Why are people scared of carbs?

With some, too many carbs = increased blood sugar = uncontrolled diabetes.
Most diabetic have to watch their carbs very closely to control their blood sugar.

While lots of people say calories in = calories out - that is true for a robot.
But I have not met many robotic people.
Two other confounding factors are appetite; and your brain (very complex).
Higher protein suppresses appetite. So science shows in studies that if one group eats a high carb meal, and another eats a protein / fat meal (same calories); at the next meal the people who have eaten the carb will eat more food. (Hence the reason that a lower carb meal will make it easier to "diet".
A second reason is that we also like to "feel good". The endocrinology system responds to sugar / fat (eg. chocolate) and makes us feel good. So if you are feeling a bit down, a snack of a short length carb (such as sugar) picks us up (not a hunger / appetite response). Works in the same area of the brain - the hypothalamus.

Thirdly, we have to eat protein - there are some essential amino acids we need. We have to eat fat. There are fats we cannot synthesis. But there is no "carb" we actually need. Yes - there are some vitamins in complex carbs such as green leafy vegetables, but these are not carbs - they just happen to be there, and you can get them elsewhere.

Back to the start. Calories are calories, but that ignores we are people with very complex physical, mental and social interactions.

In

Simple carbs are bad, complex carbs are good. Some people don't understand the difference and cut them all out.

I'm not afraid of carbs, but I feel my body responds better to a lower carb diet, especially when I'm trying to lose weight. I think everyone is different so what works for me may not work for someone else.

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I like what John Pinette said about it: "People have gone low-carb hysterical. They see you eating a piece of bread and like they're like 'Wha-WHAT?' If they were so bad, I'd have been dead 10 years ago!"
Carbs just tend to be high in calories. Since I've started logging with MFP, I notice that I'm usually under for carbs at the end of the day without even meaning to be. But yeah, a life without rice, cake or crust for my pizza toppings? *shudder*.

People are scared of carbs because somewhere along the line, they heard about the deleterious effects of eating refined carbohydrates. Many have confused eating an isolated macro-nutrient with eating whole food that contains the vilified macro-nutrient.

Low carb = fad diet. Just eat whole foods filled with vitamins and minerals and you'll be ok.
Also carbs = diabetes....eh....I beg to differ. I know two people who've gotten diabetes after doing low carb. The one managed to reverse it with a "high carb" diet while the other one still is following low carb and suffering.

People are scared of carbs because somewhere along the line, they heard about the deleterious effects of eating refined carbohydrates. Many have confused eating an isolated macro-nutrient with eating whole food that contains the vilified macro-nutrient.

Oh is that what it is? They just confused the fake evil for the real evil. lols.

Personally, I think people are afraid of how amazing carbs are. They're afraid they will eat too many if they have any at all.

I agree with you that everything has its time or place. I love sweets but I have to limit them. I also love fruit, that has to be limited to. Yes carb loading is good/used before a competition for an elite athlete and of course putting a small amount of sugar will not hurt anyone. The problem is most americans are not elite athletes, and many don't get a fraction of the activity yet eat more calories or carbs per day than one. All the processed food shoved into our faces are terrible nutritionally speaking. When you constantly eat like that it can cause a multitude of problems, obesity only one of them. I know it's hard, I too struggle with fighting the foods we are faced with daily. For most people, they should be cutting a significant portion of these foods out of their life for weight, skin, health, everything. It is a fact that eating to many carbs makes it harder to burn fat. No one should ever be on a no carb diet, but adding more protein and decreasing carb intake can go a long way.

I have personally dropped 160 pounds on a low carb diet.

A low carb diet helps with a heap of issues people might have. However, in order to do a low carb diet right, you need to be 100% clean foods. This means not to eat processed junk and this is a rule for every way of eating, if you want it to work and regain your health.

From the top of my head, these are my benefits :

Stable blood sugar doesn't cause sudden exhaustions,
You're able to get out of bed without hitting the snooze button 10 times
You know when you're hungry and when you're "tempted"
It's easy to maintain
It's easy on your wallet
It's easy on your bowels
You're using fat for energy which has 9 calories/gram which is more than double the carb energy content which is 4 calories/gram. You have more energy.


I'm satisfied with my food. I do not get tempted, i do not drool over junk food. After a while junk food loses its glamour and even though it might smell good, well.. so does my cat's food but i'm not tempted to eat my cat's food.

It's also a very forgiving way of eating. I went high-carb-low-fat-raw-vegan for a while, gained 40 pounds and was told constantly that i had metabolic damage. However, as soon as i returned to low-carb I dropped 20 out of 40 pounds, so i'm guessing my metabolic damage didn't really exist.

Haven't been keeping my diet to a T however, i'm still dropping weight.