Am I eating too many carbs?

carbohydrate is the primary energy source for your body so it's essential in your diet. The key factor is the type of carbs you're choosing and how they fit into your daily meals.

Carbohydrate digestion creates insulin release in your body to regulate the sugar levels in the blood...a process which is also linked to your fat burning breakdown of fatty acids.

During the day, you want more complex fibrous carbs that break down slowly allowing you to maintain more constant blood sugar levels. Pre and post workout, you want simpler carbs that are digested easily to be quickly assimilated into your muscle cells as fuel (Glycogen) sparing your proteins for use in the body for necessary tissue repair.

Most people's diarys have alot of poor choices when it comes to their Carb selections during the day and this is where they stall in seeing results in the long run.

"If you want to lose body fat, first control overall food intake, then aim to consume a majority of carb dense foods during and after exercise sessions (for about 3 hours after). Outside of the 3 hour window consume primarily protein and fat, while consuming fewer carb dense foods (25% of less of meal made up of carb dense foods)."

You should probably not eat fruits past lunch time and limit it to like 2 servings a day. They're great and healthy for you but they have A LOT of sugar in them even though it doesn't seem like it. And yogurt should probably be kept at around 2 a day and light yogurt or fat free. Hope this helps! If it doesn't just bump up your exercise, should help you get over any plateau your at.

Just watch your sugar intake with all of the fruits and yogurts. You might want to switch it up a little and add some raw veggies with low-fat dip into the mix. Fruits are healthy but contain quite a bit of sugar.

Getting enough cardio/excercise in each day will keep the sugar from getting converted to stored fats. Good luck!

Hi Suzay,

it really depends upon your viewpoint on nutrition. Primal / Paleo diet advice would say yes you are - but the main stream of dieting would say no you're not.

Its worth a bit of research into the different diet / lifestyle choices on offer. I found 'The Primal Blueprint' by Mark Sissons a very worhtwhile read. After a bit more research I decided to adopt this approach - but tweaked it to suit me. So far its had a positive effect and I'm pleased with the outcome. Basically I've cut out all grain based foods (bread & pasta as well as rice and potatoes) and I changed my settings on here to 20% carbs, 40% protein & 40% 'Healthy' fats. This puts me in the 'sweet spot' Mark Sissons describes for losing weight of between 50 & 100g of carbs per day. these I get from fruit with a high Glycemic Index rating as well as vegetables. I'm also following a bodywight workout programme called 'You Are your Own Gym' by Mark Lauren. With the combination of the two Its worked for me, but I'll balance that out by saying we are all different and any diet will need tailoring to your lifestlye and ablilities. Hang in there and good luck with your goals . . .

I have the same problem. I love fruit and could live on yogurt.
I see you prefer grapes. I recommend switching to a less sweet fruit - like grapefruit, other citruses or any berries really. Look around there are charts on calories of fruit, and try to introduce some less sweet variety.

Yogurt is kind of a killer. I've switched to plain, because all the flavored ones have a ton of sugar. I sometimes add actual blueberries to the plain ones and eat them that way so I can control the sugar that goes into it. I agree, trying to cut back on both these things for a while and see if you find yourself losing weight faster. It is kind of annoying because these things are supposed to be healthy!

PS. Do not do crackers and ham that would be worse I would think!
Try a 1/4 cup of nuts every once in a while - they are more filling.