Carbohydrates are the body's main source of energy. Once your body's intake of carbs is depleted, you are left feeling lethargic and drowsy. There are two kinds of carbohydrates. The first are sugars, or simple carbohydrates. The second are starches, or complex carbohydrates. The difference between the two is the length of time it takes your body to digest them.
Sugars are digested quickly, while starches take longer. Simple carbs are foods such as pizza, chocolate, cake, and other processed food with sugar additives. Healthier foods like apples, grapes, bananas, and raisins are also considered to be simple carbs as well. Complex carbs are found in breads, cereals, nuts, pasta, and vegetables such as carrots, potatoes, and corn. Since starches take longer to digest, they release energy more slowly and will make it last longer throughout your body.
Low-carb diets often do not work, because without energy, the body doesn't feel like exercising. Dieters may become depressed and tired frequently. Usually, any success with a low-carb diet is only short-term, because the dieter gets discouraged quickly. Why? Because people usually expect to get more energy when eating healthy, not less so.
Exercise is vitally important to weight loss and overall good health. Building muscle boosts your metabolism and burns more calories. The more lean muscle you have, the more fat you will burn, even if you are simply resting.
Quick fix, fad diets usually only succeed is losing the water weight and lean muscle that you already have built up. This is why they do not work long-term. Starving and depriving yourself of needed carbohydrates simply slows your metabolism down to preserve the fat stores you already have in case of future nutrition shortage.
Eating small healthy portions throughout the day will keep your metabolism up and give you the energy you need to exercise. Studies show that people who couple healthy eating with exercise will lose more weight and fat than people who simply restrict their diet alone.
The bottom line is this: if you are looking for a quick fix and want to lose just a couple of pounds fast, then cutting out carbs might help you do that. However, the long-term effects will probably cause you to gain the weight back at a later time. Combining healthy eating habits and exercise will produce much more effective results long-term.
Depriving your body of any particular food can only make you crave it more. Practicing moderation and becoming more active will go a long way to making you a healthier individual.
Dr. Ben F. Feingold created the Feingold Diet, specifically to help children alleviate their sufferings from behavioral, cognitive, and neurological disorders such as ADHD. Later on, people are using the program to facilitate fat loss, which is another effect of this program. This becomes possible because this program flushes away toxins from our body causing our metabolism to slow down and for stored fats to remain untouched. They come from unhealthy foods that we eat from time to time especially those that contain additives and food chemicals.
