Carbohydrates

My name is Patrick McGilvray. And I’m an experienced marathoner, ultra runner, Master Life Coach, and weight loss coach for runners. I’ve learned that running more and eating less does not work for weight loss, and that there’s a better way. Now I help runners like you to get leaner and get stronger, so you can run faster and run longer than you ever thought possible. This is Running Lean.

Well, hey there, and welcome to episode 56 of Running Lean. My name is Patrick McGilvray, the weight loss coach for runners. And today we’re talking about good carbs and bad carbs. Some of the most often asked questions I get from runners revolve around this topic of carbohydrates. Most runners I talk to are either straight-up addicted to carbs, or at the very least a little obsessed with carbs.

So when I come in, and I start talking about a low-carb approach to running and weight loss, they kind of freak out a little bit. They just can’t imagine a world where carbs are not the main focus of their nutrition game.

So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to answer some of the biggest questions runners ask about carbs, like, what are good carbs, what are bad carbs, also want to talk about the quality of your carbs, the quantity of your carbs, and the timing of your carbs, all of which are very important. And they all play a different role in your long-distance running and in your weight loss. Cool. So we’re gonna get into that in just a minute.

First of all, I wanted to remind you that we have this amazing little community on Facebook, called the Running Lean community, come and check us out. I do some teaching in there once a week. We post in there every day, there’s over 5000 people in the group now, which is just crazy amazing. And they’re so positive.

And there’s so much good feedback I’m getting from people in the group, they tell me all the time, how they love the group and how it’s been changing their life. And they’re learning so much. And they’re getting so much support and encouragement from other runners that are trying to do similar things. So come and check us out, just search for Running Lean community on Facebook, and come and join us over there. It’s a lot of fun. We’re doing a lot of good stuff over there.

And then here’s a recent review of the Running Lean podcast that I received from someone in a message. And this is from Wendy and she says, “Hey, Patrick, I stumbled across your Running Lean podcast in November 2020. And I’ve intently listened to every episode. Since then I’ve learned so much valuable information from your knowledge and experience.” Thank you.

And then she goes on to say, “Some of the most profound lessons I’ve learned from you are one, you’re either in fat storage mode or fat-burning mode. I was totally in fat storage mode. I was doughy and it felt awful. Number two, you can control your thoughts. Things that happen to you are neutral. It is how you think about those events that create your feelings and your response. Number three, don’t let your lizard brain control your goals and dreams. Number four, eat real food. Number five, satiety is a beautiful thing. It feels so good. It feels so much better than the strong cravings that come from eating a diet high in refined carbs and sugar.” Totally agree with you there when need.

“Number six, embrace discomfort or choose your discomfort. You can either be uncomfortable from working hard and stepping out of your comfort zone to achieve a goal or you can be uncomfortable because of regret.” Whew, that’s a really good insight. “And then number seven, not all oils are created equally. Wow, I had no idea what goes into producing vegetable oil. Yuck. Thanks again for the work you are doing. It has helped my life tremendously. I look forward to Friday so I can listen to a new episode of the Running Lean podcast.”

Thank you, Wendy, that was super sweet of you to reach out and send me that message. And if you want to share the love, and just as a way of just saying thank you if you get something out of this podcast, and you just want to say thank you.

You can just go on Apple podcasts and scroll down on the podcast where it says to write a review and review. Just write a few comments. You know, tap the five stars and I’ll read your review here on the show. It means a lot to me that you guys take the time to reach out and tell me how this is improving your life and how it’s making you know changes in your life.

This is really important to me. My goal, my mission is to help make an impact on the unhealthy state of the world today. And to know that my messages about you know, eating healthy, and controlling our thoughts and emotions and things like that is actually resonating with people, it means so much to hear that. So love to hear from you guys.

Okay, so let’s get into this topic today, good carbs, bad carbs. And I purposely named this because we have this idea that, you know, carbs are bad. And I think people when they hear me talk about a low carb approach to dieting, to weight loss to running whatever you want to call it, you know, I talk about becoming fat adapted and needing to take more of a low carb approach. I think some people have this misconception that it just means that all carbs are bad.

And that you have to stay away from all carbs. And that is not what I’m saying at all. And I want to make sure that, you know, I clear that up here right at the beginning, I’m going to talk about some of the carbs that are good, and some that you know, maybe not so good. There’s really no good or bad here.

But some have a different effect on your body and on your metabolism on your running, your weight loss efforts, and on your overall health. And there’s just so much new science around all this stuff. So let’s get into this a little bit. And we’ll talk about good carbs and bad carbs. Cool.

