Demystifying Carbohydrates: Essential Nutrition Advice for Women Navigating Midlife and Menopause Health Journeys

Are you confused about carbohydrates and their role in your diet? You’re not alone! In this enlightening episode of Real Food Stories, host Heather Carey dives deep into the often misunderstood world of carbohydrates, aiming to clear the fog around this essential macronutrient. As a culinary nutritionist, Heather brings her expertise and empathetic approach to the table, helping women navigate the complexities of nutrition, especially during midlife and menopause.

Join Heather as she demystifies carbs, explaining their crucial role as energy sources for both the body and brain. She breaks down the three types of carbohydrates—simple, complex, and fiber—while addressing common misconceptions that lead to confusion and fear around this vital food group. You’ll learn why not all carbs are created equal, and how to distinguish between nutrient-dense complex carbs like fruits, vegetables, and whole grains versus simple carbs that can cause energy spikes and crashes.

Throughout this episode, Heather emphasizes the importance of fiber in your diet, linking it to numerous health benefits and disease prevention. She advocates for a balanced approach to eating, encouraging listeners to fill their plates primarily with vibrant vegetables and fruits, complemented by whole grains and lean proteins. If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by diet fads that vilify carbs, this episode is your chance to reclaim your relationship with food and embrace a nourishing lifestyle.

Heather’s friendly and insightful guidance offers practical healthy eating tips that empower women to make informed choices about their nutrition. She challenges the prevalent diet culture that perpetuates weight loss myths and encourages a more holistic view of health, especially for those navigating the challenges of perimenopause and menopause. With her expertise, she provides valuable nutrition advice that prioritizes well-being over restrictive dieting.

As you listen, you’ll be inspired to embark on your own personal food journey, filled with real food stories that celebrate the joy of cooking and eating. Say goodbye to the cycle of dieting and hello to sustainable eating practices that nourish your body and soul. Whether you’re seeking midlife health insights or simply want to understand the role of carbs in your meals, this episode is a must-listen!

So, tune in to Real Food Stories with Heather Carey, and discover how to make peace with carbs while embracing a vibrant, healthy lifestyle that celebrates food, culture, and community. Your journey towards empowering women in nutrition starts here!

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Transcript:

