Carbohydrates 101: Why I Love Carbs And Why I Think You Should Too
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DO NOT FEAR CARBS. DO NOT FEAR CARBS. DO. NOT. FEAR. CARBS. If you do fear carbs this episode is for you, and if you don’t fear carbs, this episode is also for you.
Here's the truth: You don’t need to fear them, you just need to be mindful of how much you are eating them.
My goal by the end of the episiode is for you to have a clear understanding of why it’s important to eat carbs and also why it’s important to eat them in the right amounts.
So, let me ask you this…Do you know how many carbs your body needs?!
Copying how many carbs someone else is eating gives you an inaccurate number.
Googling it gives you an inaccurate number.
GUESSING gives you an inaccurate number.
So if the answer is NO, and you do not know the REAL number you should be eating…
You can download my free macro counting made simple online academy ebook here that gives you a step-by-step guide on how to calculate it yourself!
Or if you want my help, you can sign up for my macro counting made simple online academy here. I’ll calculate your macros for you plus you’ll get access to the enter academy.
Lastly, if you have any questions about what I discussed in today’s episode, shoot me a DM @juliealedbetter. I’m more than happy to answer any of your questions!
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Episode 46: Why You Should Consider a Reverse Diet (The Only Diet I Support!)
TRANSCRIPT:
Hey there beautiful human. You're listening to Embrace Your Real with me, Julie Ledbetter, a podcast where I empower you to just be you. With each episode, I dish you a dose of real talk and actionable advice for building your confidence, honoring your body and unconditionally loving your authentic self. Stay tuned if you're ready to embrace your real. Let's get in. Let's get go.
Do not fear carbs. Do not fear carbs. Do not fear carbs. If you do fear carbs, this episode is for you. And even if you don't fear carbs, this episode is for you. Why? Because I'm not only going to break down and explain the importance of carbs for those who are scared of eating carbs, which if that is you, trust me, you are not alone. For a decade of my life, I feared carbs, but seriously, I would try to avoid them at all costs. And even when I couldn't, I would feel guilty for eating them. I would try to burn them off immediately and it was just this toxic relationship. And so in this episode, whether you fear carbs or you don't, I'm going to teach you the importance of carbs so that you can have a better understanding. Basically by the end of this episode, my goal is for you to have a crystal clear understanding on what your relationship with carb should be. In short, you should be eating them, but know how much you should be eating and why they are so important.
But before I dive in, I had to share this review of the day. Comes from Tim Tam. She says, "Best mornings. I love to listen to Julie's podcast on the way to work. It is truly my favorite way to start my day. Her content is full positivity and realness that all women can benefit from. Do yourself a favor and tune in."
I love this so much. Whether you guys are walking, you're jogging, you're cooking, you're cleaning, you're working out, you're driving, you're doing the dang thing girls. You are choosing to show up to prioritize yourself and just become a better version of yourself and educated on all different types of topics. If you have a girlfriend in your life that you feel like would benefit from this podcast, I just ask that you shared it out with them. You can copy the link and send it to them in a text message. You can also screenshot this episode and you can post it up on your Instagram story. Be sure to tag me @juliealedbetter and the Embrace Your Real account if you're not already following the out account. Be sure to do so. We have some really exciting content coming up on that Instagram. Okay, let's start out with why your body needs carbohydrates.
Number one, carbohydrates are your body's main source of energy. Some of you guys know this, other people don't. So I'm going to give like a little crash course on kind of the science behind carbohydrates. Most importantly, they help fuel your brain. They help your kidneys, heart muscles, central nervous system. This is why when and if you ever cut out carbs, you start to feel extremely sluggish. You might have brain fog and likely you feel like you're dragging and it's because your body literally doesn't have the most trusted source of energy available to it. So when one part of your body doesn't have the energy that it needs to carry out its basic functioning, it can create a domino effect, leading more and more issues in the body, which is something we all like to avoid.
Number two, carbs can help women with their hormones to keep them balanced. As women, you know that our hormones are extremely sensitive and depleting or depriving our body of carbs can trigger our hormones to go all out of whack. Why is this an issue? Because we all have menstrual cycles. And when our hormones are triggered, it messes with our menstrual cycle. And when our menstrual cycle gets messed up, a lot more serious issues can arise with it that we likely don't want to experience. So essentially, if you don't eat enough carbs, you may experience irregular menstrual cycles or amenorrhea. Amenorrhea is when women's menstrual cycles are absent for three months or more. You don't want to mess around with this. It can be serious stuff. So in short, eat carbs.
I do want to note that I am not an expert on this. So please, please, please seek advice from an expert when it comes to hormones. There are so many amazing women out there that are highly qualified in this and that can really help you if you are struggling, for example, with losing your menstrual cycle or feeling like there is something that is missing or your hormones are not working properly.
