Carbs often get a bad rap in the nutrition world, especially when you are trying to lose weight. It's easy to see why: Many popular diets are centered around reducing or eliminating carbs, which can be intimidating. But depriving yourself of your favorite foods is not only unsustainable, but it can also lead to feelings of guilt and set you up for a binge. How to Hit Your Macros? If you ask yourself, "Can I eat carbs and still lose weight?" this article can help clarify things. With the right approach, you can enjoy your favorite carbs while losing weight efficiently, feeling energized, and making sustainable progress without guilt or setbacks. Calorie tracking is an effective way to help you reach your weight loss goals without eliminating any foods from your diet. With Cal AI's calorie tracker, you can enjoy the foods you love, including carbs, while working toward your goals.
Yes! Here’s how to do It right:
Few things are more vilified than carbs. Every day, a new health expert bashes this macronutrient and its connection to weight gain. With about half of all American adults reporting that they’d like to achieve a healthier weight from their frame, it’s easy for people to latch onto the “carbs are bad, bacon is good” mindset.
Carbohydrates have been blamed for contributing to weight gain in various ways, including driving up blood sugar, promoting insulin resistance, consuming calories with little nutritional value, and stimulating the brain's reward areas, leading to overeating.
Low‐carbohydrate diets are a broad category that includes a wide range of restrictions with varying levels of protein and fat used as replacement calories. They can be implemented differently, but they all typically call for restricting grains (both refined and whole), legumes, fruits, and starchy vegetables to get your carb intake below a certain level.
A ketogenic low-carb diet, for example, may allow for only 50 grams of carbohydrates—not much more than what’s in a couple of slices of bread—while other approaches are more forgiving, suggesting you eat no more than 200 grams daily.
Very few people start these diets by examining the scientific evidence behind the claims. Low‐carb diets continue to be widely promoted, marketed, and commercialized as the most effective for immediate and lasting weight loss, not to mention as much healthier than diets higher in carbs. But there’s a catch: This perspective isn’t necessarily accurate.
We can definitively reject the claim that carbohydrate restriction is an absolute requirement for body fat loss. Here’s why your favorite carbs need not be sent packing when trying to eat for a slimmer waistline.
Few things are more vilified than carbs. Every day, a new health expert bashes this macronutrient and its connection to weight gain. With about half of all American adults reporting that they’d like to achieve a healthier weight from their frame, it’s easy for people to latch onto the “carbs are bad, bacon is good” mindset.
Carbs have been blamed for contributing to weight gain in various ways, including driving up blood sugar, promoting insulin resistance, consuming calories with little nutritional value, and stimulating the brain's reward areas, which leads to overeating.
Low‐carbohydrate diets are a broad category that includes a wide range of restrictions with varying levels of protein and fat used as replacement calories. They can be implemented differently, but they all typically call for restricting grains (both refined and whole), legumes, fruits, and starchy vegetables to get your carb intake below a certain level.
A ketogenic low-carb diet, for example, may allow for only 50 grams of carbohydrates, not much more than what’s in a couple of slices of bread, while other approaches are more forgiving, suggesting you eat no more than 200 grams daily. Nevertheless, very few people start these diets by examining the scientific evidence behind the claims.
Low‐carb diets continue to be widely promoted, marketed, and commercialized as the most effective for immediate and lasting weight loss, not to mention as much healthier than diets higher in carbs. But there’s a catch: This perspective isn’t necessarily accurate.
We can definitively reject the claim that carbohydrate restriction is an absolute requirement for body fat loss. Here’s why your favorite carbs need not be sent packing when trying to eat for a slimmer waistline.
What might be the most comprehensive study comparing body weight reduction and heart disease risk factors associated with low-carbohydrate weight‐reducing diets with diets that allow for a more liberal intake of carbs provides some good news for people who want to achieve a healthier weight but still enjoy carbohydrates.
A research review in Cochrane Reviews analyzed 61 randomized controlled trials. It included 6,925 overweight or obese participants (average weight: 210 pounds). Some had type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular conditions, while others did not. Participants followed either a low-carbohydrate diet (less than 45% of daily calories) or a balanced-carbohydrate weight-reducing diet (45% to 65% of daily calories).
Nearly half of the trials included were conducted in the United States. Studies' most common lower-carb diets provided 20 to 35% of energy from carbs and 20% or more of calories from protein. Nonetheless, some trials included in the investigation provided no more than 10% of energy from carbs and were very low in the macronutrient.
