Panicked about your carb intake? You aren’t alone! With the rise in popularity of no-carb diets, you might be wondering if eliminating carbs from your diet will help you feel better, lose weight, and have more energy throughout the day. Of course, not every diet is right for every person, but generally speaking, your body needs a decent balance of macronutrients and micronutrients. Carbohydrates are one of the main three macronutrients, and people need carbs to survive. That being said, most people who would benefit from cutting carbs are people who are sedentary and consume a large number of simple carbs rather than complex carbs. In fact, consuming too many simple carbs and having a sedentary lifestyle can lead to diabetes, metabolic disease, cardiovascular disease, and obesity. How can you make sure you are getting the right balance of healthy carbs in your diet? Read on to find out how you can feel great while managing your carbohydrate intake.
What You Need To Know About Carbs
Carbs are one of the three macronutrients you need to survive, the other two being fats and proteins. Carbs can be broken into two main groups: simple carbs and complex carbs.
Simple carbs are known as monosaccharides, disaccharides, or oligosaccharides. These types of carbs have one, two, or up to ten sugar molecules. Because they have only a few sugar molecules, simple carbs are digested faster and turn into blood sugar quickly. This can cause spikes in blood sugar and feeling hungry relatively quickly after a meal. Some examples of simple carbs are candy, soda, and french fries. These types of foods won’t help you feel full or give your body the nutrition it needs to function properly. You’ll likely experience a sugar crash after eating these foods, making your brain crave more food even if you’ve just eaten. Not only are simple carbs more likely to be high in calories, but they also leave you feeling hungry, making you consume more calories to help you feel satisfied.
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Complex carbs are polysaccharides, and they are bound by more intricate and longer chains. That means complex carbs are digested slowly, helping you feel full longer and giving your body more nutrition. Fiber and starch are primarily complex carbs, while refined sugar is a simple carb. Surprisingly, complex carbs include more than just whole grains- foods like legumes, nuts, seeds, and fruit with edible skin and seeds all have complex carbs. Because complex carbs are more intricate, they take longer to digest, helping your body feel full longer, extract all the nutrients from your food, and aid with digestion. Fiber helps “scrub” your digestive system, clearing out waste so your gut can more easily absorb nutrients from your food.
What Happens When You Eat Carbs
At the most basic level, when you eat carbs of any type, your body breaks the glucose (sugar) into small enough molecules to be delivered from your gut to your bloodstream to your cells, giving your cells energy to function. Imagine that carbs are sugar cubes fused together with string. Your body needs to cut the string between each sugar cube in order for the sugar to be absorbed and used by your body. If the carb is a single sugar cube or even two sugar cubes with one string connecting them, your body will be able to break down (or cut the strings between each cube) and absorb those sugar cubes quickly.
If you eat a complex carb, you are eating 10 or more sugar cubes with multiple strings connecting the cubes, which will take longer for your body to separate, helping your body feel fuller longer. Those individual sugar cubes are called glucose (or sometimes lactose or fructose, depending on the type of food).
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Once the glucose hits your bloodstream, your pancreas releases insulin, which helps deliver the glucose from your blood into your cells where it can be used as energy. When your body is flooded with too much glucose too fast, your pancreas may struggle to keep up with insulin production or may start to produce too much insulin, which can lead to diabetes.
Simple carbs will flood your body with too much glucose too fast, making it difficult for your body to regulate your insulin levels. Complex carbs will slowly be released into your body over a longer period of time, giving your pancreas time to adequately produce the correct amount of insulin without flooding your body with it.
How To Choose Healthy Carbs For Your Diet
Your brain needs carbs to function, in fact, they are the brain’s main energy source. So completely cutting all carbs forever can cause problems for your health in the long run. However, too many carbs, especially simple carbs, will lead to health problems as well. Generally speaking, you want to avoid simple carbs that are typically found in sugary foods, sodas, white bread and rice, table sugar, and syrups.
If you are going to eat carbs, opt for complex carbs like whole grains, starchy vegetables, legumes, or nuts. The best time of day to eat carbs is early in the day according to this study. Humans are typically more active in the first part of the day and energy levels drop off as the day goes on, so your need for the energy carbs provides drops off as well. Eating a heavy-carb dinner might cause weight gain, as your body doesn’t need the extra energy at the end of the day and while you are sleeping. Focus on more protein and lean fats with a healthy dose of vegetables for dinner, and make sure to add complex carbs to your breakfast or morning snack to help maintain your energy levels and blood sugar throughout the day.
Of course, there are times that simple carbs may be the best option for your diet, like elite athletes who need a boost of energy before a race or need a mid-game energy lift. In those situations, the athletes are burning off the simple carbs so quickly that they don’t cause harm, but even athletes need to watch their simple carbohydrate intake.
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Carbs And Weight Loss: Does It Really Make A Difference?
Carbs are a necessary part of your diet, but they can easily be overconsumed and lead to weight gain or prevent weight loss. When you balance your carbohydrate intake with the other macronutrients of protein and fat, and you make sure that the majority of your carbohydrate intake is primarily complex, your body will start to feel better and lose weight. Not only do complex carbs help you feel fuller longer, they include fiber which helps with digestion and nutrition absorption.
Your Digestion And Eating Carbs
Your body needs carbs to survive, but too many carbs of the wrong type can lead to weight gain. If you want to lose weight but still consume carbs, you need to have a healthy digestive system that can easily break down the carbs you consume and get them into your bloodstream.
Without healthy digestion, no matter how simple or complex the carb, your body can’t use the nutrients to help you stay energized and full throughout the day. That’s why the Digestion Duo from Xyngular is the perfect addition to your weight loss plan. The Digestion Duo includes Complete Collagen, with digestive enzymes and a world-class amino acid profile that help your body completely absorb the glucose molecules from your carbohydrate intake.*
Also included in the Digestion Duo is Complete Probiotic, which adds the healthy bacteria your gut needs to digest carbohydrates. Adding this duo to your weight loss plan will help you eat the carbs you need to stay healthy without letting the carbs stick to your body, and instead helps move the carbs from your gut to your bloodstream to your cells.* Buy the Digestion Duo from Xyngular today by reaching out to your distributor or logging into your account, and start to feel fuller, lose weight and live a healthier life!*
*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
