With the mainstream media touting fad diets, it’s natural for clients to ask me questions related to diet culture. After all, if you’re alive and breathing, you’re seeing information about diets everywhere—influencers on social, ads and commercials, food packaging, employee wellness programs, conversations amongst friends and family … the list goes on. The information overload is bound to make your average Joe or Jane curious! So today, I thought I’d tackle the most common question I get as a nutritionist focused on real food eating: “Do you eat carbs?”
Just for fun, I decided to calculate how many carbs I ate yesterday. A rough tally brought me to 190 grams. So the simple answer is: “Yes. I eat carbs.” But I’d be misleading you if I left it at that. Before I share my carbohydrate philosophy, let’s consider two very different types of carbs you’ll find in the grocery store and how your body responds to them.
Ultra-processed Carbs Vs. Real Food Carbs
The majority (71-83%) of the foods in the grocery store are considered ultra-processed. I like to refer to these as “fake” foods. Fake foods are primarily made up of refined carbohydrate (starches and added sugars), along with additives, preservatives, and low-quality fats and oils. And they’ve been stripped of the good stuff—fiber and nutrients—your body needs to thrive! Examples of fake food carbohydrates include crackers, flour tortillas, commercial breads, cereals and granola, pretzels and chips.
The remaining foods in the grocery store are—you guessed it—”real” foods. Real foods have undergone less processing, keeping the good stuff in without adding the bad stuff. Examples of real foods carbohydrates include fruits and vegetables, fermented sourdough or ancient grain breads, sprouted oats, wild rice, and beans and legumes.
How Your Body Responds to Carbs
You’ve heard it before “A calorie is not a calorie.” In other words, your body processes calories differently depending on the source. To that point I’d add, “A carbohydrate is not a carbohydrate.” Your body processes refined carbohydrates from fake foods such as crackers and tortillas differently than nutrient-rich carbohydrates from real foods such as sweet potatoes and apples.
Eating refined carbohydrates from fake foods can lead to blood glucose spikes and crashes, leaving you feeling tired and low in energy. You may also feel like you’re in a rude mood. And consuming these fake food carbohydrates over the long-term can contribute to weight gain, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and mood disorders (among others).
On the flip side, focusing your carbohydrate sources around real foods will help keep your blood glucose levels stable (hello good energy levels and moods!), and prevent weight gain and chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease. And you’ll be nourishing your body with the fiber and nutrients lacking in fake foods. All this to help you feel and look your best!
Eating 190 grams of carbs from fake foods will not bring the same results as eating 190 grams of carbs from real foods.
My Carbohydrate Philosophy
Now that you know the difference between fake food carbs and real food carbs, and how your body responds to each, let’s get to my philosophy around this. Put simply:
Make your carbs count but don’t count your carbs.
In other words, eat carbs; your body needs them. But make them count by choosing real food sources. And when you have the choice between two real food carbs, pick the most nutrient-packed one (e.g. choose the sweet potato over brown rice). Following this philosophy, you’ll have no need to count carbohydrates or get hung up on numbers. You can eat them in abundance, knowing God “packaged them perfectly” with the fiber and nutrients needed to nourish your body, optimize your health and feel your best!
“Then God said, ‘I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.’ And it was so. God saw all that He had made, and it was very good." -Genesis 1:29-31
As with all creation, the Lord knew what He was doing when He made real foods; our bodies were created to thrive on them!
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