For a trial to be included in this review, the weight-reducing phase had to be 2 weeks or longer, with the primary goal of eliciting weight loss in participants. The longest dieting phase was two years, but most trials lasted 6 months or less. This speaks to the challenges of conducting long-term nutrition investigations, such as the financial costs.
After crunching the numbers, the study authors found little evidence of a clinically significant difference in weight loss between lower- and higher-carbohydrate diets over the short—and long-term in people with and without type 2 diabetes. In the short term, the average difference in weight loss was about 2.2 pounds. In the long term, the average difference was less than 2.2 pounds.
The low-carb diets came out slightly ahead in weight loss in both timeframes, some of which could be attributed to body water loss during dietary carb restriction due to glycogen depletion and ketone production. There were also no notable differences found in health measures, including blood pressure, LDL cholesterol, and HbA1c, a measure of blood sugar levels over 2 to 3 months.
It’s worth noting that the degree of body weight lost varied greatly with both types of diets across the trials, from less than 2.2 pounds in some studies to up to about 26 pounds in others. The effects of low-carbohydrate diets compared to balanced-carbohydrate diets beyond two years are unknown, as reliable data wasn’t available to the investigators. Since most low-carb diets naturally include higher protein levels, these results challenge the belief that simply ramping up protein intake will help you shed more weight than eating more modest amounts of protein and higher amounts of carbs.
Let’s see more evidence that carbs need not be off the menu if you want to scale down. In this well-designed study published in JAMA, 609 adults aged 18 to 50 years without diabetes and with a body mass index that placed them in the overweight or obese category were randomized to follow a healthy low-fat diet (48% carbs, 29% fat, 21% protein) or healthy low-carb diet (30% carbs, 45% fat, 23% protein) for one year.
The participants received 22 diet-specific education sessions administered over 12 months to grasp better their caloric needs and what healthy foods fit into their diet. This was important to assure that overall diet quality differences would not contribute to the weight loss results.
In the end, weight loss at 12 months was 11.7 pounds for the higher-fat group compared to 13.2 pounds for the higher-carb group. So, there was hardly enough difference to declare one diet the winner in the battle of the bulge. It’s worth noting that a collection of scientists from the Stanford University School of Medicine found that neither genotype pattern nor baseline insulin secretion was associated with how the diets impacted weight loss. The takeaway? As long as people eat a diet mainly of healthy foods within their allotted calories, the macro balance may not matter as much as we believe.
These results align with this meta-analysis also published in JAMA, which found that low-carb and low-fat diets can result in substantial weight loss. Still, the differences between various diets, including Zone and Atkins, are minimal. Both low-carb and low-fat diets appear to be effective at helping people overcome metabolic syndrome, a cluster of conditions including high blood pressure and cholesterol, elevated blood sugar, and excess body fat that can place people at risk for diabetes and heart disease.
A controlled feeding study in the journal Cell Metabolism, which confined subjects to a metabolic ward and provided them with calorie-restricted diets that were lower in fat (only 8% of total calories) or lower in carbs (29% of total calories), found that, calorie for calorie, restriction of dietary fat led to more incredible body fat loss than restriction of carbohydrate in overweight adults.
This occurred even though only the carbohydrate-restricted diet led to decreased insulin secretion and a substantial sustained increase in net fat oxidation compared to a baseline diet. This throws some shade on the claims that carb restriction offers a metabolic advantage for enhancing body fat loss.
It should be mentioned that the study didn’t address whether it would be easier for people to adhere to a reduced-fat or a reduced-carbohydrate diet under free-living conditions instead of within the confines of the laboratory, where food intake was strictly enforced. In the real world, diets only work if someone can stick with them.
Lastly, a prospective cohort study and meta-analysis combined 25 years of follow-up of the Atherosclerosis Risk in Community (ARIC) data (USA) and seven other international cohort studies assessed the association between carbohydrate intake and mortality.
Findings indicated that both high- and low-carbohydrate diets increased mortality, with the lowest risk observed among those who consumed a diet containing 50% to 55% carbohydrates.
It’s reasonable to assume that the high-carb diets resulted in a greater intake of refined carbohydrates and sugars. The low‐carbohydrate dietary patterns that favored animal fat and animal-based protein sources were associated with higher mortality. In comparison, those who favored plant‐based foods were associated with lower mortality.
