Why carbs aren't so evil after all.

Many believe that carbohydrates are the cause of excess weight or excluding carbohydrates is the magic answer to reaching their goals. It seems like an easy option to just exclude all carbohydrates from your daily food intake but it isn’t as simple as that. Below are five reasons why carbohydrates really aren’t the evil that many people have believed them to be for such a long time.

1. Carbohydrates are an essential macronutrient. There are many reasons carbohydrates are essential. It is true that the brain and other organs can use other molecules as fuel but carbohydrate is the preferred fuel. Some literature suggests that the brain may use upwards of 80g of carbohydrates for energy daily. Alongside this, dietary carbohydrates provide fibre that are beneficial for digestive function, blood glucose control and reduce risk of diseases.

2. Performance is influenced by carbohydrate intake. Carbohydrates become ATP, the body's fuel for any movement or activity. Carbohydrate intake also contributes to the carbohydrate stores within the body (muscle and liver glycogen). This ATP fuel and glycogen provide fuel for exercise and be vital to performance during exercise, with greater importance at higher intensities. Below are daily carbohydrate recommendations for different amounts of weekly activity (Bean, 2013). Do you really want to risk reducing performance?

3. Sleep can be improved by consumption of carbohydrates late at night. It is well established in literature that carbohydrates consumed later in the evening improve the onset and quality of sleep. It has been shown that carbohydrates in the evening reduce the time it takes to fall asleep by approximately 50% and induces the deeper stages of sleep sooner throughout the night. Who doesn’t love the feeling of waking up after a really good sleep? You should have that feeling every night.

4. Low carbohydrates are not a magical diet. Fat loss is dictated by a calorie deficit, from any macronutrient. Carbohydrates provide 4kcal/gram whilst dietary fat provide 9kcal/gram, so it is just as easy to reduce dietary fat as it is to reduce carbohydrates. Not consuming carbohydrates after 6pm or restricting carbohydrates all week has no magic effect; it simply reduces your overall calorie consumption as it is common for the reduced carbohydrates to not be replaced with other macronutrients.

5. Fat burns in a carbohydrate flame. One of the many goals that many people have an reason for restricting carbohydrates is to reduce fat mass. However in restricting carbohydrates is taking away an essential molecule for the process of utilising fat as a fuel. When fat is mobilised and ready to be “burned” a substance that is a product of carbohydrates is needed to turn fat in to fuel and energy reducing fat mass. Thus carbohydrates are required at some quantity to achieve a reduction in weight from fat mass. Below shows how different fuels can enter metabolic pathways to eventually become cellular energy (ATP) and utilised as fuel (Berg, 2012).

So, if you would like better sleep, improved physical performance and to ensure you aren’t blocking the burning of fat you should consume the essential macronutrient: carbohydrates.

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