Number three, carbs contain fiber. Now fiber is a carbohydrate that aids in digestion, which can help you feel fuller. If you have poor digestion, typically that's a sign that something in your health is not working properly. Poor digestion can be a sign that something in your health is not working properly. Whereas if your digestion is regular, typically that means all as well in your body. Fiber can play a key in this. So when you're digesting foods, you have a built-up waste in your body, which means that you can also have toxins building up in your body. This can prevent you from losing weight, but more studies are needed in this area. There hasn't been conclusive studies to show this, but fiber can also help you feel fuller longer. It digests more slowly, releasing in your blood's stream more slowly, which can keep your blood sugar levels lower, which can typically lead to feeling fuller longer as well.
Plus some studies have shown that increased fiber can lead to a greater weight loss if that is your goal. I personally consume about 27 to 28 grams of fiber. That's what makes me personally feel best, but you have to find what works best for you. There are so many different foods that fiber can be found, many fruits and vegetables like broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, which are all things that I personally cannot eat, but carrots, sweet potatoes. It's also found in brown rice, nuts, quinoa, and so many other foods. Most foods that don't come in a package will contain some sort of fiber. And having your finger on the pulse of how much fiber you're eating can really directly correlate with how you're feeling, whether you're feeling constipated, you're feeling bloated.
I know for me personally, if I'm not eating enough fiber, I feel constipated. And if I'm eating too much fiber, I feel constipated. So for me, like I said, my happy medium is around 25 to 27-ish grams of fiber per day, but that will change, and that is totally dependent from person to person. So you need to find what you happy place is when it comes to the amount of fiber that you eat per day.
Number four, your muscles need carbs to recover and grow. So without carbohydrates and being in a caloric surplus, that's key here, you will struggle to build the body that you want when it comes to building muscle. Carbs are an essential player in muscle recovery, and if your muscles don't recover, your muscles will likely not grow and you know what happens if your muscles don't grow. This could lead to not lessening your body fat or changing your body composition overall. So if you have the goal of building lean muscle, it's so important that you are eating enough carbs to ensure that you are nourishing your body with what it needs, or it will struggle to become what you want it to be.
And lastly, not eating enough carbs, being deficient in carbs can cause headaches, fatigue, weakness, difficulty concentrating, nausea, constipation, bad breath, brittle hair, nails, acne, vitamin and mineral deficiencies. So many things. All of the oh, yikes. I've experienced personally, all of these things when I was afraid of carbs for 10 years of my life and especially the four years in college where I severely underate, not only carbs, but basically all calories and my energy expenditure was just... It was all consuming and I was doing like two hours of cardio a day, and it was not healthy for my body. I took a toll on my health. I always had headaches. I was always fatigued. I struggled so much with my face and acne and brittle nails and my hair not growing.
I mean, if you just look at any of my 10-year challenge photos, or my... I don't want to say before and after because I don't like that. But then and now photos that I post on Instagram, I honestly look younger today than I did when I was 21. And it was because I was not properly fueling my body. I was undereating. I was overexercising. I was not having enough carbohydrates for what my body needs.
Now that you understand why carbs are important, I need to discuss why it's also important that we don't overeat on carbs because as great as carbs are, if you're eating too many of them, as with eating too much of anything, it will likely hinder your progress.
Number one, how many carbs you need per day really depends on how active you are, what type of activity you're doing. So if you're like next level, extreme endurance athlete, which is less than 5% of the population, I would say probably more like two to 3% of the population, you are going to need to eat a lot of carbs. For example, ultra marathon runners or people who go and hike huge mountains or cyclists who ride a hundred miles a day, typically should aim to get around two to 300 calories from carbs each hour of the ride, which is about 25 to 30 grams of carbs an hour.
So if they're on an eight-hour hike or run or ride or you name it, that could be upwards of 2,400 calories or 240 grams of carbs. And that's outside of their pre and post-workout meals, which all contain anywhere from 30 to 40 to 50 to 75 grams of carbs. It's totally dependent on the person, It's totally dependent on the activity that you're doing and how regular you're doing that. Like you could go on one long run, but is that only one long run that you're doing for a week? And what is considered a long run to you? Or what is considered a long hike to you? Or what is considered a long cycle to you? So it's so differentiating from person to person. And that's why on the podcast, I always typically go with just general advice, simply because this is such a customized approach when it comes to knowing how much to properly fuel your body.
And I should say, like I mentioned before, this is not a typical person. Like the next-level extreme endurance athlete is two to 3% of people in general. Someone like me who works out consistently five, six times a week, but isn't doing extreme things for hours on end, that is not something that I would consider my self to be. And so personally, I aim to eat around 190 grams of carbs per day. That is my current intake when it comes to carbohydrates. I am in a slight caloric deficit. I should say that. But like I said, it is going to vary from person to person. So that's from my body.
