Rose Gillet’s been researching what she needs to do to achieve sustainable weight loss and one things she’s heard a lot of people speaking badly about is carbohydrates. Rose asks if she needs to cut out carbs to lose weight.
Rose, first of all I want you to know that we don’t believe in cutting things out at the DVCC, so the short answer is no.
What we do want to establish though is a new focus on:
- Telling the difference between bad and good carbohydrates
- Making sure you incorporate as many good carbohydrates as your body needs
Why Do You Need Carbohydrates?
Carbohydrates are an excellent source of energy and you need them to keep your body functioning correctly. When you ingest carbs into your system, your body converts most of the carbohydrate into sugar, which fuels key cells, like your brain cells and muscle cells. In short:
You need carbohydrates for your everyday life and if you’re eating the right ones then they are not a problem and they are not bad.
Getting The Right Carbs
There have been a ton of low carb fad diets in recent years and we certainly advise against jumping into any of those. You may have friends who have seen results from these, but cutting out this vital macronutrient can have a very detrimental effect on your long term health, especially over sixty.
Examples of good carbs are the ones that are natural and not refined, such as sweet potato, wholemeal rice and buckwheat. So, be sure to switch over your sugary snacks and refined carbohydrates for healthy, more complex carbs.
Once you’ve started eating the right types of carbohydrates and you still feel as if you have more weight to lose, then you can focus on slightly reducing the amount and increasing fat or protein – not focusing on cutting this out.
But the main crux of this is to make sure you’re getting good, single ingredient carbohydrates.
