All about Simple Carbohydrates
You have made up your mind to lose weight by embarking on a low carbohydrate diet. Before you begin on your diet, it is important that you learn as much as you can about the difference in carbohydrates and how eliminating or reducing them from your diet can help you lose weight fast.
There are two different types of carbohydrates: Simple Carbohydrates and Complex Carbohydrates. While our bodies need a certain amount of carbohydrates to function, simple carbohydrates are something that we can do without; or at least limit.
What are simple carbohydrates? They are made up of small sugars and are absorbed into our bodies where they are transformed to fat. They have little nutritional value because they are absorbed so quickly into our bodies. The faster sugar converts in our bodies, the better the chances that it turns to fat. Simple carbohydrates convert at a relatively fast rate.
Foods that contain a lot of simple carbohydrates are usually those that are known as having “empty calories.” The reason they are empty calories is because they contain little or no nutritional value, but are high in carbohydrates or calories.
If you are planning on losing weight on a low carbohydrate diet, it is important that you eliminate simple carbohydrates from your diet. Simple carbohydrate foods that should be eliminated from your new diet include the following:
- Cake. Empty calories. Plenty of starch and sugar and very little nutritional value. Cake is especially bad if filled with some sort of fatty filling consisting of lard mixed with sugar, or has an icing on the cake. Eliminate cakes from your diet, particularly those that are pre-packaged as they contain preservatives in addition to mountains of carbohydrates;
- Biscuits. Biscuits may be tasty, especially when covered with butter, but they are high in carbohydrates and sugars. The butter that you put on your biscuits is high in fat. For bread, you are better off eating wheat based products instead of white flour based products when on a low carbohydrate diet;
- French Fried Potatoes. While potatoes contain potassium, which is beneficial to your health, a fried potato makes sure that all those nutrients go out the window, leaving you with only an enormous amount of both carbohydrates and fat. If you get French fried potatoes at a fast food restaurant, they are also usually loaded with sodium. There is little if any, nutritional value in these items and no reason for you to have them;
- Chocolate. Although dark chocolate, in moderation, contains antioxidants that can be beneficial to your health, chocolate on the whole contains a lot of sugar. If you cannot give up chocolate completely, limit your intake to one square of dark chocolate a day;
- Soda. Soft drinks are often called “liquid sugar.” Soft drinks are high in sugar and have no nutritional value whatsoever. Drink water instead, if you are going to go on a low carbohydrate diet.
In addition to eliminating the above foods from your diet, you will also want to stop using table sugar. This means drinking your tea or coffee black. It will be worth it when the pounds start to slip off.
