Baby Steps III – Carbs are a dirty word

Carbs, the macro everyone loves to hate.

The most abused food in the world.

Keto, cleansing, juicing, paleo, south beach, whole30, zone, low carb, Beverly Hills, alkaline, weight watchers, Jenny Craig, gluten free, elimination diet, Dukan Diet, macrobiotic… the list goes on and on

Fad diets will tell you carbs are bad! Carbs are sugar and sugar is causing diabetes which is killing Americans daily. Sugar is making you fat. Sugar is stealing your lunch money.

And so will people with doctorates. Society. Your mom

So you believe them and you shun shun shun the carbs, you replace all your rice with cauliflower and pasta noodles with zucchini and spaghetti squash.

You feel good about yourself. You shed a few lbs.

But eventually you either feel tired and weak. You overeat the cake at the work party and your body hates you in new ways. Causing you to either give up or restrict further.

You wonder how everyone does it.

Well here is a secret.

We eat carbs.

Athletes, models, fitness freaks, yogis, people pushing the next fad diet with the before and after pictures. They’re eating carbs.

We are constantly being lied to by people trying to make a buck to help you lose ten lbs in five days to leave you gaining the weight back when the diets over with a slightly slower metabolism each time…

If you’re here then I hope you take this to heart

EAT THE CARBS

STOP FAD DIETING AND EAT THE DANG CARBS

Change the way you think about them. Educate yourself, use them to your advantage and do not abuse them. Lifestyle change, here’s the hardest part of it for most.

So let’s talk about them…

 

Carbohydrates:

There are five different groups of them:

1. Grains
2. Fruits
3. Dairy
4. Starchy vegetables
5. SUGAR

Yes – they all break down to sugar and all have different attributes. But none of them need to be completely eliminated (unless you have an actual allergy) from the diet.

There are also three different classifications of carbohydrates:

1. Sugar
2. Starch
3. Fiber

Sugar of course being the simplest.

Starch – is a complex carbohydrate made up of lots of sugar molecules. Takes a while to break down and usually contains…

Fiber – a complex carbohydrate that cannot be broken down by the human body.

Daily intake

According to our wonderful government, we need to get between 45 – 65% of our diet from Carbs. I often recommend as low as 30% for the weight loss seekers and upwards to 70% for those die hard long distance athletes.

Now this is where it gets sticky for me…

I cannot tell you exactly how much you need. YOU. Sitting/standing at a computer/on your phone reading this blog post have to figure that part out for yourself.

I don’t know what you do, what diseases you may have or are developing, how much you walk, how often you lift weights, go for runs, what your resting metabolism is, how you respond emotionally and physically to certain foods…

So here is where you need to start doing your own math….

If you are mostly sedentary (sit at a desk all day, maybe go for a walk, stretch or do easy yoga) or looking to lose weight. I want you to start at the bottom.. or at 45% of your diet

So if you eat 2,000 calories – you are getting 900 calories from carbohydrates.. divided by four because carbohydrates give you 4 calories per gram... that gives you 225 grams a day.

If you are moderately active and trying to lose weight start at 50 – 55%

If you are very active, wanting to bulk, a long distance athlete or are trying to perform better in the gym overall – I recommend the upper limit of 65%

Also – give your starting point some time to tweak. If you don’t see results, play with the numbers/percentiles… but please please please do not cut the carbs out of your diet.

Reasons why I don’t want you cutting…

1. Carbs stimulate insulin… Another one of those dirty words. Insulin is a STEROID HORMONE. Meaning that it actually stimulates the body to BUILD MUSCLE.
2. Carbohydrate is the preferred use of fuel for the brain… and omg if I haven’t been scolded by people gulping down ketones and globs of coconut oil about how the brain functions JUST FINE without carbs. If you ask me.. if you have to have brain fog and keto flu to lose a few lbs.. and the muscle mass that goes with it… well, just not for me. IF you are keto and love it… good for you. But please stop hating on carb eaters and people who tell you it’s possible to enjoy your life and be healthy with carbohydrates in your mouth.
3. Muscle glycogen.. every time you exercise your body uses the glycogen (carbs) stored within them to move and work. Without it you crash and burn… it is VERY hard for the body to turn fat into fuel, just like it is hard for the body to break down fat. Carbs are fast energy, so if you like to move, please eat them.
4. Post workout – This is my favorite talk when I am doing seminars… did you know that every single cell in the body has three receptors alive, awake and ready to take in molecules into the cells? GLUT (glucose transporters) 1 – 3. However, when we workout we wake up a fourth transporter called GLUT4 – this guy helps carry EXTRA carbs into the hungry tissues and with that we bring in MORE protein. So carbs are vital post workout
5. They taste good.

Fiber

The best reason for eating carbs… soluble fiber.

Part of the reason I choose to put carbs after non-starchy vegetables is because we NEED fiber. It is so good for our insides. It lowers cholesterol, helps keep up full and it can help us lose weight. This wasn’t my original plan.