Speaker #0
Well, hello, everybody, and welcome back. And if you are just tuning in with me for the very first time, it’s so nice to meet you. And I’m really glad you’re here with me today. I am your host, Heather Carey, nutritionist, chef, mom, and a woman who has been around the block with food. I want to open up about real food in relation to health, weight, and our bodies so you can make peace with what you eat. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Real Food Stories podcast. For the next couple of weeks, I wanted to get back to topics that people ask me about all the time. And hopefully, as a result, I will help clear the air so that you can feel good about what you eat. Now, I know this is a podcast and I can’t possibly cover everything in a short 45 minutes. But I’m going to do my best to give you a good overview of food for the next couple of weeks and to hopefully take some of the mystery out of what we are eating. Last week, I spoke to you about protein, especially for women in midlife. How much do we really need? Why we need more protein during this time? The best types of protein and how to combine plant-based proteins to make complete proteins. If you have not listened and you are curious about protein, which a lot of us are, be sure to go back and tune into episode 81. I also mentioned last week that protein falls under the category of macronutrients that we need in our diet. Macronutrients are types of foods that we cannot live without. They are also foods that we don’t need to go crazy about, as in cutting out whole you food groups in the name of some nutty diet. And protein seems to be one that has withstood the full-blown elimination from diets, unlike the other two macronutrients, fats and carbs. But on the other hand, that also means that we have often gone dangerously overboard on protein. And while we do need to be mindful of getting a little more protein as we get older, we don’t want to go overboard with it. Again, take a listen. And if you want the full recap in writing with the links I mentioned, I wrote a whole blog post about it. And you can find that in today’s show notes and last week’s show notes. Today, I wanted to give space to another one of our macronutrients that has been debated and ripped to shreds in the diet world. And that is carbohydrates. Carbs, for short, are so… filled with confusion and misinformation that if you only listen to one of my podcasts, make it this one. I’m hoping to clear up all the mystery of carbohydrates today. Let’s jump in and get all the 411 on carbs. Let’s do some Nutrition 101 and explain what carbs even are because just the word or nickname carbs has gotten so skewed. When I hear people say, I don’t eat carbs, or I’m addicted to carbs, or I have to limit my carbs, I immediately ask them if they realize that kale is a carbohydrate. Don’t get me wrong, so are brownies, but vegetables and fruits fall into this category too. Let’s dive into the what and why of carbohydrates. Carbohydrates, or carbs for short, are like the energetic fuel for your body. and most importantly, for our brain. They’re found in a huge variety of foods, which I understand can add only to more confusion about them. Foods like bread, pasta, white rice, fruits, and vegetables, desserts, all come with different forms of sugars, starches, and fibers, which then puts them all into the same macronutrient category. When we eat any types of carbs, be it an apple or a cookie, our bodies break them down into glucose, which is a type of sugar that can be processed into your bloodstream and then goes on to fuel your body’s cells, your organs, your tissues, and most importantly, your brain. When glucose gets released into our bloodstream, it gives you the energy you need for everything we do. from walking to thinking to exercising. Glucose is fast acting, meaning it can be used immediately, or if we don’t need it right then, or if we have an excess, it will be stored in the liver and muscles for later use. Okay, are you with me so far? Because there’s a little bit more about Nutrition 101 and carbs. Carbs fall into three different types, simple, complex, and fiber. Simple carbohydrates are basically the carbs that get vilified in the diet world. Those are syrups, sugars, white pasta, white rice, soda, candy, desserts are all perfect examples of simple carbohydrates. They break down really quickly in your bloodstream. They enter quickly and get stored in your muscle liver quickly if there is an excess. Simple carbohydrates are like the quick energy boosters of the carbohydrate world. They’re made up of just one or two sugar molecules, which means they’re digested and absorbed by the body very fast. Now, these foods are often sweet and taste good. They’re also packed with with sugars that give us rapid bursts of energy. But here’s the thing. While they can give us a quick pick-me-up, they’re not always the best choice for sustained energy. That’s because they can cause our blood sugar levels to spike. And then when we get a spike, we ultimately get a crash. And that can leave us feeling tired and hungry very soon after. Here is where some understandable confusion lies with simple carbs. While sugar, like honey, for example, is a simple carb, so are fruits and milk products. They fall into this category too. Fruit contains fructose and milk contains lactose. Both are sugars. One of the most asked questions I get is wondering if fruit is bad for us. Now, here is why fruit, even though it contains simple carbs, is perfectly fine for you. If you ate an orange, for example, you would also be eating other things besides fructose. The orange contains a lot of water, which dilutes the fructose, and it also contains fiber, which I will explain in a couple of minutes, which slows down that quick release of sugar into your bloodstream. So for right now, I want you to make peace with fruit. Fruit is so full of nutrients. I think of fruit as my edible vitamins. Same goes for dairy. Dairy is not just lactose. It is protein. There’s some fat in there. There’s vitamin D. There’s other things in milk products besides just the sugar component. Lactose is a small part of what makes up dairy. And fructose is really a small part of what makes up fruit. In short, simple sugars are a quick source of energy. You might… have felt starving at some point. And the only thing that would taste satisfying was a piece of chocolate, not a carrot or a bunch of red pepper slices. When you eat sugars like a candy bar with nothing else, you will have a quick jolt of sugar entering your bloodstream. And then you might feel that crash because it digests that quickly. And like I said before, you will probably feel hungry pretty soon after. Now, that doesn’t mean you have to avoid simple carbs altogether. They can be a handy source of energy, especially if you need a quick boost before a workout, for example, or if you’re just feeling low on energy. And having birthday cake on your birthday or an occasional dessert is a delicious