Carbohydrates are one of the 3 macros your body needs. This macro has been shrouded in lots of controversies and confusion in recent times. Many people these days feel like carbs are bad and evil. But to tell you the truth, all macros (carbs, protein, and fat) are essential and vital for good health. You must find ways to include each of them into your diet in the proper ratio. And since carbs are naturally our bodies’ primary energy source, you must also learn how to burn carbs. If you don’t burn enough carbs, excess calories from the carbs can ruin your health.
Thankfully, your body constantly burns carbs and converts them to energy in the forms of glycogen and glucose. So all we need to do is find healthy ways to boost the use of energy (or calories). If you can burn off more calories, your body would be burning carbs faster.
This is one of the hacks for staying in shape. As you burn more carbs, your body will store less of them in the form of fats. This will, in turn, lead to the loss of excess body weight. Aside from weight loss, burning carbs contributes to metabolic health, as well as disease prevention.
Healthy Ways on How to Burn Carbs
1. Become physically active
Sitting down for hours is not a good thing at all. But that’s what happens when you work from an office desk all day long. Unfortunately, people leave from work to sit in the car as they travel back home. And upon getting home, many people who be found sitting on a couch, glued to their TV screen.
If this is how you live your life, you would not be burning as many carbs as you should. You’ve got to stay active and move around quite often to burn carbs. A good place to start is to take a five minutes’ walk at the turn of each hour.
2. Try to go running
Going for a run is one of the excellent ways to burn off carbs. If there’s glucose (from carbs) in your system, your body will start burning it off as you run.
No other energy source is as readily available as glucose in the human body. So when you start running, your body would begin to pull out glucose to energize your working muscles.
3. Do some aerobic exercise
Aerobic exercise helps to burn up carbs. It doesn’t matter whether the exercise is moderate or high-intensity. As soon as you start your exercise, your body instinctively draws upon carbs as its primary fuel source.
4. Lift weights
When you lift weights, your muscles will use glycogen, a product of carbs. Your body stores carbs in the muscles as glycogen. This glycogen store depletes each time your muscles are working. Then your body breaks down more carbs to replace the depleted glycogen.
So you see how the process looks like. Your body is naturally designed to burn carbs to supply your muscles with more energy. That’s why weight lifting can help you burn carbs.
5. Eat meals in smaller quantities
Huge meals cause your blood insulin levels to spike. Insulin, in turn, removes glucose from your blood. But it does not convert it to energy. Rather, it converts it to fat for storage.
That’s where the real battle comes from. You want to make sure that the carbs you eat are burned for energy and not converted to fat. Aside from this, when your body accumulates fat, metabolism would become slower. As such, your body would be burning carbs slower.
The way out is to eat your meals in smaller quantities. This increases metabolism and encourages your body to burn carbs faster.
6. Avoid processed and refined carbs
Nobody can effectively burn refined carbs. So if your food is full of them, it will slow down your carb metabolism. Carb metabolism refers to the rate at which your body is burning carbs.
How can you tell when you see processed carbs? This is quite simple. Any food that no longer looks like what we find from nature is processed. Refined carbs, on the other hand, are those whose fiber and nutrition have been removed during processing.
Some of these foods include bread, pasta, baked goods, and so on. Whole foods are better than these options. Your body would burn carbs from whole food more effectively.
7. Eat starchy fruits and veggies
The ideal place to get your carbs is from starchy fruits and veggies. If you get carbs from these sources, your body will burn them more efficiently. Examples of starchy veggies include yucca, sweet potatoes, parsnips, plantains, winter squashes, parsnips, and other delicious foods.
When you eat these carb sources, your body would recognize the carbs as actual foods. It would then burn them and use them to produce long-lasting energy. You are not likely to gain excess weight or have metabolic issues if you eat your carbs from starchy fruits and veggies.
8. Watch your overall carb intake
Even if you are getting carbs from the best sources and eating only in small amounts, you should still keep an eye on your overall car intake. You don’t have to count carbs and calories or measure out portions. But just watch what you’re eating. Something inside you tells you when you’re eating too much.
9. Be consistent
If you’re careful today and careless tomorrow about your eating habits and exercise, you might not see results. Going on and off with all the tips we have shared above might not work. You have to be consistent if you will see results.
Conclusion
How to burn carbs is not a problem if you know what to do. And that’s what we have shown you in this article. If you can stick with the principles and practices we have shared above, your body will be able to burn carbs more healthily and effectively.