Healthy Foods Part 12: Carbs!

Weight Loss And Carbohydrates

Managing foods and the groups is very important when it comes to trying to lose weight. It’s impossible to lose weight without being able to balance them all so that you get the right blend of energy and nutrients, which is maybe why carbohydrates play a big part in any diet. Carbohydrates are one of the three main sources of energy, being completely made up of sugar or starch. Carbohydrates are pure energy because they don’t have another function, unlike fats and protein so if you want to lose weight it’s essential that you get the balance right!

Foods that contain carbohydrates include potatoes, pasta, rice, bread, biscuits, cakes and chocolate, to name a few. Fruits also contain carbohydrates because they are largely made up of fructose, a simple but really sweet sugar. In fact, carbohydrates can be found in most foods in some way, shape or form, but it is the foods that are high in carbohydrates that you should manage if you want to lose weight.

There are two main types of carbohydrates and the one you eat tends to determine how much weight you lose, or even if you can lose weight at all. The body uses up carbohydrates as an energy source before using protein and fats because of the fact that it can’t do anything else. If you want to lose weight then, you have to make sure that you don’t eat too many carbohydrates because the excess that you don’t burn off is converted into fat and then stored. But how can they really help you to lose weight?

You can lose weight by eating complex carbohydrates instead of simple ones. Complex carbohydrates are starchy foods like pasta and rice. They are actually digested slowly because its takes quite a while to break them down, which uses calories, believe it or not! As a result of the time it does take to break them down, they actually release energy slowly. One bowl of pasta would be enough to set you up for the day in terms of energy, and the fact that it does release over the day means that very little of it is stored as fat, so you don’t put on weight!

Complex carbohydrates speed up your metabolism because it has to work overtime to break them down. As a result, when all of the carbohydrates are gone, your metabolism will start in on your stored fat and this ensures that you lose weight throughout the course of the day!

It is simple carbohydrates that lead you to put on weight instead. Simple carbohydrates, like those in biscuits and cakes, are released very quickly because they take next to no time to break down. This gives your body a high amount of energy in very little time. Your body can’t use it all at once and so it’s converted into fat and stored. Avoid them like the plague!

Remember the old proverb when it comes to simple carbohydrates – a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips! It is absolutely true! Tucking in to a big bowl of pasta instead will help you to lose that fat and get rid of past indiscretions that involved the biscuit tin!