Personally, I have done reverse diet. My metabolic capacity is a lot higher from someone who might be eating 90 grams of carbs, which is not enough, which I'll go into in a second. But you just jumping from 90 grams of carbs to 190 grams of carbs, you're likely going to see a significant increase in body fat gain and actually gaining weight because you likely need to do it slow and methodically, which is another talk for another day. I actually have an episode on this. I talk all about reverse diet. I talk about my experience with reverse diets. I believe that is episode 46. I will go ahead and link that in the show notes below so that you can easily go listen after this podcast. But please hear me when I say it's so variant from person to person. And that's why it's so important that you learn how much your body needs and that you hire a coach that knows what they're doing so that they can guide you through that process.
When we are personally figuring out people's customized macronutrient when they fill out the extensive questionnaire form, whether it's in one of our challenges or it's in our Macro Counting Made Simple Online Academy or it's in our upcoming one-on-one nutritional coaching that we will be launching soon, we go through an extensive questionnaire form that asks you some of the following questions: Like how old you are, how much you weigh, how tall you are, what work do you do? What is your profession and what are you doing throughout the day? How much you work out and what is your consistent schedule with that, that you can commit to? What does movement look like outside of your workouts? What is your goals? Do you have a history of any injuries or anything else that would affect how much your body needs? So as you can see, just from that list alone, it's an extensive questionnaire form that we go through because we cannot just copy and paste how many carbs one person is eating for another person and expect that it's going to be the same thing.
For example, I'm 5'9. There's other people that we work with that are six feet. I've worked with women that are 6'1 and they're basketball, volleyball players. And I've also worked with people that are five feet tall. So it is totally dependent. All of us are different. You could weigh more, you could weigh less, you could have a history of something. You could be older. You could be younger. There are so many factors that go into this. And that's why it's important for you to figure out how many carbs your body needs based on those things, to ensure that you can reap the benefits of eating carbs without the negative side effects of constantly overeating carbs, which I'm going to discuss next.
If you do want to figure out how many carbs your body needs, I do have a free ebook that will teach you the basics of it. So how much your body needs, bare minimum. And that's not in a caloric deficit or surplus. That is more so like where you should start at maintenance mode. So if you want to maintain where you're at and just see how much your body needs, you can go to my free ebook. That is www.juliealedbetter.com/free-ebook, or you can actually just go straight into learning more about my Macro Counting Made Simple Online Academy. This is where we personally calculate your macros for you and we show you step by step how we did it. Whether it's the goal of a body fat loss, a reverse diet, muscle building, whatever your goal is, we will teach you step by step how to do that. And that's over at macrocountingmadesimple.com. I will link both in the show notes below. So if you're interested in either one of those products, we can help you out and we can teach you how to do it so that you can go about properly fueling your body.
Number two, too many carbs because of overconsumption can actually get converted into fat. So your body breaks down carbs in glycogen, which gets stored in your muscles for fuel, but there's only a limited amount of storage in your body for carbs, for a lack of a better term. So the question is what happens when we eat more than what our body is capable of storing? Well, it gets stored as fat and our body has unlimited storage for fat to ensure we always have energy to utilize when we need it. So it's trying to do a nice thing by converting the carbs into fat, because it wants to protect us by giving us a backup energy. But unfortunately this is where carbs can get a bad rep.
So since carbs do get stored as fat in this case, when we overeat them, people think that the solution is to just not eat them at all and they think that they need to avoid them at all costs. But they're overcompensating. They don't need to cut out carbs. That's not necessary. Instead, all you need to do is you need to eat the proper amount that your body needs so your body doesn't reach the point of carbs getting converted into fat for storage. For later, that's not really going to be used.
And number three, overeating carbs can actually trigger you to retain more water weight. For example, each gram of carb you consume, your body holds on to about two to three grams of water. So if you're overconsuming carbs, your body is likely going to hold onto a lot of that water, which is why after a holiday like Thanksgiving or Christmas or some holiday that you really feel like you overate. If you step on a scale, it will likely say that you gained five pounds. You actually didn't gain the five pounds. That would be next to impossible to do in one day. It's likely though that you're just holding on to excess water weight. It's not real weight that you've gained, but again, this is why carbs get a bad reputation.