Fact: Yes, but it would also mean nixing fruits, vegetables, and whole grains Yes, that plate of steamed veggies you ate for lunch contained carbs. “Carbohydrates vary widely in terms of their nutrient density, so everything from a green bean, which is a good source of fiber, protein [and other vitamins and minerals] to a slice of white bread, which does not offer much other than carbohydrates, is considered a carbohydrate,” says Pegah Jalali, MS, RD, CDN, an NYC-based pediatric dietitian. Instead of saying, ‘I can't eat that,’ ask, What is a source of carbs that will provide me with more nutrition?
She recommends that people move away from the obsession with banning all carbs and focus on the types of food they’re eating. “If you are eating mostly fruits and vegetables, then it is fine if your diet is high in carbohydrates,” says Jalali.
“On the flip side, if your diet is high in carbohydrates, but you are eating mostly processed foods like packaged breads, cookies and chips, then that is a completely different diet.”
Ferreira advises her clients to consider the different foods that contain carbohydrates on a spectrum. On one side are the foods you can eat in unlimited quantities—nutrient-dense, fiber-rich, and whole-food carb sources like green veggies and fruit. Towards the middle are nutrient-dense, but also carbohydrate-dense, foods such as white potatoes, that should be balanced out with those at the ‘eat as much as you can’ end, she says.
On the other end of the spectrum are foods like bread and pasta. "While these still have a place in the diet, they require balancing out in order to create a diet that provides nutrients we need," says Ferreira. "I really urge people to start looking at carbs in this new way. Instead of saying, ‘I can't eat that,’ [ask] what source of carbs will provide me with more nutrition?”
Fact: There are simple and complex carbohydrates “The main reason [carbs get a bad rap] is that when people think ‘carbs’ they think ‘starch’, like white rice, pasta, potatoes or white bread,” says Bowerman. “While many refined carbs don’t offer up much nutritionally, there are lots of ‘good carbs’ — healthy foods that provide carbohydrates your body absolutely needs every day to function properly.” In actuality, there are three types of carbohydrates:
Things get confusing when we look at specific foods, which can contain different types of carbohydrates. They can either be labeled simple or complex based on their chemical makeup. Complex carbs “contain a complex chain of sugars and some fiber, protein and/or healthy fats, vitamins and minerals,” says Rebecca Lewis, registered dietitian at HelloFresh.
“The presence of fiber, protein and fats is important because it slows digestion, prevents a spike in our blood-sugar levels, and helps us to feel full and satisfied for longer (i.e. curbs cravings).” That's why many healthy diet plans include carbohydrate-containing foods like starchy:
Follow the 10:1 Rule: Choose foods where for every 10 grams of carbs, there is 1 gram of fiber. The simple carbs often found in processed foods and drinks are more straightforward for the body to break down, meaning they don’t keep you full as long and can lead to erratic blood sugar levels.
That’s not to say that simple carbs are always bad for us. “Simple carbohydrates are found in fruits, veggies and dairy—all of which are healthy choices as they also contain good stuff like vitamins, minerals, and fiber,” says Lewis.
“However, simple carbs are also found in less healthy foods like refined grains, processed snacks, sweets, soda and juice, which lack extra nutrients. These foods are very quickly digested, which can cause swings in our blood sugar levels and often leave us hungry for more.”
The trick is to look for foods with a more robust nutritional profile. That apple may have simple carbs, but it also contains a hefty dose of fiber to slow down the digestion of the sugars.
Fact: It’s not the carbs making you fat; it’s the sugar and calories “Anything is fattening if you eat too much of it, and not all carbohydrate-containing foods have the same calorie density,” says Bowerman. “This myth persists because many people who eat a lot of refined carbs and sugar do lose weight when they cut back on these foods. But it isn’t because they’ve cut out all of the carbs, it’s because they have cut out a lot of the calorie-dense foods.”
Research shows that while low-carb eaters tend to lose more weight at first, after one year, weight loss levels out and is no different than that of those who eat a low-fat (moderate carb) diet. That being said, sugar and excess calories tend to be the culprits when it comes to carbohydrate-containing foods and weight gain.
