Why you must Stop Eating Refined Carbs

Alexios Papaioannou
April 5, 2024
10:59 am
23 minutes read

Ever feel like you’re on a blood sugar rollercoaster? Refined carbs, like white bread and sugary cereals, are like fast food for your body. They give you a quick burst of energy, then leave you feeling flat and hungry. This can lead to packing on the pounds and upping your risk of health problems. Swap the white stuff for whole grains, fruits, and veggies – they’ll keep you feeling full and awesome all day long!

Ditch the white bread and sugary treats! Refined carbs are like empty calories for your body. They give you a sugar rush, then leave you feeling like a cranky monster. This can lead to weight gain and yucky health problems. Pick whole grains, fruits, and veggies instead – they’ll keep you fueled and feeling good all day long!

Key Takeaways:

Sugary Shockers: Ditch white bread and treats! They’re like a sugar rush followed by a cranky crash. This can make you gain weight and feel icky.
Energy Ebbs & Flows: Refined carbs mess with your blood sugar, leaving you tired and hungry soon after eating.
Beat the Bloat: Whole grains, fruits, and veggies keep you fuller for longer, so you ditch the belly bloat and feel great!
Healthier You: Say goodbye to icky health problems like diabetes and heart disease by saying no to refined carbs.
Whole Grain Wins! Choose whole wheat bread, brown rice, and munch on fruits and veggies for happy energy all day!

What are Refined Carbs

Refined carbs are like stripped-down grains that lack fiber and vitamins. They digest fast, spiking your blood sugar and leaving you hungry. Think white bread, pastries, and sugary cereals. Choose whole grains, fruits, and veggies instead for a more balanced diet!

Refined carbs are found in processed foods. Foods that have been heavily processed usually contain refined carbs. Simple carbs such as white flour and white rice are quickly digested and absorbed into the bloodstream. This causes a quick rise in blood sugar levels.

Carbs are essential for our bodies because they provide energy. We need carbs to digest food and produce energy. A healthy diet should include lots of fruits, milk products, and whole grains.

Refined Carbs and Sugar – The Diet Saboteurs

Good carbs include whole grains, fruits, beans, nuts, seeds, and legumes. Bad carbs include refined grains, processed foods, and sweets.

Sugars are sweet foods that come from plants. Refined sugars include white sugar, brown sugar, corn syrup, honey, molasses, maple syrup, and agave nectar. These sugars are often used as ingredients in baked goods or candies. Some people think that eating too many sweets causes tooth decay and cavities. However, most of the time, this isn’t true. Some studies show that eating sugary foods helps prevent cavities.

Refined grains are white bread. White pasta. Tortillas. White pizza dough. Artificial sweeteners. Breakfast cereals are refined. Natural alternatives to these foods include whole grains, brown rice, legumes, nuts, lentils, sweet potatoes, and whole-grain bread.

Lose weight fast by cutting carbs and eating healthy fats

Refined carbohydrates and processed foods have a lot of calories. Cutting them out helps you lose weight. They are simple and refined, so the body absorbs them quickly. This causes your blood sugar levels to shoot up fast. Simple carbs get into the bloodstream quickly, leading to a rapid increase in blood sugar.

Eat healthy carbs to boost energy and lose weight

Simple carbohydrates are in processed foods and drinks. They break down easily in the body. This means they won’t keep you full for long and cause uneven blood sugar levels. Complex carbohydrates are different. They come with fiber, which is a type of carbohydrate. Fiber helps control blood sugar levels and makes you feel full. You can find complex carbohydrates in starchy vegetables and whole grains. They help you maintain a healthy weight. They also reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

A low carb diet can help reduce the risk factors associated with type 2 diabetes and heart diseases

Low-carb diets focus on healthy carbs, fats, and proteins. They can lower the risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease. These diets limit carbs like grains, starchy veggies, and fruits. Instead, they boost protein and fat intake. The goal is to make the body use stored fat for energy, which helps in losing weight.

