What Your Body Needs: Carbs

Oh how we love our carbs.

Yes, your body needs water, carbs, protein, fat, vitamins and minerals. If you don't get the right quality and quantity of these, you die.

But what are good carbs? Let's start with what a carb is supposed to do for you. Oddly enough, a good carb turns to sugar or glucose as it is called in the body. The glucose gives you energy and is fuel for your body as you burn...but you can't eat refined white sugar and hope to satisfy your body's carb needs.

"It should be understood that fat in the body does not all come from the
fat that is eaten in the diet. When an excess of carbohydrates is eaten,
it is converted by the body into fat and stored. In this way the body can
store and use fat without having a large amount of fat in the diet. The
deposits could be viewed as a type of carbohydrate bank, where deposits and
withdrawals are made as necessary. So utilizable fat is ultimately
dependent upon carbohydrate intake."
Fit For Life
Diamond

Bad carbs are foods that pretend to be glucose sugar boosters but are imitators instead. White sugar, white flour, pasta, muffins, "whole wheat pasta", croutons, cookies, donuts, bread, tortillas, chips, wheat thins: these are all bad carbs. They are loaded with preservatives, sugar and flour. They are void of raw carbohydrates which in turn produce energy giving glucose.

Good carbs are vegetables and whole grains. They create raw energy in the body. All vegetables provide usable carbohydrate energy to the body. Go for nutritional density!

When a runner says they need to "get their carbs" from a plate of pasta, they might be able to gain the energy to make a run but the trash they have consumed in providing that energy is unnecessary. Put steamed brown rice, quinoa pasta and the whole rainbow of vegetables under your skin. See how you run now!

"I started thinking about the popular viewpoint that buzzed around the
nutrition world, calling these whole grain bread products 'complex
carbohydrates.' There were whole books written on this subject that
reported carbohydrates to be a necessary part of our diet. That was
true. But after these grains were turned into flour, they weren't even
close to their original complex form. They released more like a simple
sugar, which was way too fast for our bodies to metabolize and burn. The
fiber in these bread products was now broken down compared to what was
originally in that whole grain to begin with.
I realized it was just a stripped-down, pale copy of what it had originally
been. With refined grains of any kind - white, whole wheat, oat, spelt,
millet, quinoa, rice, corn - if they were altered in any way and turned into
flour, they became detrimental to our bodies. I decided to use sprouted
brown rice as a transitional food for sick clients who were heavily addicted to
flour products.
Furthermore, I was learning that refined grains were a huge factor in the
deterioration of our bodies at the cellular level, especially when we ate them
consistently. They couldn't be metabolized fast enough, and when not used
up, they fermented inside the cell, creating acidity that forced the oxygen out
of the cell. This was true whether a person ate white or whole wheat
bread, spelt, or organic corn tortillas.
Here's how I broke it down:

• Incomplete metabolism of sugar created fermentation.
• Fermentation forced oxygen out of the cell, causing cellular
  asphyxiation.
• Cellular asphyxiation led to havoc and death at the cellular level.
• Oxygen starvation at the cellular level created a fertile ground for cancer
  to grow!"

The Cure
Dr. Timothy Brantley

You will get your vitamin and mineral needs from vegetables which are good carbohydrates designed to release the energy you need. Or, you will continue to rely on what is written on a package of bread or pasta. Think about it.