Today, we have decided to discuss a topic that we are confident will find agreeable resonance amongst most of us, thereby bearing testimony to the fact that it is of ubiquitous pertinence. All of us, irrespective of our shapes and weight, at one point or another, have experimented with new dieting techniques, trying to figure out which could be the one that would enable us to achieve that super hour-glass figure. The most notorious words that you often hear in diet programs are – “carbs” and “starch.” Health experts and dieticians have suggested to avoid carbs and starch like plague if you want to lose weight, but why are carbs and starch considered road blocks in the weight loss journey, let’s find out why replacing high starch and high carb food items is important to lose weight.
What are Carbohydrates?
Let us set tone to the piece by shooting off a discussion on what are carbs in the first place. Carbs or carbohydrates have been medically defined as one of the three macronutrients – the other two categories being fat and protein. Since no naturally-occurring food item can contain just one macronutrient, it is understandable that carbs are one of the most abundant and naturally found substances in the world of human edible food items. It is thereby classified as an important nutrient that is essential to the proper growth, development and sustenance of the human body. However, multiple recent studies have conclusively established that consumption of excess amounts of carbs can cause serious health issues and as such it is of major concern, especially given the vital nature of the macronutrient in our daily food items.
Now, let us try to understand as exactly how consumption of excess amounts of carbs is detrimental to our overall health and how it adversely affects our earnest efforts to lose weight.
But even before we venture on or attempt to enlist the varied means by which carbohydrates actively contribute to weight gain/make it difficult for us to lose those pesky pounds – we must explicitly mention that by carbohydrates we mean sugars, starchy food and fibres as well. All three of the latter are medically categorised as types of carbohydrates and health experts, professional dieticians and certified physicians the world over agree on this classification.
How Carbs Contribute to Weight Gain?
Carbs in excess directly contribute to weight gain. It is quite difficult to lose weight especially if you are one of those people whose bodies’ are in the habit of retaining body weight. There is not much to do for people who have a somewhat genetic/ hereditary tendency to gain body weight- all they can do is exercise harder, stick to a healthy diet, follow a strict workout regime and cut back on excess carbs as far as possible. And many popular dieting varieties such as “keto” and “Whole 30” have vilified carbs as the root of all obesity related health problems – and there are plenty of those to lose our sleep over. However, it is a tricky situation indeed. One cannot cut down all carbs altogether from our diet as some diets would have you do it- for that might wreck a greater havoc on your health. One can forget about losing weight, the situation may turn bad for you because lack of such a macronutrient can adversely affect your health.
Carbs biochemically are designed such that they lower your metabolism and consequently put those tyres around your tummy. So, it is understandable to feel the urge to cut carbs out of one’s diet altogether, but you must be careful that carbs are nevertheless our primary source of energy. While the idea of cutting out sugar from our daily diet is quite feasible, it would be difficult to imagine a diet that can entirely replace the calorific importance of carbohydrates. And while it is a well-known fact that the human body can draw energy from proteins and fat, it shall never be a feasible alternative to carbohydrates in light of long-term health benefits.
Carbs are chemically predisposed to affect your digestion such that you end up storing a lot of fat in the body that in turn goes on to add those extra pounds to your body. Many alternative diets stress the importance of fiber in the human body and consistently reiterate that a high-fibre diet would prove highly beneficial, especially to those who are fighting obesity and excess body weight. Fibres are essential to our body’s overall growth and good health; however, we will be hard pressed to find a source of fibre that is without carbs. That’s right, carbohydrates, by their very ubiquitous nature have more or less solidified its position in the realm of human consumables. Essentially, fibres are also classified under carbohydrates along with sugar and starch, and as a result finding a carb-free fibre source would be chemically impossible.
In other words, medically approved and scientifically endorsed methods need to be incorporated into our diet so that we may judiciously cut back on our carb intake, thereby ensuring that we do not get obese on account of excess amounts of carbohydrates.
In conclusion, it is best to underline the principal contention that was just discussed – carbohydrates are not the cause of weight gain – they are just one of the causes of weight gain.
The next big culprit in our list is starch, or more specifically, starchy food- a type of carbohydrate. Starchy foods are notoriously fattening and it has been alleged that they are responsible for the ill health and obesity of more than 50% of our native population. And with excess quantities of starchy food in our system, evidently our digestion and metabolism goes for a toss, consequently contributing to weight gain and obesity.
And the issue surrounding the intake of starchy food shall follow along the footsteps of all that has been stated till now. Sugar is one of the most popular forms of starchy food items amidst human edibles and as has been mentioned earlier, it is a subtype of carbohydrates. Excess sugar in the human system leads to the medical condition labelled as high blood glucose level or hyperglycemia, which can cause irreversible damage to your liver and kidneys and can irreparably affect your cardiac system causing amongst other cardiac conditions, viz hypertension or high blood pressure.
From all that has been discussed so far, one thing must have become totally clear by now, which is to simply put the obvious in categorical perspective; unbalanced diets are the root cause of all health problems. It is indeed wise to cut back on all types of carbs and starchy food. It would be doubly unwise and certainly counterproductive if one were to injudiciously cut back on essential carbs and fibres sans which normal and healthy lifestyle is impossible. Under the circumstances, it might do more harm than good. In the quest to lose weight, we might end up upsetting our entire physiology and body system.
So dear readers, we hope that you found this article both instructive and useful. We hope that you shall attempt to follow what little we have tried to upheld and briefly present here. And we would like to conclude with the very important disclaimer that before you decide to embark on any diet in the future, you shall take the proper care and consult a professional dietician or medical practitioner to build a diet chart that would suit your physiology and assist you in gaining that desired figure.
Popular Starch and Carb Foods To Avoid on Weight Loss Diet:
- Bread.
- Corn starch
- Refined flour.
- Potatoes.
- Pastas.
- Cakes.
- Pastries.
- Muffins.
- Green peas.
- French fries.
- Sugar.
- Maple syrup.
- Beer.
- Flavoured yogurt.
- Alcohol.
Do share your thoughts in the comments section below. Stay healthy and pretty.
