Can I Lose Weight Eating Good Carbs

Carbs have it pretty rough. Meal after meal, they do their job, tirelessly working to fuel our bodies with the energy we need to thrive, be active, and, yes, even lose weight. And how do we repay them? By cutting them out of our diets.

“Many fad diets like the Atkins Diet have vilified carbohydrates as a dietary evil and blamed them for weight gain, ” explains Georgie Fear, R.D., C.S.C.S., author of

. These fad diets (and the slew of best-selling books that accompany them) have used cherry-picked shreds of evidence to suggest that obesity is caused solely by carbohydrates—and as convincing as they may be, they’re wrong, she says.

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Carbohydrates are our body’s primary energy source, helping to power everything from brain function to our workouts. The key is making sure that the carbs we eat are from whole, nutritious foods—straight from good ol’ mother nature, says Canada-based nutrition counselor Abby Langer, R.D. These carb sources, like whole grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables, contain fiber, which increases satiety, regulates digestion, and is consistently linked to weight loss. (Men need 38 grams a day, while women need 25.) Studies have even shown that

To reach your daily fiber (and other nutrient) needs and hit your healthy weight for good, Langer recommends incorporating about half a cup of healthy carbs into each meal. Here are your six most weight loss-friendly options.

Of hate from the low-carb clan, but sweet potatoes, white potatoes—they’re all good. “I cannot say anything bad about potatoes. There’s nothing unhealthy about them, ” says Langer. One particular perk: Potatoes are full of resistant starch, a type of fiber that literally resists digestion, filling you up but never making its way to your bloodstream. (It’s one reason potatoes are often identified as one of the most satiating foods around!)

How To Eat Carbs And Lose Weight

Carb up: Try serving up your spuds baked, and play around with healthy toppings like Greek yogurt, black beans, poached eggs, or cheese. Be creative; just don’t fry them or drown them in butter and sour cream.

Potatoes are technically starchy veggies, but the other carb-rich veggies out there—think carrots, squash, corn, and beets—deserve a shout-out too, Langer says. Starchy vegetables sometimes get a bad rap simply because they contain more carbs than non-starchy vegetables (think spinach or asparagus), but that’s not a bad thing! For example, a third of a medium carrot’s six grams of carbs come from fiber, plus a carrot packs a full day’s-worth of vitamin A.

Carb up: Exactly how you integrate starchy veggies into your meals depends on which you prefer. Fear’s personal favorite? Kabocha squash. “I love it cubed, tossed with olive oil and salt, and roasted, ” she says. “It’s a great thing to toss on a salad to make it more filling than it would be with just leaves.” The cube, roast, and toss rule-of-thumb applies to pretty much any starchy veggie out there, whether it’s squash, beets, or parsnips.

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This is a big category, and includes everything from whole-wheat bread and brown rice to ancient grains like spelt, millet, barley, oats, freekeh, bulgur, sorghum, farro, quinoa, and amaranth. Unlike refined grains, these good-for-you grains all have one thing in common: fiber—and lots of it. Replacing any white carbs in your diet with whole grains can both reduce overall calorie intake and boost your metabolism, according to 2017 research published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

Carb up: If you regularly eat white carbs, swap them out for their whole-grain counterparts. Or, cook up your favorite ancient grain and mix in your favorite veggies and protein for a satisfying, balanced meal, suggests Langer.

Carb- and fiber-rich legumes (think beans, chickpeas, peas, and lentils) are all over your weight-loss goals. After all, a single serving provides about half your daily fiber needs, and according to one 2016 meta-analysis, simply adding about three quarters of a cup of legumes into your daily diet can directly contribute to weight loss. Not to mention, legumes are also a great source of plant-based protein, which makes your meals more satisfying and revs your metabolism. A cup of cooked lentils packs 18 grams!

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Carb up: Stock up on canned legumes, rinse them to remove excess sodium, and then throw them on top of everything from salads to pastas to potatoes to open-faced sandwiches—the options are endless!

Fruit—be it bananas, apples, or blueberries—can absolutely be a part of your weight-loss plan. Despite the fact that they’re rich in simple sugars, fruits are linked to better blood sugar control, which supports healthy weight loss.

