts, seeds, olive oil, organic, range, or grass-fed animal products (poultry, lamb, beef, pork, eggs) and wild smaller fish such as salmon, starting right now, you will lost weight."

I know this all sounds very technical, but by understanding what the different food groups do to your body and how it affects your metabolism is crucial information to know so we can make the right decisions in our every day diet. Don't believe the fad diets that all carbs are bad for you! Carbs are essential to the body and for weight loss. Just make sure they are whole, unprocessed carbs and you will be healthy.