Diet: Do carbs matter?
Lately I've been eating a lot of pasta. It's my favourite food and what has been quickly available to me. However I've been making sure to keep my overall calorie intake the same.
So if I eat the same amount of calories.. but more carby foods will I hinder my weight loss, at all?
Comments
Depends on the calorie intake -- at some point of deprivation the laws of physics say you must lose weight, no matter what it is you're eating. If you ate 100 calories of pasta a day and nothing else, you'd lose weight.
But relaying too much on carbs probably has a metabolic disadvantage -- you can probably eat a few hundred more calories of fat and protein and get the same result. Or, your body mass could stay the same but a higher-carb diet may make you skew to more fat and less lean.
Calories DO matter -- there's a difference between eating 500 calories and 3000 calories. But calories are NOT all the same -- for the simple reason that your body has metabolic and hormonal responses to the mix of food you eat. For example, carbs spike your blood sugar, which causes a release of insulin to deal with the blood sugar, and a high level of insulin in turn promotes fat-storage, inhibits fat-burning, promotes sodium retention, hence higher blood pressure; and over time such habitual insulin surges promote metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance.
Once, I asked a physique model advice about diet. The first thing she said was: "Carbohydrates are killer. You need to count out every carb you have because they sabotage everyone's body." Another bodybuilder woman told me that I should get all of my carbohydrates from fruits and vegetables. In other words, yes, they matter, A LOT.
Too many carbohydrates (especially simple carbs like white bread and regular pasta) will be immediately converted into sugar by your body. Once that has happened, all that sugar will be stored into your body as fat. Since you like pasta so much, start eating it only once or twice a week and always buy 100% Whole Grain noodles. Whole grain noodles are better for you, but you still do not want to be eating it a lot unless you are going to burn it off at the gym for the next two days. Try to eat other, healthier whole grains like quinoa and brown rice. These contain more protein than pasta does. Look up how many carbohydrates you are supposed to have in a day and track what you eat to stay within that range. You will find that you can't eat as many as you though you could!
Oh ya - carbs are garbage. If you need to lose weight, this is what you have to quit eating.
Carbs are food your body doesn't need. Your body does need proteins and fats. Think about repairing the retinas in your eyes.... you repair them with molecules you get out of proteins and fats... you don't get anything out of carbs except sugar. And you can't repair anything with sugar.
And pasta is the very worst of the carbs - it's manufactured to be just pure sugar. At least an apple has some vitamins to go with sugar... pasta has nothing.
Sugar enters your blood stream and is turned to lard to put on your butt by the action of insulin.
If you want to read about this, get Atkins "New Diet Revolution" - either on Amazon or in the library. Atkins can explain all this to you.
If you eat the same amount of calories that you stick to it does not matter what it is (to extent) aslong as you don't go over your calories. It won't hinder your weight loss