How to Eat Carbs

I’ll tell you that it’s plenty hard to eat well while traveling. I just returned late last night from almost a week of travel. It was great to connect with biz friends and get pumped up about how to help my clients best, but it’s a challenge to eat well. I mean why wouldn’t I want to indulge in a New York pretzel or Philly cheesesteak? I’ve never had those things before and it seems crazy NOT to try them right?

So, I ate a few things NOT typically on my nutrition plan over the last few days.

I’m happily sitting in my window seat at home now, with my usual coffee and Sev at my feet. It’s great to be home with my own kitchen (even with my horrible cooking), but at least I have better control over my food intake.

(This is my view right now – fall is here in Canada, I’ll head up those stairs with Sev to the off leash dog park right after I press send on this email.)

I wanted to share with your some powerful tips on how to ‘undo’ nutritional mistakes. It takes some pre-planning with ‘carb cycling’ but it’s well worth the effort so that you can enjoy a few binge meals and not gain belly fat.

I know I’ve been talking about carbs a lot this week. The fact is, ALL carbs are NOT bad. Forget about ‘low carb’ diet plans. I’ve done them. I never felt as stupid as I did when I tried to go ‘low/no carb’. This is because your body needs carbohydrates for brain function. If you don’t have available carbs, your body can make them, but it’s a process and during that time, I felt fuzzy headed and dumb, no energy and actually no will to live 😉 (Okay, so that’s a little dramatic).

You can head here to find out more about carb cycling,  so you don’t have to go through what I did, but I’ll do some explaining below….

First of all, when you go low carb, your body will rid itself of water first. For every gram of carbs you consume, your body will hold nearly 3 grams of water. So you’ll be instantly rewarded with ‘weight loss’ when on a low carb diet. The truth is, this is just water

loss. Boo to that. As soon as you start to consume carbs again, you’ll put pretty much every ounce back on.

So, here are three things to do to lose fat and not just water. In addition, you won’t ruin your metabolism or suppress fat burning hormones.

1. Try to consume zero starches or fruits for 3 or 4 days in a row.

This will help accelerate glycogen depletion and get your metabolism back into fat burning mode. This should equate to a total of 25-50g carbs for the day. Consume protein in every meal to help increase satiety and keep your body in a high-energy fat-burning environment.

You’ll program your body to burn a ton more belly fat by using this approach a just a few days during the week.

2. Increase your fats and double your servings of green cruciferous veggies on depletion days.

When you lower carbs you’ll automatically need energy from other sources. Friendly fats and cruciferous veggies should be your go to macronutrients to help provide this needed energy.

Some good examples to use are extra fish oil, extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil, grass fed butter and small amounts of raw nuts for fats -kale, broccoli, spinach and asparagus are great choices for extra veggies.

This will help provide all the fiber, vitamins, and minerals necessary to maximize fat-loss during the carb deplete. It will also help you with appetite control.

Additionally, the veggies I listed above contain a unique compound (called DIM) that helps control bad estrogen inside the body, which will indirectly lead to more fat loss.

3. Double your daily water intake on depletion days and the day after a food binge.

I know this technique isn’t groundbreaking but it works.

And most folks simply underestimate how effective proper hydration can be for UNDOING the damage of over-eating, getting rid of post weekend carb bloat and facilitating other metabolic processes that burn fat.

Remember, if you cheat this weekend you’ll be holding almost an extra 3 grams of water for every gram of carb you consumed. So if you had a few slices of pizza, some bread and a bowl of ice cream we’re talking an extra 700 to 1000 grams of water sitting around in your body.

Keep this in mind:

First, when you drink more water, your body will be less likely to hold onto it. If you feel bloated, drink more. Your body will give up the excess fluid faster this way so you’ll feel leaner.

Try to consume 60-70% of your total body weight in ounces of water on your carb depletion days. So if you weigh 150 pounds then you should be aiming for 100-120 ounces of water minimum.