Weight Loss by Cutting Carb Confusion "But Don’t Carbs Make me Fat?" Part 2of 3

Carbs (not protein) supply you with energy – like the gas in your car. There are good-for-you carbs and bad-for-you carbs. Carbs (good or bad) don’t make you fat – too many calories make you fat. The good-guy carbs give you the most nutrition for your calorie buck – found in whole, fresh fruits and vegetables, along with whole grains (brown rice, not breads) and beans. Results: energy boost, weight loss, and health gain. Delete from your brain (forever) the simple and complex carb debate – it is a non-issue. Simples can be good (fresh fruits) or bad (candy); complex carbs can be bad (white flour) or good (yams).

Review over. See? Simple, not complex.

Let’s spotlight refined sugar: one of the bad-boy carbs

Somewhere along the way, in our minds, the natural sugars in fruits got mixed up with man made refined sugars. They are not the same animal. Nature’s sugar in whole fruits is nature’s perfect source of glucose that keeps us energized and alive! These natural health- and life-giving sugars, good-guy carbs, come perfectly packaged in whole, plant foods that provide proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals, enzymes, phytochemicals, antioxidants, all the other micro nutrients, as well as colon-sweeping fiber.

In fact, your smart brain runs almost exclusively on glucose from good carbs – sourced by whole, fresh fruits and vegetables. But refined sugars? Beware! Refining strips away all, I mean all, nutrients, leaving only useless calories – lots of them.

Refined sugars:

• don’t satisfy your hunger drive so you eat too much and/or get hungry right away
• intensify cravings – for more and more sugar, adding up more and more calories
• drain energy
• bombard blood with sugar (refining strips all digestive-slowing fiber), overworking the pancreas’s insulin production. Result: type 2 diabetes from worn-out pancreas
• add fat to your fat – excess sugar (too many calories) turns into fat and is stored right where you don’t want it – in your fat. Fat you can see and fat you can’t see, around your heart, intestines, vital organs, and blood vessels.
• add wrinkles to your wrinkles and sags to your bags (refined sugar ages you and your skin!).
• contributes (no, it’s not just fat) to clogged arteries, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high triglycerides, heart disease, cancers, migraines, kidney damage, asthma, acid stomach, osteoporosis, eczema, arthritis, cataracts, anxiety, fatigue, moodiness, hyperactivity, PMS, and lowered immunity.
• is highly addictive, very difficult to break away from and stay away from. When you eat white, refined sugars (total junk), completely empty of nutrients, your body craves more carbs to get those nutrients and energy it desperately needs. That’s one of the reasons your rational, thinking mind (it knows better!) says, "No, I’m not going to eat this," at the exact same moment your misbehaving hand shoves it into your open-like-a-baby-bird mouth. Sound familiar?

Watch out! These sneaky bad-boys are masters of disguise and hide in unsuspected places. Read your labels. Sugar can be labeled as sugar, brown sugar, corn syrup, rice syrup, dextrose, glucose, sucrose, lactose, maltose, fructose (any word with "–ose" on the end means sugar), dextrin, barley malt, "no sugar added," turbinado, evaporated cane juice, fruit juice concentrate, honey, and maple syrup.

The best way to deal with these bad boys?

Keep your eyes (and mind) open and steer clear of them. The less you eat, the less you will crave, the more weight you will lose, and the better you will feel. The best part of all – you will feel good about you. Next time: Carbs - Part 3: Refined Grains. Until then, continue to make better choices – one good choice at a time. You are worth your every effort.