• Simple carbs are called “sugars.”

• Complex carbs are called “starch” or “carbohydrate.”

• Fiber is made of sugar strung together in a way you can’t break them down. They just pass through. The labels on food include fiber in the carb tally, but really, that’s just confusing and unnecessary. Whenever I list the number of carb grams, I have already deleted the fiber, leaving the “Net Carbs” which are the ones that actually affect you most.

Carbs, like fat, are mostly used as fuel by the body. It is strange to note that when we eat carbs, our bodies say to themselves “Carbs! It must be summer! Let’s get busy eating all the carbs we can find, and store them as fat for the winter. If there is one berry, there must be more around here somewhere.”

This is why eating carbs increases your appetite, and why “You can’t eat just one” when it comes to sweets, chips, bread, or other carb-heavy foods.

This also explains why people find it easier to increase body fat eating carbs than they do by eating actual fat! Eating the fat has an appetite suppressing effect (“Satiety”) whereas carbs have an appetite stimulating effect.

Animals who have survived the winter and spring don’t have much fat left in their bodies by the time summer comes around. When we eat fat, it’s almost as though our bodies say “I’m eating fat. It must be winter. There is probably not much food around, so I better not get too hungry.”

Proteins are made of chains of smaller units called amino acids. Amino acids are mostly needed as structural building blocks for everything in your body, but they can also be broken down for fuel in case of emergencies. When they are broken down, they burn dirty. The “Amino” part is actually converted in the body into ammonia. Yes, the same thing they use as an industrial cleaner and in the manufacture of explosives. After the amino part is removed, some amino acids turn into sugar before being burned, and some go down the fat pathway and never turn into sugar.

We need a supply of protein to do things like keep our muscles intact, repair our bodies, and keep the immune system working. This is especially true if you are engaged in hard physical work, athletics or trying to build muscle mass. However, because some of the protein will turn into sugar, (and the fact that it burns dirty) we need to keep the protein intake down to the right level.