Eating low-carb means your body makes less insulin. Insulin is a hormone that stores energy. Too much insulin is often due to eating sugary foods. This can mess up our blood flow and cause problems like diabetes. High carb diets make the pancreas overwork, producing too much insulin. Long-term, this can lead to type 2 diabetes.

Cutting refined carbs leads to more sugar cravings

Cutting back a lot on carbs makes your body turn fat into ketone bodies for energy. Refined carbs are processed fast by your body. They don’t give you energy for long and make your blood sugar levels shoot up. These carbs are full of added sugars. If you stop eating them, you might crave sugar more. Energy from refined carbs goes away fast. This can make you feel hungrier sooner than if you ate whole foods with complex carbs.

Why carbs should make you lose weight faster

Refined carbohydrates don’t have much nutritional value, so they don’t make you feel full. The body also breaks them down quickly. These carbs have more nutrients and take more time for the body to absorb. Because they digest slowly, sugar also enters the bloodstream at a slower rate. Eating fewer high-calorie carbs cuts down your daily calorie intake. This makes your body burn belly fat for energy instead of sugar from carbs.

Understand the importance of carbs and fats in your diet

A low-carb diet means you eat more protein and fat but less fiber. Studies have found low-carb diets better for losing weight than low-fat ones. However, health and nutrition depend on more than just weight loss. Cutting out carbs can have benefits. But, making big changes to your diet needs careful thought. It’s important to know how these changes affect your body.

Why carbs aren’t always bad for you

Eat the best foods to keep your body running smoothly

To avoid feeling like you’re missing out on healthy carbs, choose whole grains instead of refined ones. Eating the right amount of “good” carbohydrates can fulfill your daily nutritional needs. It also improves appetite control and keeps your energy levels high all day. Thus, the aim is to decrease simple carbohydrates and eat a healthy amount of complex carbohydrates for a balanced diet. Although complex carbs are important in a healthy diet, avoiding simple carbs’ empty calories is a big step toward a healthier, more nutritious diet.

Eat carbs for strength, not fat

Simple carbohydrates consist of simple sugars. Eating too much of them can hurt your body now and later. This is why people trying to build muscle often eat simple carbohydrates. They include foods like white rice, pasta, and bread in their diet to gain mass. Eating lots of refined carbohydrates mainly leads to weight gain. This is because of the large amounts of simple carbohydrates consumed.

Why you should ditch bread and pasta and eat more vegetables instead

Yes, cutting out almost all carbs from your diet will make you lose more weight, but not for the expected reasons. When you stop eating processed foods and carbs, your intake of sugar and salt decreases significantly. According to LeVec, most foods high in carbs turn into sugar in your body. If you limit your carb intake to under 80 grams a day, as some diets recommend, your body starts to break down fat to create ketones. These act as a weak form of glucose, resulting in the “cloudy” feeling associated with low-carb diets.

Carbohydrates are essential for endurance athletes

Eating fewer carbohydrates impacts your body’s functions. Refined carbs give you a quick energy boost. Unrefined carbs release energy slowly, which is beneficial during long runs or intense workouts. These carbs contain fiber, which makes you feel full and aids in digestion, and protein, which supports muscle maintenance and growth.

Amazing Body Changes When You Give Up Carbs

Refined and Complex Carbs How to Make the Right Choice

Our bodies need carbs to survive. It’s important to know how much to eat. Carbs come in two types: refined and complex. Refined carbs are in processed foods like white bread, pasta, and sugary drinks. Complex carbs include whole grains, fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, and seeds.

Weight Gain and Refined Carbs

White bread is straightforward to digest because it contains simple carbohydrates. These carbs cause rapid spikes in blood sugar levels. Refined grains are bad for weight loss because they spike blood sugar levels.

Carbs are foods that give energy to our bodies. Complex carbs are better than simple carbs because they take longer to digest. These carbs include whole grains, beans, peas, lentils, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, and other vegetables. Simple carbs are in white bread, pasta, crackers, cookies, cakes, pies, candy, soda, and other sugary treats.