All right, first of all, what are carbs? What are carbohydrates? Carbohydrates are basically forms of sugar, you know, where you take, like refined sugar, table sugar that you would just like eat out of the bag, just take a spoonful of that. And that’s like pure carbohydrate, right? And lots of foods contain sugar, lots of foods contain natural forms of sugar or carbohydrate. Okay.

So when we’re talking about sugar, we’re talking about carbs and vice versa. Okay, so carbohydrates are basically, you know, the sugar content of foods. And all carbs get turned into glucose in your body. So 100% of carbohydrates that you eat will become glucose in your body. All right, glucose is very easily available for your body to use for fuel.

You know, so you eat an apple, it’s got, you know, carbohydrates in there, that gets turned into glucose, which is the version of sugar that your body can use for fuel and so boom, eat an apple, get some fuel, right. Some of that glucose, though, gets used for energy, but some of it gets stored as glycogen in the muscles.

So some of that glucose will be readily used right away. It’s kind of floating around in your blood, let’s just put it that way. Some of it is like, oh, you know, our glucose is pretty high. And let’s just put some of this away for later. And it’ll store some of that glycogen in your muscles for use later. That’s all good too.

Once your glycogen stores are full, though, in your muscles, your body’s going to be like, Hey, we got this extra glucose or glycogen stores are full, let’s just store this away for use later in the form of fat. Right? So typically, this is very generally speaking here. Typically, the more carbs you eat, the more fat that gets stored on your body.

So overconsumption of carbohydrates, leads to can lead to incessant weight gain, among other things. Alright, so when we talk about carbs, we’re talking about this version of sugar that our bodies can use for fuel. But too much of it can be, you know, start, we can start storing that as fat. All right. So that’s just a very broad overview. I’m going to get into this a little bit more and talk about some of this more in detail.

But I want to talk about this other idea, first of all, before we get into all that, so there’s this idea that I’ve thrown out there before, which is that there are no such things as essential carbohydrates, okay? When you look at all the essential human nutrients, you know, we talk about fat protein, certain vitamins, and minerals, carbohydrates are not on that list. Okay?

In fact, there’s a report done by the US Institute of Medicines, food and nutrition pinboard in this report, it says, the lower limit of dietary carbohydrate compatible with life apparently is zero, provided that adequate amounts of protein and fat are consumed. So what they’re saying is, the lower limit of carbohydrates that we need to survive is basically zero, as long as we’re getting enough fat and protein, okay?

If you don’t eat fat, you will die. If you don’t eat protein, you will die, our body does not make those nutrients. So we have to eat them, we have to eat, get them in our diet. If you don’t eat fat and protein, you will die. But if you don’t eat carbohydrates, you’re gonna kind of do just fine, you will survive.

Now, I’m not saying you should do this. And I’m not saying that it’s the best way to go. But what I’m saying is that you can survive without carbohydrates. That tells you something about the human body. It tells me that carbohydrates are not essential and that they’re not the most important thing. They’re pretty low on the list of them of importance from a macronutrient standpoint, if you ask me, okay.

And this makes sense. Because of the way we’ve evolved as humans, like when carbohydrates were scarce during the winter, or during these ice ages were carbohydrate-based foods were unavailable, we would survive just fine. During these long winters. Without any carbohydrates at all, we ate more fat and protein, and we were just fine.

In fact, there are many indigenous people around the world today, who do just fine eating zero carbohydrates. You know, the Inuit Eskimos are one example of people that do not eat carbohydrates. They don’t, they don’t grow a lot of vegetables up there, in the frozen north, you know, so they eat fish, and you know, whatever else they eat, I don’t know seals and things like that, but a lot of fat, a lot of protein, and they do just fine.

But here’s the crazy thing, and this is where you stuffed makes you scratch your head and you’re just like what the heck? The current USDA guidelines suggest that up to 65% of your diet should be from carbohydrates. Based on what? Why would they suggest this if carbohydrates are not even an essential nutrient for us, this is this is what I just don’t understand.

So that leaves only 20% for protein because they suggest 20% protein and 15% for fat. So these are the two things that your body actually needs, or you will die. And they’re like putting those things pretty low on the list. Okay? So I look at this, look at this dietary guidelines and they suggest like 45 to 65% of your diet be from carbs.

And then we wonder why 88% of people in the United States are considered metabolically unhealthy. I don’t even know what to say about that. Just, it’s bananas, right? The whole thing is bananas. So what does this mean?

