It’s been going around that in order to lose weight and that pesky fat; you have to cut out fats and carbs in your diet. THIS IS A LIE. Please do not follow this trend. Eating fats is a whole other topic, but today I wanted to talk about why carbs are super important to keep in your diet.

So what are carbs? Carbohydrates are your body’s energy source. Your muscles need energy to function. Carbohydrates also fuel the central nervous system, create energy that aids in fat metabolism and allow protein to be used to repair muscle instead of being used as energy. I think this common misconception of carbs being bad comes from the fact that after ingested, carbohydrates are converted into fructose and glucose which people know as sugar. But this conversion isn’t bad at all. After this conversion it runs through the blood stream to the brain where your body then uses it as energy.

Next point has to do with protein. When we workout, our primary goal is to increase lean muscle mass and lose fat, right? In order to increase that muscle mass, which kicks up our metabolism for fat burning, we have to provide our muscles with the building blocks to build/repair them. Those building blocks are amino acids found in complete proteins such as chicken, beef, soy, etc. However, if we do not take in enough carbohydrates, the body starts to use protein as an energy source. This basically means your exercises and lifting efforts are for nothing.

Going back to the central nervous system, glucose is important for its functioning. Carbs provide the glucose, which is turned into energy, to the CNS. Without this energy you could start to feel weak and dizzy, like you would having low blood sugar. This could be detrimental when exercising both mentally and physically.

Now let’s talk about which carbs you should be eating. There are two categories: simple carbohydrates (bad) and complex carbohydrates (good). Simple carbohydrates are named so because there isn’t much to them. Not a lot of nutritional value and are made up of basic sugars that are easy for your body to digest. Simple carbs include soda, cake, cookies, white rice, white bread, and so on.

Complex carbohydrates are harder for your body to digest fast, which is why it can boost your metabolism, and made up of longer chains of sugar molecules. Examples of these include brown rice, sweet potato, and whole grains. You will also notice, with simple carbs you get a “sugar high” from the spike of glucose, whereas with complex carbs it’s broken down slower giving you a more evenly distributed energy level.

Have I convinced you to add complex carbs back into your diet yet? I hope so! Now, this is not to say that you can eat all the complex carbs you want. You still have to figure out your daily energy expenditure and base your carb intake on that. Otherwise all that excess glucose WILL get stored as fat. Do a little research and calculate your macros because all I want is for you to feed your body good and live a happy, healthy life!