Refined carbs are bad for your health because they cause you to be hungrier faster than whole foods. Whole foods contain complex carbs, which give you energy over time. You should avoid eating too many refined carbs.

Low-carb diets are unhealthy because they cause people to overeat sugar. Complex carbohydrates help improve digestion and overall well-being.

Potential negative effects of refined carbs

Refined carbs, such as white flour and processed sugars, can negatively affect health. These foods provide little nutrition and can contribute to weight gain, heart disease, diabetes, and other health issues.

Refined carbs are quickly digested in the body and can cause a rapid rise in blood sugar levels.
An energy crash often follows this surge of energy shortly after eating. Refined carbs also lack fiber which helps promote fullness and regulate digestion.

Eating a diet high in refined carbs can lead to obesity, high cholesterol levels, insulin resistance, and an increased risk of developing chronic diseases like heart disease or type 2 diabetes.

To improve overall health it is important to limit the intake of refined carbs and focus on consuming more whole grains, fruits, and vegetables.

How do Refined Carbs Affect Health?

Refined carbohydrates cause people to put on weight because they fill them up quickly. People who eat lots of empty calories tend to overeat. This leads to obesity.

A diet high in simple carbs causes weight gain. Refined carbs cause diabetes.

It would help if you avoided sugary drinks because they’re full of empty calories. Instead, eat healthy snacks like nuts and fruit.

What are refined simple or “bad” carbs?

Bad carbs are foods that contain lots of sugar and refined grains. These foods cause you to gain weight, increase your risk of heart disease, and make you feel sluggish.

Refined carbs and sugar are bad for you. You should avoid them as much as possible. Eating too many of these foods can make you feel hungrier than usual, and then you’ll want to eat more of them. These foods can be dangerous because they can cause you to gain weight, get high blood pressure, and develop other health problems.

Why is cutting down on sugar and refined carbs so difficult?

Sugary treats aren’t the only culprit when it comes to weight gain. Many other types of carbohydrates can cause you to pack on pounds. Some examples include white flour products, refined sugars, and simple carbohydrates. Choosing complex carbohydrates instead helps you feel full longer and burn more calories.

Eat the right carbs and lose weight fast

Carbs are one of the critical macronutrients your body needs every day to function properly. You need to know which carbs to target. Carbohydrates seem to get a bad rap for making you fat, but they are vital in providing your body with the energy it needs to live. Complex carbohydrates “contain a complex chain of sugars as well as some healthy fiber, protein and fat, vitamins and minerals,” says Rebecca Lewis, HelloFresh nutritionist. As a result, if you cut out refined carbs and replace them with healthy, nutrient-dense foods or complex carbs, you’ll eat less and feel full longer,” he notes.

Actionable advice for reducing refined carb intake

Reducing refined carb intake can be difficult, but it is worth it for the long-term health benefits. Here are some actionable tips to help you reduce your refined carb intake:

First, try to focus on whole foods like vegetables, fruits, and whole grains, as these usually contain fewer carbs than processed or packaged foods.
Second, look for low-carb alternatives such as cauliflower rice instead of white rice.
Third, if you must have a snack, opt for one that is high in protein and fiber so that you feel fuller longer. Fourth, try to avoid sugary drinks like soda and replace them with water or unsweetened tea.
Lastly, plan ahead and make sure to include healthy snacks in your meals so that you’re less likely to reach for a refined-carb snack when hunger strikes.

With these tips in mind, reducing your refined carb intake should be achievable!

Scientific Studies – Credible Resources

Refined carbohydrates have been linked to a variety of negative health effects, including an increased risk of obesity and chronic diseases.

Refined carbs are stripped of all bran, fiber, and nutrients, making them less nutritious than whole grains. Additionally, refined carbs can cause rapid spikes in blood sugar levels due to their high glycemic index.