This does not mean you should not eat carbohydrates, okay? This does not also mean that 65% of your diet should be from carbohydrates. I don’t think that is a very good approach. And I don’t think zero carbohydrates is a very good approach either, okay. So carbs can be good.

Carbs can be bad, there’s like some good and bad, we’re going to talk about all of that. I love carbohydrates, I really do. But the type of carbs that I eat matters, okay? The type of carbs that we eat in our diet does matter. They’re not all the same.

The amount of carbs that you eat matters, right? You just can’t go hog wild on eating carbs. You can’t just like make that the majority of your calories and expect everything to be fine inside your body. And then the timing of when you eat your carbs matters. Okay? So the quality of your carbs, the quantity and the timing all matters.

So I’m going to be talking about all of those things today in this episode. Okay. Are you excited? I’m so excited. Okay, so let’s talk about when carbs go bad, you know, when they go off the rails here. So when we eat carbohydrates, this raises our blood sugar, right, our body then produces insulin to bring this down. And when we do this all the time, more and more insulin gets produced. And when your body’s producing insulin constantly, it doesn’t, it stops working the way it’s supposed to, it doesn’t respond the way that it should, and your body becomes resistant to the insulin effect.

And so this is called insulin resistance. When this happens, your body can no longer regulate your blood sugar properly. So your blood sugar is going to be up a lot, it’s gonna be up all the time. And when this is the case, you start storing more fat, and you know, more of the energy that you need is going to be just stored as fat.

So instead of taking this energy that’s coming in and using it is just getting put away for later, right. So this is the problem with high insulin is that you’re in this fat storage mode. Okay? Another way of saying this is that you become carbohydrate intolerant. So this just means that you can no longer handle the carbs and the whole glucose, blood sugar insulin response that goes along with it, okay?

As we get older, our tolerance for carbohydrate intake tends to go down. I remember in my 20s, I would be able to eat like a whole pizza, loaves of bread, mounds of pasta, drink tons of beer, Gatorade, what is that stuff called Mountain Dew, like all this coke, whatever, I would not gain an ounce, right? But once I got into my 30s and 40s, things started to become very different for me.

Now, if I just like smell a doughnut, I gain a pound. So things change. As we get older, we become less tolerant of carbohydrates as we get older. This is why a lot of runners who are heavily addicted to carbohydrates, and they’re like, well, this always worked for me in the past, why isn’t it working anymore?

It’s because of this whole carbohydrate intolerance thing, okay. So the carb intolerance can lead to being excessively hungry. So if you find yourself like, pretty hungry all the time, all day long, we’re having these incessant food cravings, you know, these really strong cravings for food.

If when you eat, you’re not feeling full, you’re not feeling satisfied. If you have energy spikes and crashes throughout the day, if you’ve been gaining weight, all of these things are signs of carbohydrate intolerance. This can also lead to chronic diseases like type two diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, chronic inflammation, irritable bowel syndrome, Alzheimer’s, and more. Right?

So there’s all these like, really bad, healthy things, unhealthy things that can happen when your carbohydrate intolerance goes down. And typically, as you get older, and as your carbohydrate intake goes up, all these things tend to happen, okay? So it’s not that like carbs are bad, right, but rather, to many can be problematic, right now, not everybody is going to have all of these the exact same response to carbs.

In fact, there are some elite athletes out there who are in their 40s 50s, who are super lean, who eat a ton of carbs in the form of, you know, very refined carbs, and in simple sugars and stuff like that. But they tend to metabolize that very effectively. Okay, this is not normal, but this is like there are people that are at that end of the spectrum that can still do tons of carbs, and it’s not a problem.

But for most of us, this is a problem, it becomes very problematic, we start to have all these different negative side effects from too many carbs. Okay? So when we talk about how many carbs, like what’s good and what’s bad. So this kind of varies for everyone, you got to figure out what’s right for you. This is all about, you know, this is an experiment of one. Everything I talk about is always about you.

You need to figure out what works best for you what feels good to you, what’s helping you to reach your goals. Are you becoming fat-adapted? Are you losing weight? Do you feel good? You have tons of energy? Are you thinking clearly all these things matter? It’s not just a number on the scale we’re looking at. We’re looking at all these different factors.

So you need to figure out what kind of works for you, okay, but I’m gonna give you a little place to start So a good place to start, if you want to lower your carb intake, start with about 100 grams of carbs per day, that’s a good place for most people to start, I think the average Americans probably consume four to 500 grams of carbs per day.