“Really the secret behind carbohydrates is to identify and limit the amount of added sugar in your carbohydrate sources; highlight whole foods like fruits, vegetables, beans and whole grains; and pay attention to portion sizing carbohydrates along with your protein and fat sources,” says Amanda Markie, MS, RDN, LD, Outpatient Dietitian at UM Baltimore Washington Medical Center.
“Sugar can be found naturally in foods like fruits and milk products, as well as being more concentrated into your processed foods like sodas, candy or baked goods,” explains Markie. Research shows that while low-carb eaters tend to lose more weight at first, after one year, that weight loss levels out and is no different than those who eat a moderate carb diet. So you want to ensure that you’re choosing sources of carbohydrates that have this naturally occurring
sugar.
“Also look for higher dietary fiber with a lower amount of added sugar, which you can identify if it is one of the first ingredients on the ingredients list,” says Markie. “Limit those foods that have sugar within the first two to three ingredients." And just because you’re choosing the higher-fiber, low-sugar options doesn’t mean you can eat them unlimitedly: portions matter.
“Four cups of quinoa will make anyone gain weight. The quantity is the key strategy,” said Monica Auslander, MS, RDN, the founder of Essence Nutrition. “For example, I'll eat steel cut oatmeal, but only 1/3 cup a day. I'll eat beans, but only 1/2 cup at a time. I'm a petite person and not an athlete, so I can't afford to have three slices of Ezekiel bread for breakfast, a sweet potato at lunch, and three cups of quinoa at dinner.”
Fact: The right carbs stabilize blood-sugar levels for sustained energy A 2014 study published in the Nutrition Journal found that participants who ate a high-carbohydrate, high-fiber, vegan diet (they got 80 percent of their calories from carbs) saw a drop in average blood sugar, lost weight, and had significant improvements in blood pressure. Plus, the glucose our bodies glean from digestible carbs is needed to function in multiple organs, including the brain. So that sugar in the blood stream isn’t just okay—it’s necessary.
The problem is when they are released all at once in high doses. “One thing that we must all remember is that carbohydrates are essential to fuel your brain, boost our energy and maintain our metabolism. The key is to eat the right food containing carbohydrates,” says Meghan Daw, RD, LDN, from Fresh Thyme Farmers Market.
“These foods contain more complex carbohydrates, meaning they contain fiber and other nutrients that take time to digest and allow a slow release of sugar into the body. This slow release does increase blood sugar levels over time but not all at once, preventing some unwanted blood sugar level spikes and symptoms that come along with those spikes.”
Fact: Not always. You also need to use common sense. The Glycemic Index is a system that ranks foods based on how much a specific portion increases blood sugar compared to pure glucose. "One major setback [to the use of the Glycemic Index when choosing what carbohydrates are best] is that this index measures the body’s response when the carbohydrate is eaten without other foods, but how often are we eating a carbohydrate at a meal on its own?" says Markie.
You may have a baked potato for dinner, but there's a good chance it's accompanied by a piece of salmon and some veggies. "Having these foods together can change the speed of digestion and your body’s response," says Markie.
She adds that the Glycemic Index can guide determining which foods are the better choices. Those lower on the scale may be higher in fiber, which slows digestion. But you need to use common sense to make the final judgment. "There are other cases in which the Glycemic Index does not direct the consumer toward the most healthful choice," says Markie.
"For example, a soda has a Glycemic Index of 63, while raisins have a Glycemic Index of 64, however that does not mean raisins and soda have the same nutritional value." It's a tool you can use, but it should be one out of many, as it doesn't consider the other nutritional values of the food, she adds.
Fact: The source of those carbs matters. All carbs are not created equal. So, blindly counting net carbs isn’t the best way to establish a healthy diet. But, food labels in their current state can be tricky to decode. “Reading labels will provide you with the quantity of carbohydrate that is in the food, but it doesn’t necessarily tell you about the quality,” says Bowerman.
“For example, I have patients who don’t drink milk because of the carbohydrate content, but the carbohydrate in milk is not added, it’s simply the natural sugar (lactose). But it’s hard to tell from a label which carbs are natural and which are added, and unless you read the ingredients list as well, you won’t know the source of the carbohydrate.”
A high fiber count in most packaged items can be a good sign that a food is a healthy choice. Lewis recommends following the “10:1 rule: Choose foods where for every 10 grams of carbs, there is 1 gram of fiber.”
Nevertheless, Bowerman caveats that manufacturers can add fiber to products afterward, so you should check the ingredients list for a whole food source to ensure the fiber is naturally occurring.