According to the American Heart Association, eating a diet heavy in refined carbohydrates increases the risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

According to a study published in The Lancet Public Health, eating a diet heavy in refined carbohydrates is linked to an elevated risk of early mortality.

To lower the risk of noncommunicable illnesses such as obesity and diabetes, the World Health Organization recommends limiting free sugars, which include refined carbs, to less than 10% of total calorie consumption.

Scientific studies have shown that consuming refined carbohydrates can have negative effects on health ^[1] ^[2] ^[3] ^[4] ^[5]. Eating processed foods rich in added sugars and other refined carbs is linked to an increased risk of obesity, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and even death ^[1] ^[2] ^[3] ^[4]. Diets high in refined grains can also lead to overeating and insulin resistance ^[5].

References

1. Death by Carbs: Added Sugars and Refined Carbohydrates …

The emerging body of scientific evidence suggests that excessive intake of processed foods rich in added sugars and other refined carbohydrates is a chief …

2. Why Refined Carbs Are Bad For You – Healthline

Eating refined carbs is linked to drastically increased risk of many diseases, including obesity, heart disease and type 2 diabetes. Almost every nutrition …

3. Evidence that Refined Carbohydrates, not Fats, Threaten the …

Processed carbohydrates, which many Americans eat today in place of fat, may increase the risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease more …

4. Diets high in refined grains increase heart attack risk

A large new study suggests that eating more than 7 servings of refined carbohydrates per day increases the risk of heart disease and death …

5. Refined Carbs and Sugar: The Diet Saboteurs – HelpGuide.org

This can cause you to overeat, put on weight, and over time lead to insulin resistance and type-2 diabetes. Diets high in refined carbs and …

Cited Sources

Ever feel like you’re on a blood sugar rollercoaster? Refined carbs, like white bread and sugary cereals, are like fast food for your body. They give you a quick burst of energy, then leave you feeling flat and hungry. This can lead to packing on the pounds and upping your risk of health problems. Swap the white stuff for whole grains, fruits, and veggies – they’ll keep you feeling full and awesome all day long!
Ditch the white bread and sugary treats! Refined carbs are like empty calories for your body. They give you a sugar rush, then leave you feeling like a cranky monster. This can lead to weight gain and yucky health problems. Pick whole grains, fruits, and veggies instead – they’ll keep you fueled and feeling good all day long!
Key Takeaways:

Sugary Shockers: Ditch white bread and treats! They’re like a sugar rush followed by a cranky crash. This can make you gain weight and feel icky.

Energy Ebbs & Flows: Refined carbs mess with your blood sugar, leaving you tired and hungry soon after eating.

Beat the Bloat: Whole grains, fruits, and veggies keep you fuller for longer, so you ditch the belly bloat and feel great!

Healthier You: Say goodbye to icky health problems like diabetes and heart disease by saying no to refined carbs.

Whole Grain Wins! Choose whole wheat bread, brown rice, and munch on fruits and veggies for happy energy all day!
What are Refined Carbs
Refined carbs are like stripped-down grains that lack fiber and vitamins. They digest fast, spiking your blood sugar and leaving you hungry. Think white bread, pastries, and sugary cereals. Choose whole grains, fruits, and veggies instead for a more balanced diet!
Refined carbs are found in processed foods. Foods that have been heavily processed usually contain refined carbs. Simple carbs such as white flour and white rice are quickly digested and absorbed into the bloodstream. This causes a quick rise in blood sugar levels.
Carbs are essential for our bodies because they provide energy. We need carbs to digest food and produce energy. A healthy diet should include lots of fruits, milk products, and whole grains.
Refined Carbs and Sugar – The Diet Saboteurs