You'll hear some people go on these low-carb to no-carb diets and they lose 10, 15, 20 pounds in a week. Well, you have to remember that they aren't losing weight from fat. They're losing weight from losing water weight. And water weight loss and gain is only a temporary thing. This weight that they lost, isn't going to last because they won't be able to not eat carbs forever. That's just not realistic. That's not sustainable and that's not fun. So once those people who initially lost the 10, 15 or 20 pounds in one week, once they start eating carbs again, or let's say for example, they go on vacation and they quit their diet for the week, they will likely gain all of that water weight back and likely more. So once they do eat carbs again, the water weight that they initially lost will come back and all of their efforts will essentially be for nothing. And they'll be frustrated because they're like, "I lost the weight so fast. How can I so quickly gain it back?" And that's why, because typically those people are not losing real weight from fat. They're losing water weight.
I hope that this kind of gave you a good understanding of why it's important to eat carbs, but also why it's important to eat them in the right amounts. I don't want you to fear carbs. You just need to be mindful of how much you are eating them and what your specific body needs. Let me ask you, do you know how many carbs your body needs? I would say about 30 to 40% of my regular podcast listeners you would say, "Yes, I've learned that from you. You've taught me how to properly fuel my body." There's the other 60, 70% of people that have no idea how much their body needs. I'm telling you by copying how many carbs somebody else is on an Instagram reel of what they eat in a day or Googling it is going to give you an inaccurate number. Guessing is going to give you an inaccurate number. It's so, so important that you fully understand how much your body needs.
And I've said this before, and I'll say it again, and I will continue saying it, you don't have to your calories or macros for the rest of your life. But I do think that learning how much your body needs and practicing that consistently and having that tool in your toolbox for whenever you want to use it is so, so important. I know for me, for so many years, you guys, me just guessing or me just Googling or me just trying to copy the seven-day meal plan that I saw in the fitness magazine at the grocery store, that left me feeling so defeated and so much more frustrated.
It wasn't until I actually took the time to say, "Okay, I am so over this guessing game. I'm so over thinking that I'm eating enough, but not feeling good or not seeing results," that when I finally invested in teaching myself to properly nourish my body, it was singlehandedly one of the best things that I've done simply because I feel empowered. I feel educated. And when you feel empowered and educated, truly nothing can stop you. The sky is the limit and you are no longer wandering in this desert trying to figure out how much your body needs and just getting frustrated and fed up.
So if that's you, again, if you want to learn more, if you're like, "Julie, you've sold me. I want to eat carbs. I don't want to fear them. I want to eat them in the right amount." You can learn more either by downloading my free ebook. Go to www.juliealedbetter.com/free-ebook. Again, I will link that in the show notes. Or if you just want to skip that part and you just want to say, "Julie, want you to teach me directly. I want you to show me step by step how you do it so that I can feel educated and I can feel empowered." You can go to macrocountingmadesimple.com. Again, that's macrocountingmadesimple.com. I will link both of those in the show notes below.
The other episode that I did mention in this specific podcast is episode 46, talking all about reverse diet. So if you have found yourself undereating and you know that you have not been fueling your body properly, and you're eating a very low amount of calories, a reverse diet could be very beneficial for you. And if you don't know anything about reverse diets, or if you just want to a refresher on what a reverse diet is, kind of hear my experience about it, you can go to episode 46. I will link it in the show notes and you can easily go listen to that.
But I hope that this episode was helpful for you. I know for me, I wish that I would've known these things years ago because I felt like I was banging my head against a wall and just not getting anywhere for so long, because I was told that carbs are not good, or that you need to limit carbs, or you need to feel guilty for eating carbs. And you guys, that's just not the case, especially if you have health and fitness goals, especially if you're wanting to build muscle, you're wanting to change your body composition. You have to be fueling your body enough. And it's the most enjoyable way live a sustainable lifestyle, by eating the foods that you love in the proper amount so that you cannot only love what you're eating, but also see results and not feel like you are restricting yourself. Again, I will link all of those things that I've mentioned in the show notes below.
If you have a girlfriend or someone in your life that you feel like would really buy from this Carbohydrates 101 mini class, if you will, then you can send this to them in a text message. You can also screenshot this and post it up on your Instagram story and share it with your circle of influence. I appreciate you guys more than you know. Thank you so much for tuning in and I'll talk to you in the next episode.
All right, sister, that's all I got for you today. But I have two things that I need you to do. First thing, if you are not already following me on the gram, be sure to do so @juliealedbetter, yes, it's with an A in the middle, for that daily post-workout real talk, healthy tips and tricks, and honest accountability to keep your mind and heart in check. The second thing, be sure to subscribe to Apple Podcast to never miss an episode. Thank you so much for joining me. It means the absolute world. And I'm going to leave you with one last thought. The most beautiful women that I have met in my life are the ones who are completely confident and secure in being authentically themselves. Remember that beauty goes so much deeper than the surface. So go out there and embrace your reel because you're worth it.