So this would be like lowering your carb take quite a bit, but without going like full-on like keto or whatever, right, which would be like less than 20 grams a day, which is, you know, fine for some people. But you don’t have to do that to start experiencing some of these benefits of lowering your carbs and start feeling better. So shoot for like 100 grams per day and see how you do.

See if you start feeling good. See if you have the energy, if it comes back, try it for like, two weeks, right? See what happens. This is a good experiment for you to try. Most people who try this like two-week experiment, you know, keep their carbs for 150 to 100. Somewhere in that range. They start to feel amazing.

They can’t believe how much better they feel after just two weeks of doing that they have more energy, no afternoon crashes, they feel more satiated, they’re not hungry all the time, and their inflammation goes down. They may stop having the bloating and gas, they said. And they almost all lose weight, too. Right. So this is just like a very simple thing that you can try for two weeks and see how you do.

For me personally, I probably am somewhere around 40 to 50 grams of carbs a day. And that seems to work great for me, I don’t really count this stuff I don’t measure, I did. Every now and then I do I still do like measure my daily macros just to kind of see where I am ballpark-wise, but I’m not obsessive about this at all. I keep my carbs low. And I eat a lot of nutrient dense carbs, which we’ll talk about in a minute.

But as far as the quantity of carbs, you know, shoot for 75-100, something like that, try it for two weeks, see how you feel good experiment, okay. And so I want to kind of talk about the way our bodies used fuel really quickly here. So glucose, which is you know, freely available sugar that we can we get when we eat carbohydrates. And then there’s glycogen, which is where we store that sugar in our blood, these things are fine, right? Your body uses these fuels easily. Your brain also loves this fuel, okay?

The problem is that when we get too much of this kind of fuel coming in, okay, so I’m not saying that, you know, carbs are bad, or glucose is bad. Sugar is bad, but too much is bad. Okay, so your fat burning gets diminished. When you eat more carbohydrates, you are more in fat storage mode. So when you eat fewer carbs, that typically means you’re more in fat-burning mode.

And your body uses fuels this way, freely available glucose number one, number two glycogen that’s stored in your muscles. And then number three stored body fat. And the idea is that we want to kind of rid our body of the freely available glucose, you know, get that glycogen to be used from our muscles so that we can start to access that stored by body fat.
So that’s one of the reasons why we want this low-carb approach we want to be able to burn fat, right? You burn fat, you can run all day you burn fat, you start to lose weight, you burn fat, you start to have all this energy. So that’s what we’re trying to get to here. Okay. So I just want to make sure that that made sense to you guys. If it doesn’t make sense, then you can go back and listen to that again.

Okay, now let’s talk about the quality of carbs the kind of carbs that you eat matters. Okay. So we’ve talked about how many carbs let’s talk about the difference between good carbs and bad carbs. So like I said, there are no like really good or bad carbs, but they’re they have different effects on your body, right?

The higher the concentration of the carbohydrate, the more of an effect it’s going to have on your blood sugar, your insulin production, and the more it’s going to keep you in that fat storage mode. Okay. So some of what I would consider to be the bad carbs would be number one, Sugar.

Sugar is the most concentrated form of carbohydrate that’s out there. And really, there’s no real there’s not a lot of good that comes from eating sugar. There just really isn’t. It’s connected to so many health problems that it’s probably best to avoid, like 99% of the time. So sugar is like the number one sort of what I would consider to be like the bad carb, the other kinds of carbohydrates that I would try to like really limit to almost none would be super-refined carbohydrates like flour, and anything made with flour.

So that would be like bread and pasta and cookies and crackers and muffins, and oh my gosh, there are so many things that have flour in them, right? Flour is a very, very concentrated very refined carbohydrate, it spikes your blood sugar like crazy. So we want to kind of stay away from that. All right, so that would be also on the naughty list, right? The bad list of carbs.

The other carbs that are kind of considered to be higher in carbohydrate content are the other category of foods I should say they’re higher in carbohydrate content would be starchy vegetables. So for the most part, we’re talking about underground vegetables, root vegetables, white potatoes, that kind of thing. Legumes like beans are very, very high in carbohydrates, and very starchy.

So any of these considered starchy vegetables would be sort of something you want to stay away from, you know, while white rice, that kind of stuff, okay, it doesn’t mean not any. That doesn’t mean you can never eat beans again, or never have a white potato, the rest of your life, it just means like these things are going to have a higher effect on your body, they’re going to increase your blood sugar more, they’re going to put you into fat storage mode more.