Good carbs include whole grains, fruits, beans, nuts, seeds, and legumes. Bad carbs include refined grains, processed foods, and sweets.
Sugars are sweet foods that come from plants. Refined sugars include white sugar, brown sugar, corn syrup, honey, molasses, maple syrup, and agave nectar. These sugars are often used as ingredients in baked goods or candies. Some people think that eating too many sweets causes tooth decay and cavities. However, most of the time, this isn’t true. Some studies show that eating sugary foods helps prevent cavities.
Refined grains are white bread. White pasta. Tortillas. White pizza dough. Artificial sweeteners. Breakfast cereals are refined. Natural alternatives to these foods include whole grains, brown rice, legumes, nuts, lentils, sweet potatoes, and whole-grain bread.
Lose weight fast by cutting carbs and eating healthy fats
Refined carbohydrates and processed foods have a lot of calories. Cutting them out helps you lose weight. They are simple and refined, so the body absorbs them quickly. This causes your blood sugar levels to shoot up fast. Simple carbs get into the bloodstream quickly, leading to a rapid increase in blood sugar.
Eat healthy carbs to boost energy and lose weight
Simple carbohydrates are in processed foods and drinks. They break down easily in the body. This means they won’t keep you full for long and cause uneven blood sugar levels. Complex carbohydrates are different. They come with fiber, which is a type of carbohydrate. Fiber helps control blood sugar levels and makes you feel full. You can find complex carbohydrates in starchy vegetables and whole grains. They help you maintain a healthy weight. They also reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
A low carb diet can help reduce the risk factors associated with type 2 diabetes and heart diseases
Low-carb diets focus on healthy carbs, fats, and proteins. They can lower the risk of type 2 diabetes and heart disease. These diets limit carbs like grains, starchy veggies, and fruits. Instead, they boost protein and fat intake. The goal is to make the body use stored fat for energy, which helps in losing weight.
Eating low-carb means your body makes less insulin. Insulin is a hormone that stores energy. Too much insulin is often due to eating sugary foods. This can mess up our blood flow and cause problems like diabetes. High carb diets make the pancreas overwork, producing too much insulin. Long-term, this can lead to type 2 diabetes.
Cutting refined carbs leads to more sugar cravings
Cutting back a lot on carbs makes your body turn fat into ketone bodies for energy. Refined carbs are processed fast by your body. They don’t give you energy for long and make your blood sugar levels shoot up. These carbs are full of added sugars. If you stop eating them, you might crave sugar more. Energy from refined carbs goes away fast. This can make you feel hungrier sooner than if you ate whole foods with complex carbs.
Why carbs should make you lose weight faster
Refined carbohydrates don’t have much nutritional value, so they don’t make you feel full. The body also breaks them down quickly. These carbs have more nutrients and take more time for the body to absorb. Because they digest slowly, sugar also enters the bloodstream at a slower rate. Eating fewer high-calorie carbs cuts down your daily calorie intake. This makes your body burn belly fat for energy instead of sugar from carbs.
Understand the importance of carbs and fats in your diet
A low-carb diet means you eat more protein and fat but less fiber. Studies have found low-carb diets better for losing weight than low-fat ones. However, health and nutrition depend on more than just weight loss. Cutting out carbs can have benefits. But, making big changes to your diet needs careful thought. It’s important to know how these changes affect your body.
Why carbs aren’t always bad for you

