What's a Carb?

We hear a lot about low-carb/no-carb/high-carb (let's not go there) 'diets'. But what is a carbohydrate, and why do I want to avoid/limit them?

Carbohydrates drive insulin drives fat (Taubes 2007). Break it down a little more... Eat carbs, insulin gets released in your body, carb gets stored as fat. Insulin is a fat storage hormone, so when too many carbs are being eaten, you have excess energy and this gets stored as fat. So, fat doesn't make you fat. Carbohydrates assist a person in that direction.
It makes sense that if you are trying to lose some weight, you'd want to limit the things that make you store fat. When you're storing fat you can not burn fat. To have a body that is a fat burning machine, we want to keep insulin at bay. To keep insulin at bay we want to not eat high carb foods. At the top of the list for insulin releasing high carb foods are breads, baked goods, sugar (any form of, basically), pasta, rice, potato and starchy vegetables. Instead of counting calories, keep track of how many carbs your eating. I bet it will surprise you. At Fitday.com you can tell it what you ate, and it will break down the nutrient ratios for you. No calculating needed. I recommend, eating how you usually do for a few days and keep track of it on Fitday. Then make small steps to cut back the carbs you're consuming. Start with the obvious choices, the ones I listed above. Then when you can refine from there. This is just the basics of the carbohydrate dilemma, but it's a great place to start on the path to better health.

 Book Suggestion for the day:'Good Calories Bad Calories' Gary Taubes "...shows that heart disease and other diseases of civilization appear to result from increased consumption of refined carbohydrates: sugar, white flour and white rice...."