treat. There’s nothing wrong with that. We just don’t want to make this type of carbohydrate our main source of carbohydrates. A good rule of thumb is to remember to balance out those simple carbohydrates with other foods that provide more sustained energy, like whole grains, protein, and healthy fats, to keep you feeling fueled and satisfied for longer. For the sake of today’s talk, let’s think of simple carbs as sugar, candy, cookies, and processed grains that are stripped of so many good nutrients. like white pasta, for example, or white flour, soda, or other highly processed junk foods. They start out with good intentions. They start out as whole grains and then just get stripped down to nothing. Fruit juice is another great example. When you take away all the other parts of fruit and just have the juice, the sugar content is extremely high, often higher than most sodas. Now, the most notable nutrient that is stripped out of simple carbs is fiber. And fiber is an extremely important part of our diet. Here’s what fiber is and why it is so important. Fiber is a carbohydrate that cannot be broken down in your bloodstream into glucose, the fuel for everything in our body. So instead, fiber passes through our body undigested. Then why do we need fiber if it provides no calories and you cannot digest it and turn it into fuel and energy? Think of fiber as a friendly helper. Fiber helps to slow down that rush of blood sugar into our bloodstream because we still need to let it pass through our digestive tract. When fiber does enter our intestines, it actually gives nourishment to the billions of good bacteria living there. Our digestive tract and gut. microbiome is like our second brain, as some people have put it. Our immune system, for one, is heavily influenced by our digestion, and not getting enough fiber is linked to constipation, IBS, heart disease, colon cancer, and other bowel conditions. Diabetes and breast cancer have been shown to be directly linked to the amount of fiber we eat. All are affected by our fiber intake. And there’s still a lot we don’t even know about our gut and fiber intake. What we do know is that most people are not getting enough fiber. When the focus of your calories is on those simple carbohydrates like white pasta and white rice and a lot of animal protein, you are definitely not getting enough fiber. For reference, adults in midlife need about 30 grams of fiber a day. I can tell you with certainty. that if you are starting your day with a bagel, for example, and then having a salad at lunch and white pasta for dinner, you are definitely not getting enough fiber in your day. Fiber comes from whole sources of plants, not the stripped down versions and not from animals. Beans, legumes, whole grains, fruits, and vegetables all contain varying amounts of fiber, and are all so good for you. Now, I spoke last week about plant-based proteins, and here is where the added benefit comes in. One cup of black beans, for example, has 15 grams of fiber and still being loaded with protein. What a great way to get more bang for your buck when it comes to your calorie intake. Fiber comes in two forms, soluble and insoluble, And both have different functions, but both are very beneficial for us. Soluble fiber dissolves in water and is found in high amounts in foods such as oats, apples, chia seeds, lentils, and blueberries. You may have heard of oats and the cholesterol-lowering benefits of eating oats. This type of fiber helps draw out the LDL cholesterol or the bad cholesterol in our bodies. Soluble fiber also slows down digestion by helping us feel fuller longer. Insoluble fiber does not dissolve in water and helps food move through our digestive tract. Food in this category would be vegetables like broccoli, whole grains like brown rice or quinoa, kale, nuts, or seeds. So let’s talk about the next. part of the carbohydrate conundrum, and those are complex carbohydrates. Now, complex carbs are multifaceted. You might want to know that complex carbs are strings of sugar molecules that are strung together. But in the real world, what this means is that complex carbs are the more healthy carbs that you might be familiar with. These are whole grains, such as brown rice rather than white whole wheat pasta rather than white pasta, quinoa, farro, millet, for example, starchy vegetables like corn and sweet potatoes, beans like black beans, cannellini beans, chickpeas, and lentils, and then, of course, all of the vegetables, peppers, carrots, tomatoes, cauliflower, the list goes on. Any vegetable gets thrown into this category. Now, because fruits have so much nutrition and so much fiber, I absolutely put them into this category as well. I know fructose is a simple carbohydrate, but they come with a lot of benefits. So I’m not talking about fruit juice. I’m talking about the whole fruit. Complex carbs provide a slower, more sustained release of energy due to their fiber content. Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and beans help with digestive issues, heart disease, diabetes, certain cancers, our immune system. I think you get the point. I think I’m trying to hit this point home. These foods are good for you and can taste good, too, when you know how to make them taste good through… cooking and practicing cooking. Simple, more processed carbs just taste good, right? They are simple, quick fixes. So why do carbs get such a bad rap in the diet world then? If we know that whole complex carbs are so good for us, what do people perceive as the problem with eating them? The first thing is that you want to make sure not to get confused with the definition of all carbs. So again, when I hear someone say that they are a carb addict, I highly doubt they are talking about being addicted to kale and brown rice. So let’s not throw all of the carbs under the bus. I get being addicted or feeling like you are addicted to bread and desserts, but kale and cauliflower, I highly doubt you’re going to be overeating those. The second reason why carbs get such a bad rap is that there is plenty of fear-mongering books out there, like The Plant Paradox or The Paleo Diet or Whole30. And I am sure there’s tons more to vilify even vegetables. The Plant Paradox, for example, is a head-scratcher. I really don’t even understand where he’s coming up with those theories, but that’s for another conversation. And really, when you eat high-protein diets like like paleo, you end up initially losing a lot of water weight. So they seem like credible weight loss diets, but you’re not losing weight in the right way. There’s also a lot of diets that are geared towards menopause that make a business out of fear-mongering and the feeling that we have been eating and doing something wrong with food. Women in midlife and menopause need great sources of carbohydrates. I cannot emphasize this enough. I am you reminding you again about the absolute health benefits to eating a lot of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and beans. Our