There are good carbohydrates and bad carbohydrates. The bad carbohydrates are also called simple carbohydrates and are dubbed “bad” because they contribute to weight gain and offer no health benefits to your body. The good carbs are also known as Complex Carbohydrates and they provide more of a health benefit to the human body.

The simple carbohydrates turn to sugar when digested and enter the blood stream quickly. This is the carbohydrate that can contribute to weight gain and other health issues. Complex Carbohydrates, unlike simple carbohydrates stay in the body longer and works through the system providing nutrients. These good carbs should always replace simple carbs if you want to achieve weight loss and ultimately better health. Complex Carbohydrates, when digested, separates further down in your body and becomes glucose and is used by your body as energy. You can compare it to gasoline for a car and without carbs your body will have less energy. Similarly, you have regular unleaded and super unleaded and one will make your car run and the other makes it run better.

Complex Carbohydrates makes your body work better much like super unleaded does for your car. With Complex Carbohydrates glucose is released slowly in the human body. Whereas with simple carbohydrates sugars enters the blood stream almost immediately, this can cause the body to become off balanced – consequently causing headaches, irritability, and fatigued. In addition, Complex Carbohydrates help the body carry toxins out though regular bow movements.

It’s recommended that you have three to five servings of Complex Carbohydrates daily. Lists of these wonder foods are easy to put together. Just as easy is including these good carbs in your diet. A few examples of the good carbs are: Whole grain, Oatmeal, Barley Brown rice. Low fat yogurt, Broccoli, Yams, Potatoes, Lentils, Strawberries and Grapefruit. A few examples of the bad carbs are: White flours, Sugar (white and brown), Cakes, Candy, and Soda.

Many people have found success with weight loss when replacing simple carbohydrates in their diet with Complex Carbohydrates. It is simple to do. All that is needed is a genuine effort on your part to consume more foods from the complex carbs list listed above.

For the last decade or so people have been taught that carbohydrates are bad. Through diets and studies people have been taught to ignore carbs as those are the things that make you fat. Heck, there have even been a variety of diets out there that tell you that you can eat as much dairy, red meat and drink as much diet soda as you want as long as you cut carbs completely out of your diet. Unfortunately, those people are missing the point about carbohydrates. Just as there are in the “fat” universe, there are good types of carbohydrates and bad types. Complex carbohydrates are the good types of carbs, These are the types of carbs that are found in brown rice, pasta, oatmeal, bran, wholegrain cereals, etc. On the other hand, there are the bad carbohydrates: the simple carbohydrate. While simple carbohydrates can be okay for you in natural foods such as fruits and vegetables, eating them in refined foods like candy and fast foods are the best way for you to gain weight.

The thing that people don’t tend to understand about Complex Carbohydrates is that they are the best way for you to get energy throughout the day. Through a simple scientific process, complex carbs turn themselves into energy for your body to feed on. People confuse these types of carbohydrates with the ones they eat in candy or drink in soda, as those don’t get converted into energy and thus just kind of it there and tire you out during the day. Even if you aren’t out there running a marathon or walking to work everyday, complex carbs will help give you energy throughout your work day and your home life.

Of course, you have to eat the right types of foods in order to get Complex Carbohydrates in your diet. Just because you see carbs on the label doesn’t mean that it’s the right types of carbs that your body needs. Brown rice has complex carbs, white rice doesn’t; wholemeal bread has complex carbs, white bread doesn’t; natural pasta has complex carbs, the overly processed kind doesn’t. Do a little more research into complex carbohydrates to see what kind works for you and what kind doesn’t.

Not all simple carbohydrates are bad for you, though. As long as you take the natural route and go with fruit you won’t find weight gain in your future. The things you have to worry about is when the carbohydrates have been taken apart and put back together in a unnatural way by a process. This is what you find in products that are full of table sugar such as fast foods, soft drinks and candy bars. In a way, they are the complete opposites of Complex Carbohydrates.

Carbohydrates are a large source of the body’s energy.  Carbohydrates are converted by the body into glucose which is a form of sugar that is used by the body. As you may have heard over the years, there are good carbs and bad carbs. If you maintain a diet that is too high in carbohydrates it can negatively affect the body’s balance in several ways.  The most prolific way is that it can skew the blood sugar level which will affect energy levels and even mood changes that will leave you feeling fatigued and irritable.

There are two main types of carbohydrates; simple and complex carbohydrates. Both types of carbohydrates form glucose when digested by the body.  That glucose is then transported throughout the body through the bloodstream and then is converted to energy by the cells.  The pancreas is located in the abdomen and it secretes insulin which controls how much glucose is used by the body’s cells.

If there is any glucose left over it is converted into glycogen which is then stored in fat cells.  Glycogen is also stored around the liver.  When the body is in need of supplemental energy a secondary hormone called glucagon comes into play.  The glucagon converts the glycogen back into glucose which is then released into the body for use via the bloodstream.

This process is known as glucose metabolism.  The difference between simple and complex carbohydrates is that complex carbohydrates take longer to go through the metabolic process which produces a slower and more sustained release of this energy.

Complex carbohydrates are also known as starch foods.  They can be found in many foods in their natural form and can also be refined in processed foods.  Some of the natural foods that complex carbohydrates can be found in are bananas, beans, chickpeas, lentils, nuts, oats, sweet corn, whole grain cereals and yams. Complex carbohydrates which are found as refined starches are found in biscuits and pastries, pizza, sugary breakfast cereals white bread and white pastas and white rice.

It is important to maintain a balanced diet that includes both carbohydrates and proteins.  If you have concerns about your dietary intake and how many carbs you really need to be taking in, consult your physician or dietitian.

There are a lot of misconceptions about whether carbohydrates are actually good or bad for you.  To clear up some of the misconceptions about carbs and examples of some of the best complex carbohydrates to incorporation into your daily diet, watch this great short video by certified nutritionist, Isabel De Los Rios.

Watch another great video about Isabel and learn more about her nutrition plan she created called “The Diet Solution”Click Here Now!