Personal Training Articles:

Are Carbs Good or Bad?

All Carbs are Not Created Equal

Lately, this nation has been caugt up in a low carb frenzy! What is going on? Was Dr. Atkins right? Was he full of it? Are carbs really that bad? As usual, the truth lies somewhere between the extremes.

Dr. Atkins said carbohydrates were bad. They make you fat. Don't eat them. He said you can eat as much fat and protein as you want, as long as you avoid carbs. Our opinion is that Atkins was full of it. As our friend and famous personal trainer Phil Kaplan says, "Fat is probably not the best thing to eat all the time if you want to lose fat."

Then you have the people who say that you should avoid all fat at all costs. They tell you to load up on "healthy" foods like bread, pasta, potatoes, and rice. Look at the bottom of the old government food pyramid. It's nothing BUT carbs. You can thank the farmer's lobby for that. Actually, the USDA knew its food pyramid was wrong, so just came out with an updated version, which is only marginally better, but much more confusing. The truth is that carbohydrates are important for health and energy, but most Americans do eat more than they need.

The problem is that all carbs are not the same, and neither are all fats. Some carbs REALLY ARE bad for you, and should only be eaten in limited amounts. Some fats are REALLY GOOD for you, and should be eaten on a regular basis. We'll have more to say about fats in the next article. For now, let's talk about carbs.

The two kinds of carbohydrates most commonly consumed are sugars and starches. Sugars cause your insulin level to rise quickly, which can cause fat storage. OK, that's one point for Dr. Atkins. Starches are a little more complex. Every starch is simply a bunch of sugar molecules, joined together into a long chain. Your body has enzymes that break these chains down into their component sugars very quickly. How quickly? It depends on the starch, and there's the rub. If it's a starch that you can digest quickly, it's pretty much the same as eating sugar. If it's a starch that takes a long time to break down, it doesn't affect the insulin level anything like sugar does. So Atkins' big mistake was not separating carbs into good and bad carbs.

Here's an experiment you can do to prove this. Take a cracker made from bleached white flour. Scrape all the salt off it. Now put it in your mouth and chew it up, but don't swallow it. Within less than a minute, it will start to taste sweet. That's because the enzyme amylase that is in your saliva has broken the starch down into sugar.

How can you tell good carbs from bad? Ask your personal trainer to explain the concept of glycemic index. Stay away from carbs with a high glycemic index. It's healthy to eat a reasonable amount of carbs with a low glycemic index. In general, avoid sugar, and avoid white bread, white rice, and potatoes. Those things can all be eaten, but control the frequency and portion size.

Be sure to read the next article, where we explain which fats will kill you, and which will actually keep your arteries clear.