http://www.care2.com/greenliving/carbs-dont-make-you-fat-calories-do.html
Carbs Don’t Make You Fat, Calories Do
Q: Carbs seem to simply make me fat. Even low Glycemic Index carbs. Does this mean I need to stay off them forever to lose weight and keep it off?
A: It’s not just the carbs that are making you gain weight. It’s consuming more calories than your body needs. The carb-heavy foods that we know (and sometimes love) are often loaded with calories.
Instead of giving up carbs all together (something I personally could never do), I always recommend eating a balanced diet so that you satisfy your nutritional needs as well as your cravings.
The most important thing is to understand how many calories you are consuming and burning. Do a little homework. Keep a food diary for two weeks and calculate the amount of calories you consume at the end of each day. There are approximately 3,500 calories per pound of body fat, so if you eat even 100 calories more than your body burns per day every day (surprisingly easy to do), you can add a pound every month. Twelve pounds a year!
Here’s a bonus tip: Increase the amount of fiber in your diet. This will not only help you feel full and eat less but according to recent studies those on a high-fiber diet lost more fat from around the abdomen than those on other types of diet plans.
Learn more:
Glycemic Index and Weight Control
Master Your Metabolism
Weight Loss Action Plan
Dr. Brent Ridge is the health expert for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. You can call and ask him a question live every Tuesday at 2 p.m. Eastern on Sirius Satellite Radio, Channel 112 (1.866.675.6675). You can also follow along as he learns to grow his own food and raise goats on his farm in upstate New York by visiting www.beekman1802.com.
Got a health question for Dr. Brent? E-mail him at drbrent@care2.com.
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add your comment »Thank you Dr. Brent! I agree with Tana as well. There is no magic diet - bullet - food - that is going to make you lose weight. You can eat and not gain weight by burning the same or more calories than you eat. Stop giving excuses for why you cannot walk down the block, most of them are probably caused by the large quantity of fat surrounding your real body. I know this because I am fat myself. This morning I actually did the dirty and looked at myself naked in the mirror. Guess what? That person is not me, I did not recognize her at all. After all of the excuses, both to myself and others, I am a fat log at over 200 lbs. It's disgusting to me and I resolved to lose the weight. After all, if you're gross to yourself, you should do something about that. So I started today, and it's not as hard as it seems. On webmd they have a form you can fill out to figure out how much is going in and how much is burned. By going on a 3 hour hike with my kids I burned almost all of the calories I had eaten today. I was very surprised at how easy it seemed to burn so many calories. Yeah I was hot, but burning calories produces heat. We'll see how it goes, but I was very happy to read this and be reminded that there is no magic bullet as I had been considering a couple of products that most likely won't work.
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Kabin
Konteyner
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Often people overindulge in their carb intake,particularly those on a vegetarian diet,because their protein intake is low. The body can demand more carb intake until it has extracted the level of protein it requires. If your diet is protein deficient, increase your protein intake,eat less carbs and exersize.
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Well put Tana. Diets don't work. Avoiding one food or another doesn't work. Thinking that lowfat cookies and lowcarb bread will magically take the pounds off won't work. People avoid sugar at all cost and eat artificial sweetners which are unhealthy. There is no easy way out. Eat less and work up a sweat is the only way to do it.
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Thank you. Finally someone has said it. This culture is desparately seeking the easy way out. How can I eat and not gain weight? Commercialism abounds with various diets and products that feed this mentality. When you put the donut down and go out and get some exercise you'll find the key to better health and "easy weight loss".
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