Carbohydrates

I feel that this particular food group takes a bashing, especially when it comes to those wishing to losing fat. It seems to be the ‘go to method’ for those who wish to do so.

Wanna lose fat? Cool, cut all your carbs

Except it isn’t a simple as that...

If you’re training consistently and purposefully, carbs are your friends - they’ll fuel your muscles and help you perform at your best in the gym. Cutting them entirely from your diet long term when you’re living an active lifestyle can lead to hormone imbalances - this can translate to feeling

- Slow, demotivated and sluggish
- Having higher anxiety levels
- Depression
- Lower testosterone and higher cortisol levels (not good, fellas)
- More body fat!
- Loss of bone density
- Interrupted menstrual cycle (not good, ladies)
- Plus more problems

Why?

Because our brain and central nervous systems preferred source of energy, is glucose - which we get from those dreaded carbs. Starving your body of carbs in order to lose weight is to also starve your bodies physiological functions of its preferred energy source, for things like hormone production.

Of course, our bodies have a back up system - we’re not going to keel over and die due to a lack of carbs.

Enter Ketosis.

In short, ketosis happens when our bodies recognise a lack of sugar. It therefore mobilises our fat stores to use for energy - sounds great, doesn’t it? For some, quite possibly. But it comes at a cost that may not be worth it when adopting this diet long term.

For starters, you’ll need to be consuming less than 30 grams of carbs a day in order to keep your body in this state, so

- Forget bread
- Forget pasta
- Forget rice
- Forgot drinking at social events
- Forgot eating regular meals with friends and family
-Forget cakes, biscuits and chocolate!

One day of carb indulgence and you’re out of ketosis. Hardly sustainable and hardly worth the effort IMO. In addition to this, the initial weight that you lose when going Keto probably isn’t even fat. You see, our body breaks carbs down into glucose, this glucose is then neatly packed together to form a substance called Glycogen.

Glycogen is then shipped off to the muscles and liver for storage, ready to be called upon when needed.

Glycogen is heavy and our body doesn’t like to carry too much of this substance around. You also have to bare in mind that for every gram of glycogen stored, you store around 3 grams of water, too.

Do you see where I’m going with this? The rapid weight loss you lose initially is water and glycogen, not fat!

The keto diet has been known to help children with epilepsy and diabetics who struggle with their blood sugars levels, so yes, there are certainly benefits to eating this way when it calls. But using this diet long term simply to lose weight when you’re healthy and active?

Something to think about.........

Now, do a lot of people consume too much of this particular food group?

Probably

Could most do with cutting the amount of carbs in their diet?

Again, probably

But do try and get out of this notion that carbs are bad, they’re not, they’re healthy and much needed in moderation by the vast majority of you in order to fuel your body adequately.

And remember

You don’t have to eliminate a particular food group in order to lose weight. Healthy weight loss comes from a consistent and sustainable calorie deficit and you can do that eating protein, fats and even.......

Carbohydrates :)

Coach Daz.