There is all kinds of bad gossip about carbs out there and they’ve gotten a horrible reputation amongst most people. But the truth is, they are super important to your body and provide balance in good nutrition. Not to mention, they’re frigging awesome! If you’re like me, a life without carbs is not a life at all.
I could spend days explaining why carbohydrates are a huge piece of the nutrition puzzle but you won’t read it and I don’t blame you – why read about carbs when you can eat them?! So instead, I’ll do a quick and dirty run down on how to pick some of my favourite carbs so you can get to buying and eating. You can thank me later.
Rice:
Super versatile, easy to cook and come with a ton of flavour options – rice is a great carbohydrate. Your best choices are brown rice, purple rice, red rice and black rice. They are whole grains and they are naturally gluten free – just be portion smart, you don’t need a large amount. I don’t demonize white rice – it’s okay in moderation! I opt for the other rice options 80% of the time but every now and then, I’ll change it up for a small portion of white rice for the right recipe!
Bread: You’ll want to stick to whole grain bread – there’s just nothing good in white bread, it lacks all nutrition value, you might as well as eat paper! But there are some really tasty whole grain breads out there so do some taste tests and you’ll find a favourite. With bread, you want to really look at the labels – the first ingredient should be whole grain (put it back on the shelf if it has the word “enriched”), it should contain no more than 200mg of sodium and if possible choose one that does not have sugar on the ingredient list.
Pasta: There are lots of ingredient crazy pastas out there – seriously read a few labels and see how many of the ingredients you can pronounce on some of them! But if I had to pick a few things to watch for it would be to choose pastas that have “whole-wheat flour” or “whole-grain flour” as the first ingredient listed, are high in fibre and stay away from the ones that have enriched wheat-flour.
If you've been fearing carbs or have questions, please reach out! It's time to free yourself and enjoy your food - lisa@refirefitness.ca
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