Carbs!

I know nothing about carbs.  How many, and what kinds are best each day?

Carbohydrates are one of the main food groups..... plants, basically.   You get your short-term energy from carbohydrates and they're vital for good health.   There's a huge range going from fruit and vegetables, to grains, pulses (legumes), seeds and foods made with these ingredients.  All providing energy, vitamins, minerals and lots of very useful fibre.

For a healthy diet aim to get 50-60% of your energy from carbohydrates and choose a wide range so that you get plenty of good nutrition.   The less processed/refined 'complex' carbohydrates such as wholemeal bread, vegetables, brown rice etc., tend to be more filling and satisfying than the refined, highly processed starches such as white bread and potato crisps.  Added sugars (i.e. not from fruit & vegetables) should be kept below 50g a day.  Aim for 25g fibre a day.

A simpler way to think of it perhaps is to visualise a dinner plate.  Fill half the plate at each meal with vegetables and salads.  Fill a quarter of the plate with complex carbohydrates.  And fill the last quarter with other foods e.g. meat/fish, beans, oils, tofu....

Thank you gi-jane!  Is there a recommended number of grams of carbs?  CC likes to tell me how many grams I've eaten.

Not really... it depends on how much you eat.  If your intake is 2000 calories and you're aiming for 50-60% of carbohydrates you're going to eat more grammes than someone who's aiming for 1500 calories.   The analysis tool tells you the percentages.  A 'portion' of complex carbohydrate - which might be more useful for you than grammes - could be any of the following.  And you need about 3 of these each day.... one portion per main meal.

• 2oz-3oz dry weight bread,  crispbread, rice, pasta, noodles, cous-cous, lentils, quinoa, high fibre breakfast cereals, oats,  other grains
• 6oz cooked weight potatoes, sweet potatoes, other starchy vegetables
• 4oz cooked pulses (legumes) such as chickpeas or beans

PLUS.... 4 or 5 portions of vegetables, 2 or 3 portions of fruit

Kizzichan,

While gi-jane is right, you could also do low carb. Low carb works very well and can be great for losing body fat and inches. In a low carb diet you do 60% fat, 35% protien and 5% carbs. For Atkins for the first 2 weeks you get 20g carbs a day of fresh veggies or flax seed and etc. (it can be very strict) Then you move on to a few different phases and get to add carbs back in. (check out atkins.com) But anyways, I'm not joking here...you will definitely lose weight in the first 14 days. Calorie wise you can technically choose not to count. However, I did but I didn't really have to. It's fairly easy to stay at around 1600 cals.

Low carb isn't for everyone. It can be hard for some people to stick to it. And some people can do just as well on other diets. However, if you want to try something new for 2 weeks, go for it :). But, if you want to cut calories, listen to gi-jane. She knows what shes talking about 99.9% of the time :D lol.

Thank you all very much for your help!  I felt like my calorie meter said I had loads of carbs today so I started to wonder about them.  Atkins is a neat diet.  I couldn't do it right now because of meal plan food but I have relatives who tried it and it worked really well.  Again, lots of good info, thanks!

It's not 'carbs' that make you fat but the total calories you take in.  Take a look at your relatives in 18 months time to see if what they did really 'worked'... because low-carbohydrate diets are notorious for short-term weight-loss followed by equally short-term weight regain.  

GI Jane you dont have the whole story.

For a great analysis of the calories in-out idea and the affect of carbs on fat storage see this google video:

Gary Taubes on fat versus carbs and science of nutrition

Also see his book Good Calories, Bad Calories and his New York Times article What If It Was All a Big Fat Lie

I'll tell you what is the full story.....   There's science, there's nutrition and then there's living a normal, healthy life without having to jump through bizarre dietary hoops or sit at the dinner table with a pocket calculator.    Anyone who uses the words 'bad calories' in the title of a book is guilty of misleading over-simplification and I wouldn't take anything else they said seriously, sorry.  There are so many people now terrified to enjoy a bread roll or a jacket potato because they think the 'carbs' will make them fat.   There are thousands sinking into eating disorders because they think 'carbs' or 'fat' are 'bad calories'.  Even the OP of this thread is worried that they're eating incorrectly because they don't know about 'carbs'.   Something is going badly wrong. 

The human race survived for millennia without experts.   Seems the more experts we have around us and the more products catering to the latest advice we have the more confusing what is a fairly basic activity becomes. In an ideal world people would enjoy healthy, varied, traditional diets without thinking too hard about it and not believe they need to know the nuts and bolts of 'the affect (sic) of carbs on fat storage' before they are qualified to put a spoon in their mouths. 

