What are Carbohydrates?
No-Carb or Low Carb? When trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle or lose weight, it can be difficult to know what the best route to take may be when it comes to carbohydrate consumption.
The truth about carbs is that, like cholesterol, there are good types and bad types. If you want to lose weight and improve your health, you really need to know how to avoid the bad and get enough of the good.
How Do Carbohydrates Work?
Maybe you’ve heard of the popular Atkins diet that restricts your carbohydrate intake to a minimum while encouraging you to eat as many fruits and vegetables as you want? These and other diets have propagated the myth the carbohydrates are bad for you. The truth is that the basic building block of every carbohydrate is a sugar molecule, a simple union of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. Starches and fibers are essentially chains of sugar molecules. Some contain hundreds of sugars.
When you eat carbs, your digestive system breaks them down – or at least tries to break them down – into single sugar molecules, since only these are small enough to cross into the bloodstream. It also converts most digestible carbohydrates into glucose because cells are designed to use this as a collective source of energy.
The exception is fiber, which can’t be broken down into sugar molecules. It passes through the body undigested. Soluble fiber binds to fatty substances in the intestines and carries them out as a waste, thus lowering low-density lipoprotein, also known as bad cholesterol. It also helps regulate the body’s sugar usage, keeping hunger and blood sugar regulated. Insoluble fiber helps move food through the intestinal tract, promoting regularity and preventing constipation.
What are Good Carbs?
The best carbs are found in whole wheat bread, brown rice, whole grain pasta, and other possibly unfamiliar grains like quinoa, whole oats, and bulgur. They promote long-term health, and they are also high in fiber, making sure that you are ridding your body of waste rather than adding excess sugar to your system.
How Can You Lose Weight with Carbs?
Experts agree that eating good carbs isn’t enough – most diets fail because people can’t control their eating. If you are craving carbs, you should incorporate some of those healthier alternatives into your diet, but you should also try to eat less. One effective way to do this is to take a weight-loss supplement that will suppress your appetite and curb your hunger, reducing your calorie intake. The best pills we found are on www.weightlosssupplement.org which is a website that reviews and recommend pills based on effectiveness and affordability.
Even if you are a little unsure about how carbohydrates work, you can eat a little healthier today and imagine all those starches turning into sugar before you indulge in another slice of white bread.