SuperLowCarb.com - Good Carbs

Good Carbs

In a western, the good guys always wore the white hats and the bad guys always wore black. Do you know the difference between good carbs and bad carbs? It's not as easy as black and white.

Good Carbs Defined

Good carbs are foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, oats, whole wheat breads, whole wheat pastas, whole grain cereals and brown or long grain rice. These are all healthy foods, and most of them contain a lot of fiber. Why then aren't they allowed on low carb diets? Because believe it or not, they have a lot of carbs. The thing is, they are good carbs, not bad carbs, and that's what most low carb diets fail to recognize. Cutting good carbs out of your diet makes you lose a lot of vitamins, minerals, fiber and macronutrients that you need to keep yourself healthy and ward off disease. Sure, you can take supplements, but that's exactly what they are--supplements. They are meant to supplement your diet with a few extra vitamins and minerals you may have missed in your diet. They aren't intended to be your only source of these nutrients.

Good carbs are molecules that are made up of hundreds of thousands of units of sugar that are linked together, much like a strong rope has thousands of fiber. Think of how hard it is to break a rope like that. It usually takes a lot of work, weight or brute strength to break a rope like that. Similarly, it takes your body a long time to break good carbs down, which leaves you feeling full until they are broken down.

Bad Carbs Defined

Bad carbs are foods like desserts, sugary snacks, sugary drinks, instant oatmeal, white breads, regular pastas, white rice, sugary cereals and even potatoes, if eaten in excess amounts. The carbs in these foods are the ones that cause us to be overweight. So if a low carb diet meant cutting these foods out instead of all carbs, it would make more sense, nutritionally speaking. Too many of us get our carbs from these sources.

Bad carbs are molecules that are made up of only a few units of sugar that are linked together. Rather than comparing this to a rope, it's more like a thread or a string that's fairly easy to break with your bare hands. Likewise, it doesn't take much time for your body to break these down, and you're hungry again soon. That's why counting carbs isn't a great idea compared to watching the kind of carbs you eat. Now, will you lose weight faster by eating good carbs instead of no carbs? Probably not. But you can lose--especially if you count your carbs and keep it to 130 a day.