Deciphering the label is about to get easier. The new food label, implemented in July 2018, will specifically call out how much of the total sugar in a food is added, making it easier to distinguish between the unhealthy sugars found in many processed foods and the natural-occurring sugar in whole foods like fruit and milk.
Until then, you can’t go wrong by choosing whole-food sources of carbohydrates that only have one ingredient — themselves!
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This goes for all potatoes—red skinned, purple, sweet, and the regular ol' white potato. Yes, that one, too. Regarding nutritious potato options, sweet potatoes often overshadow white spuds because of their rich orange color, indicating their beta-carotene content.
White potatoes are well, white, which we often associate with meaning a lack of nutrients, in addition to our antiquated "must avoid all white carbs" line of thinking.
But all potatoes are a source of good-for-you carbohydrates. For starters, they're nutrient-dense. A medium potato (with skin) has just 118 calories and one gram of sugar while providing:
This is according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Regarding weight loss, potatoes are unique from many other foods in that they have resistant starch, per a February 2020 narrative review in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. This specific type of fiber may decrease the number of calories we process, increase satiety, and provide other health benefits.
One trick is to cook and cool a potato, like a potato salad. This increases the amount of resistant starch.
Oatmeal is one of the first things to go when you start following a low-carb/keto diet, and this isn’t just unnecessary—it can be counterproductive if you’re trying to lose weight. Like potatoes, oats also have a unique compound called beta-glucan.
A growing body of research indicates that beta-glucan suppresses our appetite and increases our satiety, as reported in an August 2018 paper in Appetite.
The study's researchers compared the effects of breakfast with beta-glucan versus one without. The group filling up on beta-glucan in the a.m. felt fuller afterward than the other non-beta-glucan group.
This one always seems to surprise. Yes, popcorn is a nutritious source of carbs—it’s even a whole grain. But choose wisely. A serving (about 3 cups) of air-popped popcorn has just 92 calories and 1 gram of fat while providing 19 grams of carbs and 4 grams of fiber, per the USDA.
But that same size serving of movie theater popcorn has 276 calories, 25 grams of fat, 15 grams of saturated fat, 13 grams of carb, and 2 grams of fiber, according to the USDA. Remember, a small order of movie popcorn has 735 calories (!). This makes (air-popped) popcorn a healthy and weight-loss-friendly snack.
According to the USDA, the average adult eats about 420 to 585 calories of snacks per day. When snacking accounts for nearly 30 percent of your total intake, it pays to make it count by noshing on healthier options.
Low-carb enthusiasts have demonized bread, but it’s essential to remember that all bread is not created equal—there's whole-grain bread, and then there's refined. Whole grain means the entire grain is intact, ensuring you get all the fiber and nutrients.
A refined grain has been stripped of at least one of its three parts, usually the bran and germ, which removes some of the following:
When you lump all grains together while cutting out carbs, you're doing yourself a disservice, especially regarding weight loss. Whole grains, including whole-grain bread, may boost your metabolism, according to a March 2017 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Raspberries are loaded with fiber, a key nutrient for losing weight. According to the USDA, they’re one of the fruits with the highest fiber content, 8 grams per cup. The only fruits with more are guava, avocado, and passion fruit. Just think, eating one cup of raspberries provides about one-third of your daily fiber intake for most adults.
So often, when trying to lose weight, we focus on cutting out calories or carbs, but an October 2019 study in the Journal of Nutrition found that this is likely the wrong approach. Researchers put subjects on several calorie-restricted diets varying in macronutrients, e.g., low-fat, high-protein, low-carb, high-carb, etc.
After six months, they concluded that fiber intake, regardless of the macronutrient and calorie intake, was the most significant factor in promoting weight loss and adhering to a calorie-restricted diet.
We need to eat more legumes, plain and simple. The 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans compared the recommended intake to what we're eating as a nation, and the gap is wide. We only need to eat about 1 to 2 cups per week (depending on your calorie intake), which is nominal, although most dietitians would likely argue that you could benefit from more.
It's good to add legumes to your plate when it comes to losing weight. Legume eaters (those who eat a three-fourths cup per day) lost more weight than those who didn’t eat legumes, regardless of whether the diets were geared towards weight loss, per a March 2016 analysis in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that reviewed the data from about 20 studies.
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