Carbs and Sugar!

What do you know about carbs?

I mean, really, what do you know about them?

Before becoming a nutrition- and food-obsessed trainer, I knew that carbs give you energy, can make you fat, and that the Atkins diet treated them like the devil. I also knew that I was addicted to them, and that anything that tasted good was, for me, a carbohydrate. Cereal, bread, pasta, rice, breaded chicken, cookies and cakes, you name it, I craved it. 

Let's backtrack. I always exercised. When I was at YSU I'd spend 2 hours a day at the Rec Center on the Elliptical, Treadmill, and weight machines. I took tons of aerobics classes and even started Spinning on the regular, but I didn't see huge weight loss until I got my carb intake under control... don't freak out, I'm not going to tell you you have to cut carbs. Believe me, I'd probably die!! But step one in carb-addicts anonymous is understanding what a carbohydrate is and how your body deals with them.

Simple Carbs

Simple carbs are easily digestible foods that raise your blood sugar quickly. When blood sugar rises, your body stops burning (and starts storing) fat. It uses the extra sugar in your blood for energy instead of what it normally uses for energy: fat. But we'll get to that soon!

What are simple carbs? Processed/refined, high sugar content foods. Anything in a box with a lot of ingredients usually contains simple carbs. Here are a few more that might surprise you:

-Fruit*
-White flour (and anything containing it)
-honey
-milk
-yogurt
-jam/jelly
-ice cream

*Though fruit is usually considered a simple carbohydrate, the sugar in fruit is fructose and glucose, which are slowly released into the bloodstream, preventing the blood-sugar spike. (This is the science behind the glycemic index.) Some fruits, like apricots, oranges, plums, pears, grapefruits and prunes contain complex carbs. Fruit also has tons of fiber and vitamins which make it a super healthy part of your diet. Don't stop eating fruit!

What does this mean for me and you?

Sugar doesn't have as many calories as fat, and it doesn't directly make you fat, necessarily... but it does cause you to store more and burn less, so by eating sugar, you are getting fatter. Make sense?

Whenever your body is functioning at a normal rate, you're metabolizing (or burning) fat for fuel. Your stored fat is the gas that keeps your body's engine running. 

When you eat too much sugar (or too many carbs, which raise your blood sugar) your body conserves it's fat-fuel and starts instead burning sugar-fuel. So, when you're normally supposed to be burning fat, you're burning sugar instead.

This is one of the reasons you can't out-train a poor diet. Say you eat a cupcake and then go to a cardio class with the intention of "working it off." Your body isn't burning fat -- it's burning the sugar and carbs from the cupcake, so you don't see any differences as far as body composition.

Complex Carbohydrates

Complex carbs are just that: complex. It takes your body more time and effort to gradually break down a complex carb, so eating them keeps your blood sugar normal. This means complex carbs don't affect your body's ability to burn fat. So although a banana and a cookie might have the same number of calories, they react differently in your body. One gives you energy, the other puts a temporary stop on fat loss. If you're a serial-simple-carb-eater, your body is constantly holding on to and storing extra fat and burning sugar for energy.

And it's not just fat-loss that carbs affect, it's your mood and energy levels, too.

Energy Levels

Yes, a simple carb will give you a jolt of energy, but whenever your blood sugar rapidly increases and inevitably decreases, you are left feeling tired, lethargic, and crappy. The fluctuation of high/low blood sugar makes you feel like trash. Keeping your blood sugar stable (eating complex carbs instead of simple carbs) ensures that you're metabolizing fat at the quickest rate possible and you don't have a horrible energy crash.

When your body burns muscle instead of fat.

Simple and complex carbs also have a lot to do with why we're advised to eat every 3 hours -- waiting more than 4 hours between meals causes your body to feel weak, irritable, and tired. Low blood sugar (as problematic as high blood sugar) causes your body to secrete cortisol, a hormone that boosts blood sugar back to normal. The way it does this is by converting muscle protein to sugar i.e. "burning muscle."

I bet you just had an Aha! moment, right?? 

So, not eating for long periods of time causes your body to burn muscle instead of fat.

How to spot complex carbs:

Vegetables. 

Whole grains like oats, whole wheat, brown rice, wild rice, Ezekiel bread, bulgar, etc. 

Legumes like beans, lentils, peanuts.
Suprisingly, dill pickles and soy milk are also complex carbs. (weird, right?)

The bottom line

You need carbs for proper mental and physical function, but if you're eating simple carbs you're making it super hard for your body to lose fat.

Simple carbs are fine and dandy for a cheat meal, but if your goal is to lose weight, cheat meals aren't the way to go.