😱 CARBS 😱 The big scary carbohydrate, here to ruin your diet and make you gain weight. It’s time to separate the facts from the fiction, such as why you should not be cutting a whole food group out of your diet and why we need carbs. 

1. Carbohydrates are the body’s preferred fuel source. 

   • Glycogen is your body’s primary energy source during intense bouts of activity. It’s estimated that the brain uses around 20% of the total energy we use per day in the form of glycogen. Cutting carbs can deprive your body of optimal fuel, impacting physical and cognitive performance.

2. Carbohydrates play an essential role in hormone production. 

   • These hormones are involved in various aspects of carbohydrate metabolism: Luteinising hormone (LH), follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), thyrotropin (TSH), and chorionic gonadotropin (CG), as well as insulin, glucagon, epinephrine, and growth hormone. They require carbs for their production or efficient functioning, highlighting the importance of carbs in maintaining hormonal balance.

3. Carbs can help you stay full throughout the day. 

   • Whole food sources help create a larger meal volume, and carb sources higher in fibre help slow down gut transit and help manage hunger. Again, it is why we always talk about a balanced diet.

4. Cutting anything from your diet is unsustainable. 

   • Excessive restriction is never a long-term sustainable way to manage your nutrition for 99% of the population. The often 1% make a lot of noise. But for most people,  Carbohydrates are important for social eating situations, optimal physical performance, and overall health.

Separating the noise from the facts: 

• Cutting carbs will make you lose weight at first. However, you will only lose a lot of water weight, and this is not fat loss 

• Carbs may make you feel sluggish, but that has more to do with the specific type of carb than the entire food groups 

• For every one person who says they feel amazing cutting out carbs because their body starts using fat as a fuel source, ten people will not feel the same way. It is simply not true for everybody. 

• People who claim it’s not carbs that are the problem—it’s sugar—don’t know the difference between their sugars. Reducing refined sugar can help manage overconsumption, but we can’t lump all sugar into the same rule. Fruits and veggies contain sugar, an important part of a balanced diet. And don’t confuse the small amount of fructose in fruit with the larger quantities of fructose found in soda.

If you have a question, please feel free to join my weekly Q&As, which I host on my Instagram channel. 

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