Everybody has got to stop hating on carbohydrates so much. Even I’m bad about carbs these days, and that isn’t me, really, but rather me in middle age cutting down on them a bit too much to try to keep up muscle.
The thing is, people need to understand what carbohydrates (“carbs”) are used for in the body. Spaghetti, and most pastas, are carbohydrates; so are potatoes. Bread is mostly a carbohydrate, except the fortified part. Some carbohydrates are complex carbohydrates; some are simple carbohydrates. Do you really want to go your whole damned life without any pasta, any bread, sugar, potatoes, though? Probably not, and you don’t need to – you just need to know what to use the carbs for.
What drives people away from carbohydrates is that they eventually all metabolize into sugar, basically (glucose), which gives you short term energy (and type II diabetes, if you overdo it), with the one exception being fiber (fiber metabolizes into fatty acids, to give you energy, again). And if you don’t use that energy, and go over on calories, carbohydrates go straight to fat. You also aren’t going to build any muscle with an all-carb diet, either, because you need protein for muscle growth.
That being said, all of you (even those with diabetes, but be careful) — you’re going to need some carbohydrates or sugars for energy to do the damned workouts (or to do anything at all) to get the muscle growth, so don’t cut them out altogether. Simply limit your sugar intake and your carb intake a bit. It’s not that hard. It’s science. You can have spaghetti; you can have bread; you can have potatoes. Just count your calories, and try to fit in protein and vegetables (no, I’m sorry, a potato does may qualify as a “vegetable”, but in name only, as much as my late father might disagree – it’s not that healthy for you, though the skin has some vitamins in it). You can also have sugar, but the thing is, balance your sugar with your carbohydrate intake. If you have, say, five hundred calories worth of sugar in a day more than you usually have, try to lessen your intake of carbohydrates, especially simple ones.
So there’s my little speech on carbohydrates. Kind of simple, really. You can have them, just don’t stuff your face with them, and work off the energy. Get some protein, and get some vegetables, and so on. Highly controversial stuff, here, such as, you know, act sensibly and so on. Again, I am not a medical doctor. This stuff is just science. Science – like magic, but it works. The links in here are all to trustworthy sources (two are to Harvard University nutrition; one’s to Wikipedia, one’s to the American Diabetes Association).