Health Benefits Of Carbohydrates
People working out at Habitat Health and Fitness know it takes more than just exercise to achieve their goals. It also takes a healthy diet. A healthy diet should include all macronutrients, including carbohydrates. Carbs get a bad rap. They’re blamed for weight gain and various maladies. Not all carbohydrates are bad. Some provide health benefits you can’t get any other way. The carbohydrate category is broad and includes both healthy foods like vegetables and fruit, and unhealthy ones like sugar and highly processed food.
Why are carbohydrates important?
Carbohydrates are one of the three categories of macronutrients. It’s one of three categories, with the other two being protein and fat. broad. It includes starch, sugar, and fiber. Carbohydrates provide the body with energy. There are simple and complex carbohydrates. Simple carbs digest rapidly and spike the blood sugar. Complex carbs take longer to digest. Carbs can be fiber. There are two types of it, soluble and insoluble. Soluble fiber bonds with water creating a gel. The gel not only adds moisture to excrement to make it easier to pass, but it also feeds the microbes in the gut that keep us healthy. Insoluble fiber doesn’t digest but adds bulk to the stool.
There are good carbohydrates and bad carbohydrates.
Fruits and vegetables are carbohydrates, and so are whole grains. Those are healthy foods. They contain fiber and other nutrients like vitamins and minerals. Highly processed foods and foods with added sugar are also carbohydrates, but they have no nutrients. They only provide energy—calories. They digest quickly, so they cause a spike in blood glucose and an increase in insulin. When that happens too often, it can cause insulin resistance, obesity, and other problems.
Carbohydrates aren’t bad.
Eating too many of the wrong types of carbohydrates is unhealthy. That doesn’t make all carbohydrates bad. You’ll find many of the healthy carbs in the produce section of the grocery. These foods contain fiber, starch, and nutrients. Fiber prevents blood sugar from spiking by slowing sugar absorption. It feeds beneficial bacteria. Whole grains also contain fiber and other nutrients. All foods with fiber fill you up quickly and keep you feeling full longer, so they aid in weight loss. To be your healthiest, you need carbs in your diet, but they must be healthy carbs.
- One type of starch is resistant starch. Like soluble fiber, it feeds the beneficial bacteria and the cells in the large intestine. Resistant starch helps prevent metabolic disease and colon cancer, increases insulin sensitivity, and aids in weight loss.
- Foods high in carbohydrates provide nutrients that many high-protein animal products can’t provide. They include phytonutrients, vitamin C, and fiber. Phytochemicals are plant compounds that play a vital role in health.
- Food can fit into several categories at the same time. While nuts contain carbohydrates, they also contain protein and fat. Milk is the only animal product containing a significant amount of carbs.
- Avoiding food with added sugar can help both the body and the mind. A diet high in sugar can affect cognitive functioning, memory, mood, and create cravings for even more sugar.
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When people opt for low-carb diets, they hope the side effects will be weight loss. In many cases, they’re right. Low-carb diets also have some negative side effects that range from uncomfortable to painful. Low-carb diets are designed to reduce the number of calories from carbs and increase calories from protein and fat. When you limit carbs, you limit sugary and refined products are removed from the diet. That alone can make a difference in overall good health and weight loss, and it’s a positive difference. What are some of the negative side effects people experience?
Most people in Lakeland, FL, can identify some food that doesn’t agree with them. A few live in fear because their reaction could be life-threatening. That’s one explanation of the difference between a food allergy and a food sensitivity, or intolerance. It’s how the body responds to the food and what triggers the reaction. The immune system triggers a food allergy. Food sensitivity, or intolerance, is triggered by the digestive system.
Do you want to look your best? People often focus on losing weight, but they also need to focus on the fat to muscle tissue ratio. The two aren’t equal. A biological female weighing 130 pounds but has over 25% body fat will look far heavier than a counterpart weighing the same whose body fat is 14%. Even though the two are the same weight, the one with more muscle will look thinner.
People who work out at Habitat Health and Fitness know that continuously eating more calories than you require causes weight gain. It’s the first thing most overweight people learn about weight control. What most people don’t search for are signs you actually need to eat more calories. It may sound like a dream come true, but it isn’t. It’s just as hard to gain weight as it is to lose it. Too few calories can interfere with the functions of the body and lead to critical health issues.
Clients at Habitat Health in Lakeland, FL, love working out. They say it helps them decrease stress. There are often stressful times when exercising isn’t possible. Some have asked for alternative remedies, such as herbs, mental focus routines, or other possibilities that don’t require putting on gym clothes and working up a sweat.
There are many articles about warming up before exercise. It’s important to warm the muscles to get them pliable and avoid injury. However, cooling down after exercise is just as important, but it’s often skipped. Why? In some cases, people don’t realize it’s important, but in most cases, they’re tired and mentally done with anything that involves moving one more minute. It doesn’t have to be that difficult. You can cool down, without significantly adding to your workout time.
People exercise for many reasons. Some like the energy it gives them or the exhilaration felt after working out hard. Others appreciate the changes it makes in their bodies and how good they look. Most people know that working out also provides health benefits when it’s done regularly. Even when people exercise to lose weight, better health is often one of the reasons for weight loss. While seeing body changes doesn’t happen overnight, you’ll often notice more energy relatively quickly and feel less stress almost immediately after a workout. That’s because exercise is a stress buster. It burns off stress hormones and sets your body back to normal.
While working out is an important part of weight loss and fitness, nutrition also plays an important role. We have local farmers in Lakeland, FL, that grow some of the healthiest options, such as leafy greens. You get many health benefits from adding leafy greens to your diet. They’re high in fiber and water content, so they’re filling, yet have only a few calories, improving weight loss potential. Depending on the green, there are a wide variety of nutrients, too. The potassium in leafy greens like spinach can help reduce bloating, relieving you of excess water weight.
No matter what your age or gender, there are a lot of reasons to start working out this year. If you live in Winter Haven, FL, it’s even easier to increase your activity than it is in colder climates. Walking more is one way to increase your activity and any increase is good, but is walking enough? You need more than just cardio and lower leg strength to be truly fit, which is why you should make this year devoted to your health and start working out to round out your fitness program.