Carbs 101
Let’s take a deep dive into carbohydrates and map out a strategy of how they fit into your diet. Here’s everything we’ll covering.
- The role carbs play in your diet
- The amount carbs you should be consuming
- The foods you should be getting your carbs from
Carbohydrates are the primary energy source in the human diet. They are mainly made up of several components.
- glucose – often referred to as sugar, is the energy source you end up with at the end of the digestive process.
- fructose – is a type of sugar found in fruit and honey, which is converted into glucose in your liver.
- fiber – a substance mostly indigestible by the human digestive system, but is essential to digestive health.
During the digestive process, the carbohydrate gets broken down into these separate components to serve their individual roles.
Two things happen with glucose in your body. It’s either being used for energy, or it’s being stored for later use. This storage process happens via insulin.
When glucose enters your bloodstream it triggers an insulin response, causing your pancreas to release insulin. The insulin pulls the glucose from your bloodstream and drives it into your muscle and fat cells. This stored glucose is called glycogen.
The glucose that is stored in your muscle tissue is what mostly drives your training performance and muscle recovery. Keeping your muscle glycogen levels high is essential to developing strength and muscle mass an optimal rate. Having more muscle mass on you will incentives your body to store glucose in your muscle tissue rather than fat.
Even though glucose also can get stored as fat, this typically only happens to a significant degree if your muscle glycogen stores and liver is full.
A large amount of glucose entering the bloodstream at once will result in a large sugar spike. When that large spike happens your body releases a large amount of insulin to pull that sugar from your bloodstream, resulting in a large crash.
This crash can leave you feeling hungry and fatigued, which lead to very poor eating habits which cause excess weight gain.
Soluble fiber is a type of fiber that dissolves in water forming gel-like substance. This gelatinous substances has a variety of key benefits.
- Protects and heals your stomach lining, which is good to prevent and fix leaky gut, GERD, ulcers, etc.
- Keeps food in your stomach for long enough to fully digest, which allows better nutrient absorption.
- Slows down the speed at which glucose enters your bloodstream, resulting in a more stable blood sugar level.
- Keeps you full for a longer period of time, which is good for hunger management.
Insoluble fiber is a type of fiber that doesn’t dissolves in water. Instead it moves through your entire digestive tract serving a variety of functions.
- It acts as a sponge, collecting toxins, excess estrogen, and fecal matter, removing it on the way out of your body.
- Acts as a food source known as prebiotics which feeds the good gut bacteria in your lower gut known as probiotics.
- Insoluble fiber gets fermented by the probiotics, creating short chain fatty acids which helps to increase burning.
- Prevents bowl movements issues such as constipation and diarrhea.
Roughly 70% of your immune system is in your gut. That 70% refers to your gut microbiome and the living cultures of bacteria that resides in it. Your good gut bacteria is responsible not just for the digestion of your food, but the maintenance of your immune function and hormone production as well.
The fiber from all of the plantbased foods you eat is what feeds that gut bacteria. Without that fiber they would gradually die off. This lack of good gut bacteria eventually leads to all sorts of issues such as excess rapid weight gain, chronic depression and anxiety, chronic illness, and autoimmune disease.
Eating a diverse carb rich whole food plantbased diet guarantees that you get the fiber you need.
As a general rule carbs should make up anywhere from 50-65% of your daily calories.
Split between the 3 macros carbs, fat, and protein, here’s some examples of what that would look like.
- Carbs 50% | Fat 30% | Protein 20%
- Carbs 65% | Fat 15% | Protein 20%
This is what you can expect your macros to look like if you stick to a whole food plantbased diet.
Protein percentage can end up higher than fat if you include a protein smoothie.
1 gram of carbs is 4 calories, so if your calorie goal is 2000, 50% would be 250 grams of carbs.
There are 2 different types of carbohydrate sources.
- simple carbohydrates which are foods that are easily and quickly broken down in the gut. These foods are mostly made up of glucose and fructose. The ideal simple carb sources are fruit.
- complex carbohydrates which are foods that have more complex structure. These foods are commonly referred to as starchy foods. The ideal complex carb sources are grains, legumes, potatoes, and greens.
The carb sources you should avoid are processed carb sources. Processed simply means that the fiber and some of the nutrients has been removed. Fiber is essential to regulating the flow of glucose into your bloodstream. These processed foods cause massive blood sugar spikes and crashes, which leads to excess weight gain, and various other health issues.