No. Good vs. bad thinking is a sure way to make health and fitness goals harder to attain.

Carbohydrates are not bad but seem to get blamed for a lot of problems. When I get asked if carbs are good or bad, almost 100% of the time I can change the question to “will carbs make me gain weight?” The simple answer is that any food you eat contains a certain number of calories. If all the food you eat results in consuming more calories than you burn (use), you will gain weight. This is the most important concept to understand when it comes to calories. If carbs are the thing that push you over the edge, so be it… that does not make them bad. In my time coaching clients, I have never had an instance when I have identified carbohydrates as the one thing standing in the way of their goals.

To understand calories and calorie balance, you need to look at all the macronutrients and understand their differences. There are four macronutrients that make up your entire caloric intake:

Notice that carbs and protein are the lowest calorie/gram and fat is the highest calorie/gram. Does this mean fat is bad? Of course not. Fat is the densest form of energy we consume and why our bodies need to have some amount of fat stores on hand in case we find ourselves in a situation where we cannot eat for an extended period of time. This applies more to our ancient ancestors, but we still play by the same rules it seems.

Diets tend to cut out carbohydrates because they are the only macronutrient (excluding alcohol) that you can get by without. This means that technically you won’t die if you eat zero carbs. This is a perfect example of simple stories that are pervasive within the world of dieting and losing weight. Because you can live without carbs, carbs are bad. As far as I can tell, that is the main reason behind carbs being demonized in so many diets. You can go down the rabbit hole here and dive into the glycemic index, insulin response, added sugars, etc., however, all roads lead back to the underlined statement above. People have been influenced into thinking this way by the health and fitness ecosystem in which they find themselves. Think of the accounts you follow on Instagram or the social circles you are in. A lot of the time our beliefs are reinforced by these groups rather than challenged. Having your beliefs challenged forces you to think about your decisions critically.

This is the tip of the iceberg on this topic. I think it is important to understand the basics of how calories work so that you can make the right decisions for yourself. I always compare this to money. To manage your own money, you first must understand how inflows and outflows work. Without this understanding, it would be difficult to put together a coherent budget and you would have no way of properly setting expectations. If you have no knowledge of how calories work and what it looks like to overeat and undereat, it is hard to set realistic goals. If you understand the fundamentals, you will not be susceptible to bad information that can lead you down the wrong path. Carbs marketed as bad is a negligent claim and anybody selling that is being lazy and not properly explaining the fundamentals. It takes hard work, personal responsibility, consistency, managed expectations, and sometimes failure to make long term changes. Quick fixes like not eating carbs work in the short-term and generally fail in the long-term… so think about your decisions and plan accordingly.