Carbohydrate Diets

Recently, a number of popular diets have identified carbohydrates as the key to losing weight. Most encourage you to avoid carbs at all costs and insist that if you do, your weight loss will be successful. Are these just passing fads, or is there really something to this concept? Here are a few things to recognize.

First, these diets identify carbohydrates as the problem because your body can convert them into sugar very quickly. Since sugar is the fuel you run on, this means that some carbohydrates can be as fattening as sugar.

On the other hand, it is unhealthy to assume that all carbohydrates are bad. Really, the focus of dieting should be on the kind of carbohydrates that you eat, rather than eliminating them altogether. In fact, a balanced diet should contain a significant amount of carbohydrate rich foods. The key is to prefer complex carbohydrates such as whole wheat bread rather than the simple carbohydrates in white flour.

Finally, a major problem with these diets is that they turn the focus to carbohydrates instead of calories. In fact, the basic focus should be on burning more fuel than you take in, which means the culprit is calories.

Links

hsph.harvard.edu - This website gives very extensive information from an extremely well-qualified source-the Harvard school of health. You can find careful discussion of balancing your diet and choosing the right kinds of carbohydrates. You can also find other information about weight loss and balanced health.

quackwatch.org - Here is an extended discussion of the pros and cons of low carbohydrate diets. This article is written by a medical doctor and thoroughly discusses the facts from a critical standpoint. You can also find more information in the links at the end of the article.

wikipedia.org - If you are interested in surrounding information about carbohydrate diets, this site sets out all the information you could want about the history, criticism, and scientific research on these diets. You will also find information about the various forms of carbohydrate diets and can follow the links to learn more. This is a very long discussion, but it is sure to answer almost any question you might have.

low-carb-diet-recipes.com - If you plan to follow one of the low carbohydrate diets, this site offers a fair number of articles on the subject and a huge library of recipes. You can find a way to enjoy most of the foods you used to eat without getting the carbs you hope to avoid. One positive feature of the site is that it does carefully distinguish between good and bad carbohydrates.