What To Know About Carbohydrates
Carbs are NOT the devil. They do affect our blood glucose levels and create an insulin response, but this is NOT bad, nor does it automatically equate to fat storage. And lastly, not only are carbs at night NOT bad for you, but carbs at night are very beneficial for improving your sleep quality.
Do We Need Carbs?
Technically, the body doesn’t need carbohydrates from the diet. There are NO essential carbohydrates for the body since we can manufacture our own. Some organs in the body need glucose to function and in the absence of carbs in our diet, we will build our own glucose for those organs. Furthermore, we can also manufacture ketones that can serve a similar purpose for fueling the brain and vital organs.
So why include carbohydrates in the diet?
While they provide fuel for your workouts, they also facilitate recovery after your workout and do so in two ways:
Glycogen Replenishment
You need to refill the glycogen stores you lower during your workouts in order to have energy available for subsequent training sessions. This occurs by consuming carbohydrates during a 24-hour period post-workout.
Central Nervous System (CNS) Management
When you are doing high-intensity exercise, you are operating in your Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS), which is also known as the ‘fight-or-flight’ mode. It is a great place to be during a workout, as it provides you with adrenaline and mobilizes nutrients in your body for energy to get you through that workout. However, as soon as the workout is over, you want to turn your SNS off and your Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS) - AKA "‘rest and digest’.
What Are Good Carb Sources?
Minimally Processed
Just like with protein, we should always be striving to get carbohydrates from the least processed sources possible. In nature, carbohydrates are most often found in the form of plant sources. My favorite sources are:
Vegetables
Fruits
Grains
Roots (Potatoes, Sweet Potato)
Natural Sugars (Honey)
Easily Digestible
One of the challenges with plant foods is the ease, or lack thereof, of digestion in the human body. Plants have evolved for millions of years to protect themselves from predation. A plant wants to survive just like animals. The only difference is that plants can’t run away from predators. So they have built internal defense mechanisms to dissuade predators from eating them.
If you’ve ever had a case of bloating, gas, stomach upset, etc. from eating beans or a big bowl of broccoli, then you have experienced these defense mechanisms first hand. The key here is finding what works best for you.
Bad digestion is a sign of inflammation and damage to the gut. This can lead to a host of downstream problems, including autoimmunity, weight gain, decrease performance, and more.
Avoid Refined Carbohydrates
Using processing and refinement methods, we can extract highly refined sugars and starches like table sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and processed grains/flours from natural plant-based sources. These highly refined sugars are very tasty and have been used by the food industry to make processed foods more palatable while at the same time marketed as healthy. It is one of the biggest food scams ever.
Avoid food labels that have any of the following listed:
Sugar, fructose, high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, dextrose, etc.
Avoid processed flours and grains that have been packaged
Fermented grains (Sourdough Bread) may be easier to digest and have a place in your diet, but it is always worth revisiting from time to time and seeing how you do without these things.
Because of their non-essential nature, there really is no carbohydrates intake recommendation. When it comes to determining your carbohydrate intake, after you’ve established your protein and fat targets, any calories left get allotted to carbohydrates. And, because you will have set your protein and fat intake appropriately, carbohydrates prescription will take care of itself.
Resources: Functional Body Building, Key Nutrition, & Pixabay