I Lose Weight Eating Carbs

Carbs have it pretty rough. Meal after meal, they do their job, tirelessly working to fuel our bodies with the energy we need to thrive, be active, and, yes, even lose weight. And how do we repay them? By cutting them out of our diets.

“Many fad diets like the Atkins Diet have vilified carbohydrates as a dietary evil and blamed them for weight gain, ” explains Georgie Fear, R.D., C.S.C.S., author of

. These fad diets (and the slew of best-selling books that accompany them) have used cherry-picked shreds of evidence to suggest that obesity is caused solely by carbohydrates—and as convincing as they may be, they’re wrong, she says.

Eat Carbs, Lose Weight: Drop All The Pounds You Want Without Giving Up The Foods You Love: Austin, Denise, Campbell, Amy: 9781594864834: Amazon.com: Books

Carbohydrates are our body’s primary energy source, helping to power everything from brain function to our workouts. The key is making sure that the carbs we eat are from whole, nutritious foods—straight from good ol’ mother nature, says Canada-based nutrition counselor Abby Langer, R.D. These carb sources, like whole grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables, contain fiber, which increases satiety, regulates digestion, and is consistently linked to weight loss. (Men need 38 grams a day, while women need 25.) Studies have even shown that

To reach your daily fiber (and other nutrient) needs and hit your healthy weight for good, Langer recommends incorporating about half a cup of healthy carbs into each meal. Here are your six most weight loss-friendly options.

Of hate from the low-carb clan, but sweet potatoes, white potatoes—they’re all good. “I cannot say anything bad about potatoes. There’s nothing unhealthy about them, ” says Langer. One particular perk: Potatoes are full of resistant starch, a type of fiber that literally resists digestion, filling you up but never making its way to your bloodstream. (It’s one reason potatoes are often identified as one of the most satiating foods around!)

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Carb up: Try serving up your spuds baked, and play around with healthy toppings like Greek yogurt, black beans, poached eggs, or cheese. Be creative; just don’t fry them or drown them in butter and sour cream.

Potatoes are technically starchy veggies, but the other carb-rich veggies out there—think carrots, squash, corn, and beets—deserve a shout-out too, Langer says. Starchy vegetables sometimes get a bad rap simply because they contain more carbs than non-starchy vegetables (think spinach or asparagus), but that’s not a bad thing! For example, a third of a medium carrot’s six grams of carbs come from fiber, plus a carrot packs a full day’s-worth of vitamin A.

Carb up: Exactly how you integrate starchy veggies into your meals depends on which you prefer. Fear’s personal favorite? Kabocha squash. “I love it cubed, tossed with olive oil and salt, and roasted, ” she says. “It’s a great thing to toss on a salad to make it more filling than it would be with just leaves.” The cube, roast, and toss rule-of-thumb applies to pretty much any starchy veggie out there, whether it’s squash, beets, or parsnips.

Good Carbs For Weight Loss

This is a big category, and includes everything from whole-wheat bread and brown rice to ancient grains like spelt, millet, barley, oats, freekeh, bulgur, sorghum, farro, quinoa, and amaranth. Unlike refined grains, these good-for-you grains all have one thing in common: fiber—and lots of it. Replacing any white carbs in your diet with whole grains can both reduce overall calorie intake and boost your metabolism, according to 2017 research published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

Carb up: If you regularly eat white carbs, swap them out for their whole-grain counterparts. Or, cook up your favorite ancient grain and mix in your favorite veggies and protein for a satisfying, balanced meal, suggests Langer.

Carb- and fiber-rich legumes (think beans, chickpeas, peas, and lentils) are all over your weight-loss goals. After all, a single serving provides about half your daily fiber needs, and according to one 2016 meta-analysis, simply adding about three quarters of a cup of legumes into your daily diet can directly contribute to weight loss. Not to mention, legumes are also a great source of plant-based protein, which makes your meals more satisfying and revs your metabolism. A cup of cooked lentils packs 18 grams!

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Carb up: Stock up on canned legumes, rinse them to remove excess sodium, and then throw them on top of everything from salads to pastas to potatoes to open-faced sandwiches—the options are endless!

Fruit—be it bananas, apples, or blueberries—can absolutely be a part of your weight-loss plan. Despite the fact that they’re rich in simple sugars, fruits are linked to better blood sugar control, which supports healthy weight loss.

