One of the most misleading and unhelpful myths surrounding losing weight is that “Carbs make you gain weight”. To put it bluntly, this is complete garbage!
By far the main factor why nearly 100% of people struggle with their weight is that their body and lifestyle are out of balance with what’s needed to reach a healthy weight. They either consume too many calories, burn too few calories, or often both – It has nothing to do with carbohydrates.
Other factors that can affect someone’s weight are if they have a health problem or hormone issues, which can make it easier to gain weight or harder to lose weight. Even with these though, it’s still very possible for most people to lose weight.
Why do you need carbohydrates?
The main sources of energy for your body from the foods that you eat are carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. You need all of these in sufficient quantities if you want to have a healthy body.
It’s very useful for you to know that carbohydrates are the most important of these energy sources in terms of providing your body with energy. This is because your body is able to utilise carbohydrates quickly and so you can get energy when you need it, for example when exercising. Having carbohydrates is very important.
What happens when you cut out carbohydrates?
Cutting out carbohydrates has several effects on you. The most significant effect and downside is that you are likely to feel drained and struggle with energy. This affects you throughout the day and it also badly affects your exercise.
You are likely to feel very tired every day and have worse moods, as well as your exercise suffering and being low quality. Low quality exercise means that you burn fewer calories which makes it harder to lose weight. Also, you wouldn’t improve your fitness anywhere near as quickly as what you could, so you don’t get the great benefit of being able to burn more calories in the future.
One of the most interesting sides of cutting out carbohydrates is that you can lose weight quickly. Bonus!!! Not at all unfortunately.
The quick weight loss happens because carbohydrates help to hold onto more water inside your body. This means that if you reduce your carbohydrate intake and you burn carbohydrates for energy, then your body releases water quickly and you lose some weight.
The trouble is that you’ve only lost water weight which is a very unhealthy way to lose weight. And just so you know, by far the best way to lose weight is to lose weight from fat.
Also, when you resume normal eating again after cutting out carbohydrates, your body will quickly regain its carbohydrate stores AND also quickly regain the water weight.
You may have a friend or heard of the person who goes on a “low carb diet” and loses 4 pounds in a week. Then the weight loss stops. Why? Because they’ve only lost water weight which will not keep going. They then become fed up of their diet which isn’t working, go back to normal eating, and the weight quickly piles back on again.
So cutting out carbohydrates and feeling garbage, and maybe losing some quick weight only to gain it back just as quickly, is a poor way to lose weight and a poor way to live!
How many carbohydrates should you have?
There’s no magic number for how many carbohydrates you should have each day. Everyone is different and unique, with different lifestyles and different tastes in foods. This is perfectly fine!
For myself, I have 60% of the calories from my diet coming from carbohydrates, with the rest coming from protein and fat. I can maintain a healthy weight easily because I have the right body and lifestyle balance. I can also assure you that I don’t have super genetics or any other super power that you don’t have.
I’ve also helped thousands of people lose weight and keep it off, and NOT one of them has needed to cut out carbohydrates to be successful!
The good news is…
You NEVER have to cut out carbohydrates.
Doing so will only make you feel worse every day and will actually make it harder to lose weight in the long run. So enjoy carbohydrates as part of a healthy diet.
To learn more about how to lose weight in a safe and effective way, so that you can lose weight and most importantly keep it off, get started with the BoostMyLife Online Program. You could easily save yourself months or years of wasted time and effort!
James Porter
BoostMyLife Founder
P.S. Get your FREE copy of The Top Ten Mistakes You Must Avoid When Losing Weight
