“Carbs are evil”

“Carbs make you fat”

When Outer Strength Fitness takes on new clients, one of the most common nutritional beliefs coming from new clientele is that eating carbohydrates is bad and will make you fat.

Removing carbohydrates from your diet is not the most optimal way to reduce body fat and achieve your health and fitness goals. By dramatically reducing your carbohydrates, you’ll feel the effects of a low carb diet or feeling lethargic, tried ad weak throughout the majority of the day.

Reducing your carbohydrates slightly can aid body fat loss, as you’ll be cutting calories from the reduction of carbs.

Control Your Energy Balance To Lose Body Fat

To lose body fat, you MUST be in a calorie deficit. This simply means that your body is burning more calories than it is consuming through food and drink. Don’t believe the ketogenic diet group where they say you can lose body fat with ketosis without being in a caloric deficit, it’s pure science.

Carbs Improve Your Workout Performance

The muscles that you constantly work during exercise run on stored glycogen. Stored Glycogen come from the breakdown of carbohydrates. To ensure you have enough energy to have optimal performance in each of your workouts, ensure you are consuming enough carbohydrates throughout the day.  The best time to have carbohydrates is in your first meal Post Workout.

Eat Your Complex Carbs

Are food sources that have been relatively untouched. They are in their natural, unprocessed form providing us with a large amount of nutrients and have a slower effect on our blood sugar levels. We want the majority of our carbohydrate intake coming from the following sources.

• Oats
• Legumes
• Brown Rice
• Vegetables
• Sweet Potato
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower
• Yams
• Pumpkin
• Spinach
• Asparagus
• Carrots

Why do the scales decrease when I eat more carbs then?

The main reason why you may see the scales dramatically decrease when you cut your carbs is that your body will lose water pretty quickly as for every gram of carbohydrate you consume, your body will hold approximately 3g of water. Obviously, reducing your carbs will show that your ‘scale weight’ will suddenly drop leading people to a false belief they have lost lots of weights quickly.

My advice to you

• Consume your carbs Post Workout

• Make the majority of your carbohydrate intake complex carbs

• Don’t worry about your scale weight if you know you’ve had a carb heavy meal/day

• Believe that carbs don’t make you fat, eating too may calories does

Enjoy your carbs!