All carbs are seen as bad now. However, health experts believe it’s not about how many carbs you eat. It’s about the type of carbs. Over the years, carbs earned a bad reputation. But, not all carbs harm you. Refined carbs lose many nutrients during processing. That’s why many see them as “bad” for health. Eating refined grains, whole grains, or carbs in general leads to different outcomes.
Eat the best foods to keep your body running smoothly
To avoid feeling like you’re missing out on healthy carbs, choose whole grains instead of refined ones. Eating the right amount of “good” carbohydrates can fulfill your daily nutritional needs. It also improves appetite control and keeps your energy levels high all day. Thus, the aim is to decrease simple carbohydrates and eat a healthy amount of complex carbohydrates for a balanced diet. Although complex carbs are important in a healthy diet, avoiding simple carbs’ empty calories is a big step toward a healthier, more nutritious diet.
Eat carbs for strength, not fat
Simple carbohydrates consist of simple sugars. Eating too much of them can hurt your body now and later. This is why people trying to build muscle often eat simple carbohydrates. They include foods like white rice, pasta, and bread in their diet to gain mass. Eating lots of refined carbohydrates mainly leads to weight gain. This is because of the large amounts of simple carbohydrates consumed.
Why you should ditch bread and pasta and eat more vegetables instead
Yes, cutting out almost all carbs from your diet will make you lose more weight, but not for the expected reasons. When you stop eating processed foods and carbs, your intake of sugar and salt decreases significantly. According to LeVec, most foods high in carbs turn into sugar in your body. If you limit your carb intake to under 80 grams a day, as some diets recommend, your body starts to break down fat to create ketones. These act as a weak form of glucose, resulting in the “cloudy” feeling associated with low-carb diets.
Carbohydrates are essential for endurance athletes
Eating fewer carbohydrates impacts your body’s functions. Refined carbs give you a quick energy boost. Unrefined carbs release energy slowly, which is beneficial during long runs or intense workouts. These carbs contain fiber, which makes you feel full and aids in digestion, and protein, which supports muscle maintenance and growth.
Amazing Body Changes When You Give Up Carbs

Cookies are simple carbs that provide a quick rush of energy. But they also contain lots of calories. Chocolate chip cookies are exceptionally high in calories. You may be surprised by how much you eat when you eat a lot of cookies.
Eating fewer carbs makes you start burning fat right away. When you cut down on carbs, your body burns fat instead of sugar.
Eating carbs causes insulin production, and if you overeat, your pancreas will produce more insulin than needed. This leads to insulin resistance and then Type II diabetes.
Eat this! Tips: Fiber-rich complex carbohydrates are harder for your body’s digestion system to break down, preventing the blood sugar highs and lows that trigger an increase in insulin secretion.
Simple carbs aren’t as bad as people think. There is some truth to this statement, but many myths about carbohydrates are also. People who eat more complex carbs tend to be leaner than those who eat less. This is because complex carbs provide energy for exercise and help build muscles.
Refined and Complex Carbs How to Make the Right Choice
Our bodies need carbs to survive. It’s important to know how much to eat. Carbs come in two types: refined and complex. Refined carbs are in processed foods like white bread, pasta, and sugary drinks. Complex carbs include whole grains, fruits, vegetables, beans, nuts, and seeds.
Weight Gain and Refined Carbs
White bread is straightforward to digest because it contains simple carbohydrates. These carbs cause rapid spikes in blood sugar levels. Refined grains are bad for weight loss because they spike blood sugar levels.
Carbs are foods that give energy to our bodies. Complex carbs are better than simple carbs because they take longer to digest. These carbs include whole grains, beans, peas, lentils, potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, and other vegetables. Simple carbs are in white bread, pasta, crackers, cookies, cakes, pies, candy, soda, and other sugary treats.
Refined carbs are bad for your health because they cause you to be hungrier faster than whole foods. Whole foods contain complex carbs, which give you energy over time. You should avoid eating too many refined carbs.
Low-carb diets are unhealthy because they cause people to overeat sugar. Complex carbohydrates help improve digestion and overall well-being.
Potential negative effects of refined carbs
Refined carbs, such as white flour and processed sugars, can negatively affect health. These foods provide little nutrition and can contribute to weight gain, heart disease, diabetes, and other health issues.
Refined carbs are quickly digested in the body and can cause a rapid rise in blood sugar levels.
An energy crash often follows this surge of energy shortly after eating. Refined carbs also lack fiber which helps promote fullness and regulate digestion.
Eating a diet high in refined carbs can lead to obesity, high cholesterol levels, insulin resistance, and an increased risk of developing chronic diseases like heart disease or type 2 diabetes.
To improve overall health it is important to limit the intake of refined carbs and focus on consuming more whole grains, fruits, and vegetables.
How do Refined Carbs Affect Health?