PPW3 Habit 4: Other Carbs

Yesterday we talked about the importance of getting your veggies with every meal.

Today we are going to talk about Fruit and what we call “Other Carbs”.

When it comes down to it, fruit is nature’s candy, or nature’s dessert if you will. Fruit is loaded with many of the same great things as vegetables – vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and fiber.

The biggest difference?

Fruit also contains high amounts of sugar. So while it is fantastic to add fruit to your diet, the calories and carbs add up fast if you are eating 5 or 6 pieces a day, and doing so can make it hard to drop bodyfat.

A good rule of thumb is 1 serving of fruit for every 5 servings of vegetables. Fruit makes a great dessert, enjoy it!

“Other Carbs” are in general your grain products – whole grain only please. We want to reserve our other carbs for after our training.

Why?

A couple reasons:

The first reason to save our other carbs for after we train is because this is when the body processes them more readily, keeping them from being stored as fat. Winner!

The second reason relates to the first, in that after hard training the body has used much of it’s muscle glycogen, or stored sugars, and is looking to replace them. This is crucial to the recovery process, and is one of the reasons we emphasize getting that post-training recovery carb/protein in as soon after training as possible. (like right now already!)

When we eat a high carb/starch load outside of the recovery window, it’s like pumping gas into your car when the tank is already full, only worse. Instead of pumping $4 a gallon gas onto the ground, you are spilling the excess sugars into fat cells, or worst case scenario creating new fat cells to store the excess – not cool!

You don’t have to feel (or actually be) deprived of your rice, oatmeal, sweet potato or other grains and starches, just plan to have them after you train – it’s all good!

Fire those questions below.