Eating Carbs Essay

Everyone eats carbohydrates. You pretty much can not get around it. We need carbs for energy after all. But the question still remains: how many carbs should I eat in a day? Are there drawbacks from eat too little or too many carbs? What are the side effects of eating carbs or abstaining from eating carbs? Well once again, as with protein, it depends on what you do on a daily basis. Furthermore, ingestion of carbs should be focused more around the question: WHEN should I eat carbs during the day?

As with how much fat to eat in a day and how much protein to eat in a day, it all depends on a couple factors:

* job

* insulin resistance

* activity level

* target body weight

* exercise goals

* lifestyle

The most recent Dietary Guidelines for Americans, as stated by the Department of Health and Human

Soup, meat and vegetables, and salad are all great choices for low carb dinners. Appropriate snacks are meats, cheeses, protein bars or shakes, veggies, and other super-low carb foods. Typically in the midst of a diet phase, I eat around 75 grams of carbs on a non-workout day, and maybe 120-140 grams of carbs on a workout day.

In conclusion, I recommend that if you are moderately active, you should derive maybe 30% of your daily calories from carbs. Sure, my opinion differs from specialist government agencies, but that is only because I have seen low carb diets work. I have also seen Americans grow obese and suffer from a long list of carbohydrate induced diseases.

A 200 lb man on a 2500 calorie diet would probably eat maybe 180 grams of carbs in a day, all from unprocessed whole food sources. A 140 lb woman on a 1500 calorie diet might only eat 100 grams of carbs in a day.

Someone on a strict diet might limit themselves to 50 grams of carbohydrates a day regardless of sex or weight. Just remember to avoid those nasty sugary processed carbs so that you can stay healthy, avoiding energy crashes and adult-onset type II