And you want to limit your intake of these things. Okay, not saying none, just really limit. And the other category of foods that super high in sugar content. And maybe best to avoid would be the super high sugar content fruits like bananas, apples, pears, grapes, pineapple, mango, those kinds of things, super high in sugar.

You know, the fruit we eat today has been modified over the last three to 500 years. And it’s just incredibly high in sugar content. It’s not like what it used to be. So it’s best to avoid some of these fruits that have super high sugar content because it’s just going to keep you in that fat storage mode. Okay. So those are kind of the lists. A very short list of you know, some of the things to avoid that would be considered sort of bad carbs.

You know, sugar and all forms of sugar. You know anything with added sugar, refined grains, flour, anything made with flour, starchy vegetables, and high sugar fruits. Now, let’s talk about some good carbs. Right? There’s good news here.

There are so many amazing vegetables that you can eat that contain carbohydrates that are just completely fine to eat, and suggested to eat because they’re, they provide tons of nutrition, and vitamins and minerals, and micronutrients and they help with your gut health with your microbiome and they help with your weight loss efforts and they taste great.

These would be things like all the nonstarchy vegetables. So think about things like avocados, olives, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, kale, spinach, mushrooms, tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant, peppers, cucumbers, I mean, I could just go on and on and on, right.

There’s so many amazing vegetables that you can eat, that support a low carbohydrate approach that are delicious, that provide tons of nutrition. You know, all these things I just mentioned, are nutrient-dense, each one of them provides a different array of vitamins and minerals and micronutrients and they’re so good for you.

So include tons of this type of vegetable, the nonstarchy vegetables, okay. And then low sugar fruits would be a good type of carb as well. Raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, those kinds of things are very good for you. They also provide tons of nutrients and vitamins, minerals and support that gut microbiome too. So, a good rule of thumb just generally speaking, when we’re talking about different kinds of carbs, good carbs, bad carbs, avoid the sugar, flour, starchy vegetables and the high sugar fruit and include more of the nonstarchy above ground vegetables.

Okay, so those are some different types of carbs and the type of carbs you’re eating does matter. Now, here’s something that I find really fascinating. This is the timing of your carbs, like when should you be eating carbs, right? Let’s talk about good times bad times, right?

So, a bad time to eat carbs would be eating more carbs at your first meal at breakfast, or whatever you call your first meal, lunch. Early in the day, this is not when you want to eat the majority of your carbs, okay, because what happens is, when you eat carbs at that first meal, it tends to lead to more hunger throughout the day, and also tends to increase your fat storage.

So a study in the journal Appetite, found that people who ate a high carbohydrate breakfast consisting of a bagel were hungry again soon after that meal, whereas the people who ate a low carbohydrate breakfast with more fat and protein, so they had eggs, they felt more full for longer, same exact number of calories, but a different feeling afterwards.

And the people that ate the eggs lost more weight. During the period of this study, the people that ate the bagel for breakfast gained more weight, and they were more hungry. Right. So eating your carbohydrates early in the day tends to make you more hungry, help, you know, makes you put on more weight. And then you don’t want to do that, right.

This is not going to support your weight loss efforts, that’s for sure. So what would be a different way of doing this? So a different approach would be to consume the majority of your carbohydrates in the evening. Right, so they did this study.

And this was a six-month study that they published in the journal obesity. And this put people on one of two different diets. They were both reduced calorie diet, so whatever they each were eating the same amount of calories. But the one group ate the majority of their carbohydrates. At their first meal in the second group ate the majority of their carbohydrates at their second meal at dinnertime.

At the end of six months, the people who ate most of their carbs at dinner lost more weight, had a greater reduction in waist circumference, and had an overall greater reduction in body fat mass. They also had better fasting blood sugar, better insulin sensitivity, improved cholesterol ratios, reduced inflammation, and improved levels of the hunger hormones or satiety hormones leptin and adiponectin.

So meaning their appetite was diminished. And they weren’t feeling hungry all the time. So fewer food cravings, just from the timing of their carbohydrates, as opposed to eating the majority of their carbs. In the first meal of the day, they just ate them at dinner. And so this is something that I do pretty regularly, which is I eat a pretty low carb, first meal of the day, that would be called like breakfast, and I do that around noon.

That would be like bacon and eggs and avocado, pretty much what I do most days. And then at dinner time, I eat this big salad, and I eat tons of leafy greens, spinach and kale, and lots of veggies. And then I eat some protein and there’s some fat in there as well. But pretty much I would say 90% of the carbs 95% of the carbs that I eat each day are eaten at that second meal at dinner time.

