Carbs aren’t bad for you. Do you remember in the 1960’s the invention of the low fat diet? Me either cause I wasn’t born yet but it was a real thing. But fat was demonized for a long time and considered the reason why people became overweight. Fast forward to the late 90’s and early 2000’s when low carb diets became a thing and then carbs became the new villain in the obesity epidemic.
So which is it, carbs or fats for my weight gain? It’s neither. So what is making the world gain weight at an extremely alarming rate? It’s usually the over consumption of highly processed foods. What are highly processed food? It’s pretty much anything that comes in a box, bag, or wrapper that has more than 1 ingredient in it.
I used the word usually. You can gain weight from consuming even things that are considered healthy for you. It is much harder to gain weight from “healthier” foods because your body has a response system that will tell you when that food no longer tastes good and you stop eating it. Food companies will engineer its food to be addictive so that your body’s response system never goes off and causes you to over consume. How do I know this? Let’s take oreos (substitute your favorite junk food), rice, and avocado.
Oreo’s calories – 160 for 3 cookies
Rice’s calories – 206 for 1 cup
Avocado Calories – 234 for 1 cup or about a medium avocado
Are you surprised or not? Oreo’s have the least amount of calories for a serving. Yeah except when was the last time you ate just 3 oreos? When it comes to junk food it’s extremely easy to consume 3 to 4 times the serving size. All of a sudden that 160 looks like 480 – 640 calories. Try to eat 3 to 4 times the serving size of rice (a carb) or avocado (a fat). You would get tired of eating both of those foods really quickly.
We could do this with every junk food. I could eat a whole bag of family sized potato chips. That’s like eating the equivalent of 4 or 5 baked potatoes. No one in their right mind would eat 4 or 5 baked potatoes in one sitting.
I don’t care if you don’t eat carbs. Carbs might not work well with you. Every person is different and their caloric goals need to work for them. My goal is to make you realize that carbs aren’t the enemy and you shouldn’t be afraid of them. You should be afraid of over consuming food as a whole. You could easily over consume rice or avocado just like you could oreos or potato chips. Pay attention to the amount you consume. You might be surprised how much you are eating.
Check out our website here.
Need help with workouts here are some for free
Find our previous blog posts here
Follow us on Facebook
Take a look at our instagram @the_strength_revolution