Carb up: When you need a healthy snack, pair your favorite fruit with a source of fat and protein, like string cheese or peanut butter, for example. The combo will help slow digestion and keep you feeling fuller, longer, says Fear. Just stick to three or fewer servings of fruit a day and you’ll be golden.

How To Eat White Carbs And Still Lose Weight

Aside from being a great source of vitamin D, calcium, and protein, dairy can help your weight-loss efforts. In fact, one Harvard University review found that dieters who ate a serving of yogurt daily lost more weight than those who didn’t.

Carb up: Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, milk, and even regular cheese can all help you hit your goals. And, no, you don’t have to opt for low-fat; new research shows that full-fat diary might be more effective for weight loss, since fat is so satiating. As long as dairy doesn’t bother your stomach, feel free to incorporate up to one serving of full-fat dairy with each meal, Fear says.But, while we know the macronutrient is essential for energy there's a growing body of science to point to carbohydrates as being key to achieving a healthy body composition, too.

So ingrained is the ‘bread and pasta make you gain’ message that the idea of the opposite being true seems nothing short of tomfoolery. Of course, the tables have been turning, albeit in slo-mo, for a while now.

Eat Carbs, Lose Weight: Drop All The Pounds You Want Without Giving Up The Foods You Love: Austin, Denise, Campbell, Amy: 9781594862335: Amazon.com: Books

We’ve always encouraged you not to be too hard on carbs – any nutrition expert will promote eating across all food groups – but it was around the time when HIIT really, well, hit, that everyone embraced carbs as vital for fuelling intense workouts (the fact that the tastiest way to eat nut butter is clearly slathered on toast did no harm).

Should you need convincing that you should be choosing, rather than avoiding, carbs for weight loss, take a look at the science.

In February last year, scientists at the Stanford Prevention Research Center in California published the results of a major study comparing the validity of low-carb and low-fat diets.

When And How To Eat Carbs To Lose Weight

While the randomised clinical trial monitoring 600 overweight adults found no significant difference between the two groups’ results after one year, the researchers did make an interesting observation – that the key to lasting weight loss isn’t the quantity of food on your plate, nor the food group, but the quality of that food.

They found that those who cut back on added sugar, refined grains and highly processed foods, while upping their intake of vegetables and whole foods – carbs included – lost significant amounts of weight over the course of a year. This follows the recent publication of a book hailing the power of complex carbs to help you lose weight.

The Super Carb Diet by Bob Harper, PT to the likes of Ben Stiller and Gwyneth Paltrow (and, yes, he’s the guy from America’s Biggest Loser, if you have the same taste in TV as us) is a diet plan based on the idea of eating carbs at every meal three times a day for 90 days.

How To Eat Carbs And Still Lose Weight

Among the carbohydrates donning their superhero capes are the likes of brown rice, buckwheat and bulgar, as well as wholegrain bread and pasta; Harper recommends avoiding bagels, cereals (excluding oats) and dried fruit while on the plan.

The nutritional science behind carbohydrates and their impact on the body is complex because they come in a wide variety of forms, particularly in foods that are plant-based, explains Dr Duane Mellor, senior lecturer in human nutrition at the University of Coventry and British Dietetic Association (BDA) spokesperson. Carbs can exist as anything from one molecule to chains of thousands, so the possible combinations are huge.

Should you need a reminder of what happens to your body when you swerve carbs completely, within days, your body enters ketosis – a state where it burns fat rather than sugar to fuel its processes.

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Increasingly, research is emphasising the significance of the difference between simple and complex carbs – and they call them complex for nothing.

As their name suggests, simple carbohydrates break down in one step. When you eat a chocolate bar, the simple carbohydrate sucrose molecules head directly to your small intestine where they’re quickly converted to glucose and absorbed into your bloodstream, causing your insulin levels to quickly rise, explains Kaitlin Colucci, registered dietitian and spokesperson for the BDA (@themissiondietitian). Whereas complex carbohydrate molecules require more work to convert to glucose.

When you eat a piece of wholegrain bread or a forkful of wholegrain pasta, saliva surrounds the complex carb molecule and begins breaking it down into

How Eating Carbs Can Actually Help You Lose Weight