Carb up: When you need a healthy snack, pair your favorite fruit with a source of fat and protein, like string cheese or peanut butter, for example. The combo will help slow digestion and keep you feeling fuller, longer, says Fear. Just stick to three or fewer servings of fruit a day and you’ll be golden.

How You Can Eat Carbs And Still Lose Weight

Aside from being a great source of vitamin D, calcium, and protein, dairy can help your weight-loss efforts. In fact, one Harvard University review found that dieters who ate a serving of yogurt daily lost more weight than those who didn’t.

Carb up: Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, milk, and even regular cheese can all help you hit your goals. And, no, you don’t have to opt for low-fat; new research shows that full-fat diary might be more effective for weight loss, since fat is so satiating. As long as dairy doesn’t bother your stomach, feel free to incorporate up to one serving of full-fat dairy with each meal, Fear says.How many times have you heard to cut out all white carbs to lose weight: white pasta, white bread, white rice, and white potatoes? Many people assume that eating these carbs will translate to automatic weight gain. Turns out, you can eat plenty of carbs and still lose weight.

As fat-loss coach Carter Good explained in an Instagram post, you can totally eat white rice and white potatoes along with brown rice and sweet potatoes as part of your weight-loss plan. In fact, one cup of cooked white rice has fewer calories (205) than one cup of cooked brown rice (216), and 200 grams of cooked white potatoes have fewer calories (172) than 200 grams of cooked sweet potatoes (180).

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Carter explains that this original thinking was due to the glycemic index, which rates foods based on how much they will spike your blood sugar. While the glycemic index was originally thought to help people lose weight, it's not comprehensive. For example, soda and chocolate have a lower glycemic index than some fruit, even though fruit is arguably much healthier.

Instead, what ACTUALLY matters for losing and gaining weight is, you guessed it, the number of calories you're consuming each day, he wrote in his caption.

Plus, each food has its own set of nutritional benefits: brown rice is higher in magnesium and potassium, but white rice has more calcium and folate. White potatoes also have more potassium, iron, and magnesium than sweet potatoes.

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You can totally eat carbs and still lose fat. Just be sure to measure out your portions and find enough room in your daily calorie budget for them. If you're calculating macros, make sure you are reaching for natural sources of carbs: fruit, potatoes, rice, whole grains, etc., rather than processed, refined carbs (pretzels, potato chips, sweets, etc.).

Entertainment Miley Cyrus Responds to Video of Adele Praising Used to Be Young at Las Vegas Show by Eden Arielle Gordon 30/8/23If you’re like most Humans, bread, pasta, soft drinks, French fries, sugar, and similar foods probably flew into your mind. Yes, these foods are carbs — highly processed and refined ones.

And if these are the kinds of carbs you consume on a regular basis, let me warn you, (unless you regularly run marathons), you’re most likely either overweight or heading down the road to weight gain.

Cutting Carbs To Lose Weight? Consider The Evidence — Eat This Not That

You may like them, you may consider them “comfort foods, ” you may think that they couldn’t be so bad since they are so predominant in our current diet. But the biological bottom line is that human beings have not evolved to metabolize these types of carbohydrates.

They slow down your metabolism and contribute to every one of the major diseases associated with aging including diabetes, heart disease, dementia and cancer.

In most, cases they are also “empty” calorie foods-the worst possible combination — high caloric foods, low in nutrients. They deprive you of vital nutrients as well as burden your body with the task of digesting food molecules that aren’t giving you anything you need.

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Eating them (especially in excess) is a prescription for weight gain. But they’re not the end of the carb story. If you’re like most people, you may not realise that the wide world of carbs is actually much, much bigger than this limited crowd of processed carbs.

In contrast, natural carbohydrates, which come to your table just like Mother Nature made them, contain many essential nutrients and specialised chemicals that turn up your metabolism via newly discovered plant chemicals call phytonutrients.

Our genetic nutritional template goes back 20, 000 years. Our ancestors foraged for wild food, like wild berries, grasses,

Can I Really Eat Carbs And Still Lose Weight?