Do Carbohydrates and Alcohol Really Cause Weight Gain?

Carbohydrates and Weight

Quick question, do #carbohydrates cause a person to gain weight? Do we really need it in our diet? Ponder on this.

We’ve talked extensively about Diet and weight loss.

This brings us to something we know which are called macro nutrients. These are foods we need in large quantities. I’m sure you already know them, they are carbohydrates, proteins and fats.

Carbohydrates we know supply the body with energy; they include bread, pasta, potato, corn and some less healthy ones like chocolate and soft drinks, pastries and biscuits.

Proteins build the body and good ones include meat, chicken and fish, nuts, yoghurt.

For fats experts advice we reduce saturated fats, this includes butter, cream, ice-cream, full fat milk, cheese, bacon, chicken skin, hot chips etc. We should replace them with unsaturated fats like avocado, olive oil, peanuts, oily fish, walnuts etc.

What about Alcohol?

We’ve mentioned 3 macro nutrients carbohydrates, proteins and fats. There is actually a 4th one that may surprise you. It is alcohol. The truth is Alcohol is not needed by the body though it can contribute large amounts of energy to your diet.

Back to my initial question, I asked you if carbohydrates contribute to weight gain and whether we need it in our diet. Do you have an answer now?

The truth is we need it in our diet or we will have deficiencies.  About weight gain, most of the time it is not just the carbohydrate that causes weight gain. Did you know that foods that we say are high in carbohydrates are also likely to be high in fats? Examples of these include bread and pasta. As these foods are what people enjoy, they tend to eat more and more of them. So the problem then occurs that their total energy input is more than the energy they expend, this is actually what causes weight gain, rather than just eating carbohydrates. You could actually be harming yourself if you remove carbohydrates from your diet.

Are you taking in more energy than your total energy expenditure? It is time to check yourself.