Do Carbs Make You Fat???

Everyone knows that eating carbohydrates makes you fat.  Right?  Is this really true?  What if you could stop thinking so much about the amount of carbs you eat and could still manage not to get fat?  Is it possible?

When we eat carbs we release a hormone called insulin.  Insulin is released to help keep the body's blood sugar at bay.  What we want to happen is for our body to be able to clear the sugar quickly from the blood stream and shuttle it to be stored in muscle tissue to be used as energy instead of being stored as fat.  Unfortunately the exact opposite happens for many, many people.

WHY?

Because so many people eat a horrible diet consisting of PROCESSED carbs.  Eating processed carbs (most anything packaged or white) leads a person to becoming very insensitive to insulin, resulting in the body's inability to clear away sugar in the bloodstream quickly so that it can become stored in muscle tissue and used as energy. When the body becomes insensitive to insulin it will most likely lead to a health derailing nightmare.  

Insulin resistance is a condition that causes the body to no longer effectively remove sugar from blood which leads to a huge reduction in the body's ability to burn fat and a huge increase in the body's ability to store fat and ultimately to develop type 2 diabetes. The body has a hard time burning fat in the presence of insulin so the less insulin in the bloodstream the better.  You want your body to secrete a minimum amount of insulin, to be highly sensitive to insulin so that only small amounts are needed to clear sugar after eating carb meals.  When your body stores carbs in muscles to be used as energy and not to be stored as fat it's called maximum glycogen uptake. 

So your body's ability to tolerate carbohydrates comes down to your insulin sensitivity and your body's ability to quickly and efficiently shuttle carbs to lean tissue and not to fat stores.  When it is shuttled to muscle it will be used as energy, when shuttled to fat store areas it makes your body mushy, icky, flabby and horrifically unhealthy!

HOW DOES ONE INCREASE INSULIN SENSITIVITY?

 One way is to lower your carb intake for a good amount of time (6 months to a year or even 2 years) to repair your insulin receptors.  Eat a GOOD SOURCE of carbs (spelt bread, oatmeal, brown rice, any veggie) with a protein in the morning for breakfast and do some physical activity within one hour after eating your breakfast. Your body will use the carbs you have eaten for energy when you strategically plan to workout after eating.  Then have a few more good sources of carbs after your workout.  (If your body fat is over 25% eliminate the carbs after the workout until you reduce your body fat to 20%).  At lunch and dinner eat only protein sources and vegetables!!! 

Also cutout fructose from your diet... I do not believe that pure starch (carbs) is the sole cause of insulin resistance. If that were the case then wouldn't Japanese people be the most obese people in the world?... Every meal they eat includes pure starch... RICE!  What is missing in their diet is SUGAR!  It's the inordinate amount of sugar we eat with our crappy carbs in the U.S that causes insulin resistance... not carbs. 

Please get rid of high fructose corn syrup, sweetners, sugar, dried fruit, smoothies, and even fruit juice. Limit your actual fruit intake to 1-2 pieces a day in the morning!

Eliminate all trans-fats and hydrogenated oils!  It causes you to store belly fat and is also a huge culprit to developing insulin resistance.  

Improve your omega 6:3 balance... Eat wild fish, avacados, eggs, and don't use oils high in omega 6 like corn oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil and fried foods. 

Drink Green TEA and use CINNAMON!!!  Helps divert carbs towards muscle cells and away from fat cells.

When your body fat reduces to less than 20%, and you will get there if you follow the above combined with an effective strength training and cardio conditioning program, that's when you can and should increase your carb intake making it a consistent part of your diet. It's at this point your body will become more efficient at using carbs as energy and it becomes safer and smarter to consume them.  Keep a high amount of protein combined with a moderate level of carbs and ALWAYS ALWAYS stay away from processed carbs and eliminate sugar from your diet because we want to create a bodily environment that will use insulin as a huge asset to our transformation goals and not as something that will derail our goals.  You can do it!  Start today!