hearts, our brains, our digestion, certain cancers, and overall longer life expectancy. So please do not buy into the social media and wellness influencers promoting diets like the carnivore diet or people who are making you believe that beans are bad for you. It’s just not true. As part of my Nutrition 101 series, I am going to do a podcast on different diets and which ones are the best for you. So stay tuned for that. I know I am just kind of glossing over that. And there’s a lot to talk about with carbohydrates, right? And all the other health issues that we could get ourselves into. And that’s going to be addressed in different podcasts. Carbohydrates, like whole grains and beans, have calories. Okay, this is another thing that I think maybe gets people into some fear around carbs. So yes, even though they are healthy for you, you still want and need to be mindful about how much you are eating. Vegetables and most fruit get a hall pass because they are so incredibly low in calories. I can’t think of a single person who ate their way through a couple bunches of Swiss chard. And if that’s your jam, go for it because you probably ate only about 20 calories. But cooked brown rice, for example, whole grains, they have about… 230 calories in a cup. So depending on the amount of calories you need in a day, and that’s important, and what else you’re eating, you might want to make that a half cup serving rather than a cup serving. So it really depends on how many calories you need though, but we want to be mindful of our whole grains. So I want to tell you how I make sure that I’m eating the right carbs and that I’m getting enough in my day. Last week. I gave you my portion cheat sheet, and I will link that again in the show notes if you never got it. It’s also in the blog post that I wrote. But I also want you to think in terms of what is on your plate. So let’s take dinner, for example. I want you to imagine for a second a dinner plate and go ahead and cut that plate in half, in your head, not literally. Then take another half and cut that in half so you have three parts of the plate. The biggest half would be vegetables and some fruit. So that is 50% of your plate. Now remember, vegetables and fruits are your edible vitamins. So eat those in abundance. Fill that side of the plate. Then about 25% of the plate would be some protein. And if you missed last week’s podcast on protein, go back and take a listen to that. I’m not going to get into detail right now for this podcast. And the other 25% would be whole grains or starchy carbs like sweet potatoes. I’m not mentioning fats either. I’m going to talk about fats next week in that podcast. So just know that for right now, we would just be drizzling some fats onto this to make it taste good. Now, many people flip this plate around. They make half of their plate grains like pasta, or they make half of their plate protein. and they make less of their plate vegetables. I want you to flip your plate around. I want you to make half of your plate fruits and vegetables, quarter of your plate whole grains or starchy carbs, and a quarter of your plate protein. So you can see then that most of your plate is in the form of carbohydrates, about 75% of it. This is not something I’m making up. This is based on a lot of research and data. It’s what works best for your health. And this goes for all your meals, ideally. Sometimes they are never going to be exact. Like today, for example, for lunch, I ate last night’s dinner, which was roasted salmon with some roasted broccoli and tomatoes and a lemon tahini drizzle. It was delicious, by the way, but I had no whole grains in there. And that’s okay because tonight’s dinner, I know I’m going to be eating some brown rice and I’ll make up for it that way. Every meal does not have to be. exact. It has to look picture perfect, but we want to make sure that just through our day, we are being semi-consistent. Now, how else can we get healthy carbs in our day-to-day meals? One thing to do, and this is something that I do, is start your day with a whole grain, like oatmeal. I make oatmeal with milk, which has a good amount of protein. So I’m thinking about my balance also, right, and how I can get all of these nutrients in. And I top my oatmeal with nuts and seeds and berries. So I have fruit in there. I have healthy fats from nuts and seeds. I have protein and I have whole grains. Make sure that you are using whole grain bread. And when you are eating whole grain bread, I want you to definitely look at labels. Bread should say 100% whole wheat rather than something like multigrain. Multigrain is a very misleading term. Multigrain can mean it’s 99% white flour and a smattering of a little whole grain. So it should say 100% whole wheat on the label. So if you’re going to make a sandwich, make sure you get your best version of bread. You can try whole wheat pasta rather than white pasta, brown rice rather than white rice. You get the point on that. And this one might seem obvious now, make sure that you eat your fruit rather than drink your fruit juice because it is full of unnecessary sugar and get rid of soda while you’re at it. All right, so let’s sum up carbs 101. One, carbs have gotten a bad rap because I believe that most people think of sugar and bread when they think of carbohydrates. Two, we now know… that carbs are vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and beans too, not just desserts and pasta and bread. Three, we want to emphasize complex carbohydrates rather than simple processed carbs. Complex carbohydrates naturally come with fiber, another very missed nutrient in our diets. Complex carbs are full of nutrients that are essential to your health. Like I just said, one of the most important being. fiber. Simple carbs taste good, but they don’t really add anything in the way of nutrition. And every day we need to emphasize vegetables and fruit. These are our edible vitamins. And use beans and whole grains as great sources of protein and fiber. And finally, when it comes to carbohydrates, tune out the noise of the diet books and the internet. This is based on science, not fear mongering. So I hope… that helps to clear up the air on carbohydrates and you can feel good about what you are eating. I am going to create a blog post for this. You don’t have to take notes. Don’t worry about sitting down and getting your pen and paper out. It’s all going to be in a blog post, which is linked in the show notes. If you have any questions about carbohydrates, if you want to have a conversation about how to get your healthiest. please don’t hesitate to reach out to me. My info is again in the show notes and I’m always happy to have a conversation. Okay, carry on, eat your good carbohydrates and bye for now. And as always, if you loved this podcast, please consider gifting me with a five-star review. It is so helpful for me to get the word out on real eating, our real bodies, and real food stories. Thank you so much and have a great week. Bye for now.