However… FIBER

There are two types of fiber:

1. Soluble – meaning it pulls water into the gut and bloats (think of when you cook oatmeal or rice – thats what happens in the gut too) – surrounds everything inside and moves it out.
2. Insoluble – meaning it cannot pull water in. Think about when you stick a piece of celery in water… nothing happens.. it stays celery. That’s exactly what happens in the gut. Insoluble (which if you made it this far already you should be eating 4 cups a day!) is the bulk.

You HAVE to have both. Having just one or the other can actually cause constipation or worsen constipation you may already be suffering from.

Your fiber goal is 30 – 35 grams a day coming from both non-starchy (insoluble) and carbohydrate (soluble) sources.

If you barely eat any fiber.. proceed with caution.. too much too fast is NOT fun. If you currently eat 15 grams a day.. up it to 20 and so on and so forth.

But this is also a key part of how to choose your carbs. I want you to choose high fiber source 80% of the time.

If your working out – time your simple carbs around the workouts (no fiber needed) to get the most from your workouts. (GAINZ)

Give yourself a few treats throughout the month.

Love your life a little bit, but look good doing it 😉

So lets put this together..

When choosing carbs for meals, try and aim for carbs with about 5 grams of fiber or more.

For workouts – 15 – 30 grams of SIMPLE carbs before/during/after suffices for most recreational athletes, meaning, little to NO FIBER

Starchy vegetables

1. Beans/lentils
2. Peas
3. Corn (and popcorn.. though it’s labeled as a grain at this point)
4. Potatoes

1/2 cup of each cooked = about 15 grams of carbs

In order of fiber content.. beans and split peas have up to 14 grams of fiber per cup! That’s fantastic. Potatoes are friends.. there isn’t much difference between sweet and regular except for antioxidants. Corn also isn’t the devil.

Fruit:

1. Berries (raspberries, blackberries and elderberries especially)
2. Passion fruit
3. Guava
4. Persimmons
5. Kiwi fruit
6. Pears
7. Apples
8. Oranges
9. Prunes
10. Figs
11. Jicama
12. Starfruit (do NOT eat if you have kidney disease)

1/2 cup fruit or one small apple, orange, ect…. 1/2 a large banana and little less than 1 oz of dried fruit = 15 grams carbs

Grains:

1. Oat bran
2. Wheat bran
3. Pretty much any bran…
4. Amaranth
5. Barley
6. Buckwheat
7. Rye flour
8. Quinoa
9. Teff
10. Wheat berries
11. Bulgur
12. Oatmeal
13. Brown rice
14. 100% whole wheat flour

1/2 C cup cooked, 1/4 cup bran = about 15 grams carbs

Dairy and sugar

Neither of these have fiber. Both of these can be used properly. Closer to activities is BEST. But if you like milk with meals, count it towards your intake. If you like milk and cookies… eat it a few times a month but don’t eat a whole sleeve of oreos and a gallon of milk…. It’s called balance for a reason.

This list also isn’t the-end-all-be-all, there are SO many foods out there that could count or do count. But start incorporating these foods into your meals. Pay attention to serving sizes… which for the most part is, if you haven’t noticed is 1/2 cup for 15 grams of carbs. Read your labels!

1 cup of plain sugar is 200 grams of carbs. Just an FYI

(when I was around 9 I used to spoon plain sugar in my mouth for an “energy boost” when I learned that sugar gave you energy… I’ve come so far)

Remember that TOO MANY carbohydrates is bad for you. That’s that problem, so spread your intake throughout the day. And fill the rest of your plate in with those non-starchy veggies… This is also where swaps come in handy. Mix some cauliflower rice in with real rice, mix that zoodle in with your noodles.

Carbs are crystal-like in the blood stream (and YES we need some sugar in our blood to stay alive and function… low blood sugar can be lethal a whole lot faster than high blood sugars). But the crystal like structure of them is what is causes issues in such high amounts.

Imagine a broke piece of glass (or a ball full of spikes) flowing through the veins.. now imagine 1,000,000 of them, bumping into the walls and cutting them open. But imagine that it constantly happens and the body can’t clean up the inflammation fast enough before the next 1,000,000 crystals come through and cut it all up again. That is where the issues arise, it’s when the damage becomes so bad or the body works too hard to get the sugar out of the blood that diseases begin for form.

Anyway…

This all may seem like too much to some and not enough to others. The thing to remember is you may need more or less than your peers, there are just too many factors for me to give you a blanket goal. If you’re part of the baby steps group we can brainstorm there.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1873739242730480/

If you just recently joined.. start from step one and you can incorporate them all now or try and use the 21 days to a habit method we have employed and start each one every three weeks…

Keep going with it.. so if you’re this far you should still be hydrating and eating 4 cups of veggies per day of at least 3 different colors.

Step one – here

Step two – here

Thanks for reading! Let’s start eating our carbs so we can bake a cake and eat it too! 😀