Concentrate on your Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates are basic energy producers. They come from a variety of foods like bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, fruit and vegetables. These are complex carbohydrates releasing energy into the bloodstream, our basic energy providers. Other energy producers are cakes, sweets and sugar. These are simple carbohydrates. All of these foods break down into sugar to produce Glucose for our fuel but some foods do it more quickly than others, e.g., cakes and sweets. If the energy the body obtains from these foods is not used up, it will be stored as fat.

If we work on reducing the amount of quick releasing energy carbohydrates, we will gain more valuable energy from our food as it slowly releases the Glucose we need. An alternative way of rating your Carbohydrates can be by their Glycemic Index. This is the rate at which Carbohydrates are broken down into Glucose. The higher the Glycemic rating the quicker the Carbohydrate is broken down and therefore reaches your bloodstream. When you pay attention to this there will in turn be a drop in the level of insulin produced.

Insulin stores incoming nutrients in appropriate cells. If we didn't have Insulin then cells would not be fed and they would starve to death. When we eat a lot of quickly absorbed Carbohydrates and simple sugars, a lot of Insulin is required to distribute the amount we are eating. The Insulin then stores the excess energy as body fat. Insulin also regulates hormones in our body which become unbalanced due to the intake of high Glycemic Indexed Carbohydrates which cause the over secretion of Insulin. As we get older our Insulin levels become less able to process the incoming sugars. Therefore, we store more body fat and are more likely to suffer from Diabetes.

It is very important to maintain your Carbohydrate levels. If the body has no Carbohydrates at all then it starts to find energy from other sources other than fat and this can cause nausea and fatigue. Some low carb diets encourage you to replace your Carbohydrates with more protein and more dairy products, even encouraging you to have as much as you like, however this is a very unhealthy, unbalanced way of eating.

The reason why you see so many people turning to these diets is because they produce weight loss results fast, if only for the short term. Also, if you are starving the body of vital energy it may start to feed itself from living muscle and this is going against what you are trying to achieve. A Carbohydrate exclusion diet is not a healthy one but a diet that adapts your carbohydrate intake via the Glycemic Index, may be a better alternative.