Okay, so the timing of your carbs does matter. And it will help you to oxidize more fat more efficiently. And it will help you to feel more satiated when you eat the carbs in the evening as opposed to during that first meal. Okay.

So here’s something else I wanted to touch on really quickly. And this has to do with training on a low carbohydrate approach. Okay, and this idea of metabolic flexibility. So one of the concerns that a lot of runners have is that you know, oh, if I switch to eating a lower-carb diet, I won’t have any energy for running okay.

And the idea here is that what you want to do is what you want your body to become very efficient at using fat for fuel. And the way you do that is you, you go low, you go low carb, and you train low carb, okay? That means that your body can burn fat very efficiently, which is great fuel for long distance running. And it supports weight loss, you know, you’re gonna feel better, you know, all this energy, all the amazing things that come with being a fat adapted runner.

Now, when it comes to race day, you can take a little bit of a different approach, okay? Because you’re fat adapted, because you can now use stored body fat for fuel, you’re more metabolically flexible, this is a really cool thing. Because that means that when you do bring in some more carbohydrates, you know, you can actually use that carbohydrate and the stored body fat as fuel very effectively, you can kind of switch between the two, okay?

This gives you an advantage, especially in endurance activities, like long distance running, right, you can train low and race, high train, low carb race, high carb, more high carb, not high but high Earth. So you can train low, and then you top up your glycogen stores the day or so before a race, you know, something like eat some sweet potatoes, and you don’t need a ton, you can do 150-200 grams a day before a race.

And that’ll kind of top up your glycogen stores and your muscles. And you’ll have all this slow burning energy for use the next day. But it gives you the flexibility to use more than one energy source.

Right, because most people if you’re not fat adapted, you cannot access your fat stores for energy. Not at all, you can only use store glycogen, and freely available glucose, you have to continue eating carbs for that event, you know, so you’re sucking down the goos and the gels and the drinking this sports drink and all this other stuff, right, which leads to weight gain leads to GI distress and all kinds of other issues.

But when you become more metabolically flexible, you have these different energy sources. This gives you a competitive advantage, why not take advantage of it, okay, so you can still use carbohydrates to your advantage for running. And I really suggest you try this, you know, pick a day where you want to do a long run.

Obviously, you want to practice this before you use it on race day. But top up your glycogen stores the day before and see how that gives you a little bit more energy for that long run the next day. So carbs can be good, like carbs are good for some things, you know, they’re they can help you as a tool to help you race more, give you a little more gas in the tank for race day.

They help to promote proper thyroid function, right they keep, they help to keep cortisol levels in check. So this is the stress hormone cortisol. And so you know, having some carbs can help to reduce the cortisol levels in your body. Eating carbs have been known to help with testosterone production. And carbs are a good source of dietary fiber, which we all need, right?

When carbs are bad, though, this is like when you have too many or the wrong type of carbs. Or maybe you’re eating carbs at the wrong time. This can lead to increased hunger, decreased satiety, so you never feel full, can lead to increased inflammation, bloating, gas, irritable bowel syndrome, increased fat storage, insulin resistance, weight gain, decreased fat burning, and all these chronic diseases I’ve already talked about right?

So the good and the bad bottom line here is that if there’s one thing I want you to take away from this episode, it’s that carbs are not necessarily good or bad, but the timing, the quality and the quantity of carbs all matter, okay? All of these factors can affect your overall health. They affect your metabolism, your ability to burn fat, whether or not you’re fat adapted.

All of these factors affect your energy levels, your weight loss goals, your aerobic function, your running performance, and just your overall health and well being. Right, the wrong kinds of carbs and the wrong amount at the wrong times can lead to an array of health problems, but the right kinds of carbs in the right amount at the right time, can support your weight loss goals can help you with your fat adaptation and can actually improve your running performance. Right?

You need to figure out what works for you, right? We are all an experiment of one, find a formula that works for you. And then maybe try that two-week test. Aim for 75-100 grams of carbs a day. See how you feel after two weeks, right? And then you can always adjust that up or down depending on what’s working for you. Okay, awesome.

Well, I hope you guys got something out of this episode. I had a lot of fun kind of putting this one together. And again, if you enjoy listening to the podcast, if it helps you in any way, please consider just leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. It’s a great way to say thank you for all the stuff that I do here for you. Cool, awesome, you guys totally got this. Lots of love to each and every one of you. As always keep on Running Lean, and I’ll talk to you soon.

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