Original Post by gi-jane:
There's science, there's nutrition and then there's living a normal, healthy life without having to jump through self-imposed dietary hoops or sit at the dinner table with a pocket calculator.    Anyone who uses the words 'bad calories' in the title of a book is guilty of misleading over-simplification and I wouldn't take anything else they said seriously, sorry.  There are so many people now terrified to enjoy a bread roll or a jacket potato because they think the 'carbs' will make them fat.   There are thousands sinking into eating disorders because they think 'carbs' are 'bad calories'.  Even the OP of this thread is worried that they're eating incorrectly because they don't know about 'carbs'.   Something is going badly wrong. 

The human race has survived this long without experts telling us what to eat.    Seems the more experts we have around us the more confusing what is a fairly basic activity becomes.  In an ideal world people would enjoy healthy, varied, traditional diets without thinking too hard about it and not believe they need to know the nuts and bolts of 'the affect (sic) of carbs on fat storage' before they are qualified to put a spoon in their mouths. 

 

The thing is that humans did not survive until recently on a diet with a significant amount of carbs. The bulk of human evolution happened long before farming and agriculture. Carbs were a different story in the hunter-gatherer times.. the only sources of carbs were things like veggies, fruits, nuts, seeds, etc.

I'm not trying to say all carbs are inherently bad or unnecessary, but we could certainly do without many of them. I think the problem here is that not all carbs are equal... there are many different kinds of carbs that have different effects on the body. Aside from that, a diet high in carbs ends up lowering protein and fat intake, which is unhealthy. Proteins and fat are necessary to sustain human life, carbs are optional. You do need them for good overall health, but you certainly don't need them to make up 60% of your diet.

As far as weight loss goes.. you can certainly shed excess weight without worrying about carb levels, but I know personally that it took me 6 months of being on my first plateau in the 20% bodyfat range to lower my carb intake from around 60% to 35-40%, and within a couple months of doing it, an extra 10% bodyfat came off. I tend to hear the same things from other people who are not very overweight but are trying to lean up.. that progress is difficult if they don't lower carbs.

As a small aside.. the OP's name reminds me of something on this subject.. the Asian diet could be considered an example of a high-carb diet that people consume and remain healthy and not overweight.. Japanese people do have some of the longest life spans around (Although their diet, along with the culture is fairly influenced by the western world now, so I'm not sure if that's changing or not?)

However, the carbs do come more from rice or vegetables, and generally not wheat.

The bulk of human evolution may well have taken place before the advent of agriculture but the problem of obesity and its related diseases (gallstones, coronary heart disease, Type II diabetes etc.) is relatively modern.   If we're trying to find a solution we therefore don't need to look back to the stone-age, the Victorian era will do just as well.   Even as recently as the 1940's.... specifically wartime rationing in the UK.... the population was extremely healthy on a diet where bread and vegetables were in fairly good supply, fruit was sporadic and the amount of sweets, meat, fat and dairy products available was highly limited (1 egg per person per week etc).  As you point out, the long-lived japanese do very well on their traditional carbohydrate-based diet.... but their health struggles when they switch to western/american eating habits.  Other cultures have other traditional diets.... which vary extremely widely depending on the environment.

So we've managed to work out healthy diets (including grains, rice, mealies etc.) in all cultures up until about 50 or 60 years ago.....    Which is why I think it's too simplistic to blame 'carbs'.   They're not new.

Original Post by gi-jane:

The bulk of human evolution may well have taken place before the advent of agriculture but the problem of obesity and its related diseases (gallstones, coronary heart disease, Type II diabetes etc.) is relatively modern.   If we're trying to find a solution we therefore don't need to look back to the stone-age, the Victorian era will do just as well.   Even as recently as the 1940's.... specifically wartime rationing in the UK.... the population was extremely healthy on a diet where bread and vegetables were in fairly good supply, fruit was sporadic and the amount of sweets, meat, fat and dairy products available was highly limited (1 egg per person per week etc).  As you point out, the long-lived japanese do very well on their traditional carbohydrate-based diet.... but their health struggles when they switch to western/american eating habits.  Other cultures have other traditional diets.... which vary extremely widely depending on the environment.

So we've managed to work out healthy diets (including grains, rice, mealies etc.) in all cultures up until about 50 or 60 years ago.....    Which is why I think it's too simplistic to blame 'carbs'.   They're not new.

Well, I think the problem, more than the carbs themselves, are the type of carbs. Soda, juice, white flour and sugar in general really, are what cause a lot of the problems attributed to carbs...

At least for a health/weight maintenance standpoint, healthy carbs aren't all bad, although I think in a question of weight loss it's quite helpful to lower them.. mainly because of their hormonal effects on the body (Aside from the superiority of protein in a question of weight loss).

White flour and sugar are also not new.....    The quantities they are consumed in is new.   It's helpful to therefore lower the quantities, I agree.  However that's a different thing from saying that we don't need them at all or that protein is superior.  Add in the reduction in physical activity of the last 50 years... more cars, more labour-saving devices, fewer physically demanding jobs.... and I think that's a more telling picture.