Cathal Barry
Advice for eating carbs when trying to lose body fat
Low-carbohydrate diets have become popular in recent years and for good reason too. However, many people have misunderstood the concept which has led to a widespread criminalisation of the entire food group. The unfortunate fact is that with the rise of fad low-carb diets, optimal carb intake has been forgotten.
Here are a few tips for eating carbs when trying to lose body fat.
1. Avoid refined grains
That includes bread, cookies, crackers, and the majority of processed foods since almost all of these foods contain at least a little bit of wheat, corn, soy, or rice as filler.
Why are refined grains bad?
- They're packed with calories.
- They're nutritionally empty.
- They contain no useful fibre.
- They spike blood sugar in the same way as regular sugar.
- They trigger food intake, making you eat more calories than you would if you ate the same grains in unrefined form.
- They can cause inflammation in the body.
- They increase diabetes risk if eaten frequently.
Eat fibrous carbs instead, especially green vegetables and nutrient-rich, dark-coloured fruits which are low in calories and very filling.
A simple trick is to replace refined grains with fibrous carbs in meals. Use leafy greens instead of bread and turn to blueberries and strawberries instead of cookies.
2. Improve insulin sensitivity
Certain foods increase insulin sensitivity and improve the body's ability to store the carbs you eat as muscle glycogen, which is a fuel source for the muscle, instead of as fat.
Vinegar, green tea, nuts, and berries are among the foods that are beneficial for insulin sensitivity. For example, vinegar improves something called 'nutrient partitioning' that makes muscle cells more sensitive to insulin so that carbs get stored as glycogen.
How to do it:
- Flavour food with acids such as vinegars, lemon, or lime.
- Use cinnamon and turmeric to spice foods.
- Pair high-carb and antioxidant-rich foods like oatmeal and blueberries.
3. Eliminate all liquid carbs
This means sports drinks, all fruit juice and anything with added sugar. The brain doesn't 'register' liquid sugar calories in the same way as it does calories from food. This means that drinking your carbs wonít reduce hunger, so you'll eat more calories overall.
The other huge problem with liquid carbs is that they tend to contain a large amount of fructose, which is a very sweet form of sugar metabolised by the liver.
The liver does a fine job of storing fructose as glycogen when you get it from a whole piece of fruit. When it comes in liquid form, it's digested rapidly, and the liver has trouble keeping up, leading to greater fat storage and other metabolic problems.
In conclusion, recommended carbs are starchy vegetables, fruit, or if you are eating them, whole grains.
Eat them with protein to slow digestion. And drink plenty of water!
