Many of us enjoy a baked potato alongside our steak, and that would be all well and good if we simply ate the potato. However a majority of us dress that potato up with toppings ranging from sour cream, to bacon, to melted cheddar cheese. These tasty additions to the potato are what leads to far more calories, grams of fat, and pounds packed on than we want or need to remain healthy.

Fat, or adipose tissue, is found in several places in your body. It’s location varies from person to person based on a multitude of factors from gender to hereditary traits passed through families. Toppings such as bacon, sour cream, and cheddar cheese contain large amounts of saturated fat. Just one cup of each can give you 130%, 205%, and 250% of your daily value of saturated fat respectively.

Once ingested, the fat is broken down during digestion by enzymes from the pancreas. Then the individual parts of the fat cells are absorbed into the cells lining the intestine. The cells are eventually reconstructed and released into the lymphatic system which moves them into the blood stream. These cells undergo another deconstruction and fatty acids are then absorbed from the blood into fat cells, muscle cells and liver cells. In these cells, under stimulation by insulin, fatty acids are made into fat molecules and stored as fat droplets.

It is important to remember also that as these fat droplets are stored, and as your body begins to store more and more fat, the actual number of fat cells in your body does not fluctuate, but remains the same with each individual cell simply growing in size to accommodate more cargo.

Avoiding these enticing toppings can drastically decrease the amount of saturated fats that you ingest on a daily basis. It can also allow your body to run more efficiently, instead of wasting energy to store more and more fat within it’s cell walls. Remember that a little extra something on your potato can result in a lot of extra fat on your body.

The general perspective currently held on carbohydrates is that they are to be avoided. But while bread baskets and pasta dishes are being shunned by the perpetually thin, their diets are still heavy on fruits and certain dairy products like yogurt. And while there is some truth to thinking that the latter are healthy and the prior are not, they are, in actuality, all carbohydrates.
Thinking that all carbs are evil is an unfortunate approach to eating and one that won’t serve you well if you’re looking to live a healthy lifestyle and to manage or lose weight. There are two different types of carbohydrates—simple and complex—and by understanding the difference between the two and which foods that fall in each category, the no carb adage can be thrown out the window.

Simple carbohydrates are found in refined grains (wheat, rice, etc.) and refined sugars and in fruits. The body more-or-less processes simple carbohydrates as it does white sugar, so unless simple carbohydrates are eaten in a form that includes other healthy and necessary vitamins and nutrients—as is the case with fruit—they should be avoided.

Complex Carbohydrates are digested more slowly than simple carbohydrates, but they carry additional nutrients and fiber that are lacking in processed flours and sugars. Fiber has many health benefits, but in terms of dieting, it makes the body feel fuller faster, curbing food intake. Complex carbohydrates can be found in numerous sources—from whole grains to legumes (beans, lentils, etc.) and many vegetables.

When the reality of carbohydrates is considered it becomes very clear that writing carbs off as the enemy of dieting is a drastically oversimplified concept. A diet without fruits, vegetables and dairy (a carbohydrate as well) would not only be seriously limiting but very unhealthy. So even if you do choose to shun bread and pasta, just be sure to make things clear: very specific simple carbohydrates are the culprits, not all carbs across the board. That’s why Healthy Curb was developed. It changes many simple carbohydrates into fiber in your diet, so they are eliminated like fiber. You no longer have to avoid carbs at all!

Carbohydrates are the major source of fuel for human bodies, giving us the energy to get through our lives. But with a multitude of sources for carbohydrates available and many health issues and risks related to eating carbs, it is important to understand the dietary and health concerns that eating carbs present and how to eat carbs responsibly in order to keep a healthy body without gaining weight or running the risk of developing Type II diabetes—both side effects of overeating too many of the wrong kind of carbohydrates.

The sugars that are broken down from carbohydrates are initially stored in our bodies in both muscles and the liver, but when those storage areas are tapped out, full to the brim, the sugars are then packed on as fat, causing the dreaded weight gain. In the extreme, this excess of glucose created by eating too many carbs results in an over production of insulin. If too much insulin is in the physiology, the body is overwhelmed and becomes unable to regulate insulin production, which results in Type II diabetes, a disease that can be fatal.

Carbohydrates are found in a wide variety of foods, from vegetables to dairy to fruit to grains, but the major culprits when it comes to the dangerous culprits in carb over-eating are simple, refined carbohydrates, such as white rice, white flour and white sugar. The refining processes that theses foods are put through takes them from their raw, complex carbohydrate form to a drastically nutritionally reduced product highly concentrated with sugars. These carbohydrates are much more easily broken down by enzymes in the digestive system, easily exposing the sugars they contain, which can cause stress to the pancreas, the organ which takes glucose from the bloodstream an puts it into the muscles to be used as fuel.

Another consequence of refining starches into simple carbohydrates is the removal of nutrients and the loss of fiber, and as we discussed in our last blog post. Fiber’s structure is so complex that the digestive enzymes in the body are incapable of breaking it down and digesting it, causing it to simply pass through the digestive system. It is fiber that makes unrefined simple carbohydrates, such as fruits, a healthy carbohydrate option.

The bottom line when it comes to carbohydrates is that they are not all bad for you, but the consumption of them needs to be carefully considered. By avoiding simple, refined carbohydrates that are low in fiber you can avoid the ills of weight gain, the threat of diabetes and maintain a healthy, energetic physiology. Healthy Curb was designed to change the way your body identifies carbohydrates, making it a healthy choice to help you on a road to good health.

When we choose to eat a dinner roll or a delicious doughnut, we need to understand there is a difference between these simple, sugary carbohydrates and complex carbohydrates in the way they are digested. Sugar and other simple carbohydrates are hard to digest and can alter your mood and lead to weight gain, unlike complex carbohydrates which are high in fiber and easily digested and eliminated.

The work of digesting carbs is a task assigned to digestive enzymes. These enzymes work to break down the carbs into their basic building blocks, which are essentially different varieties of sugar, making it possible to pass the carbs on from the digestive system and into the blood stream where they are put to work.

The process of digesting carbohydrates is an extensive one, taking place throughout the digestive tract. Even when we’re chewing our food, enzymes in saliva are starting to break down the starchy compounds in the carbs. Continue through the esophagus to the stomach and into the intestines, each section of the digestive system has a role in digesting carbs.

With Healthy Curb containing NT Factor, carbs undergo a much different process during digestion. Instead of being continually broken down by enzymes into their basic components of various sugars as they pass through the digestive system, the body instead treats these carbs like fiber. Fiber is a carbohydrate, but is falls into the category of carbs that cannot be digested. Fiber is present in the majority of carbohydrates in various quantities, but when the body interprets carbs that would otherwise be treated as sugar as fiber, the unhealthy aspects of these foods are simply passed through the digestive system rather than being absorbed. Fiber has many benefits for digestion and the bodies overall health, even if it’s only just passing through without sticking around. NT Factor is essentially making lemonade out of lemons by taking unhealthy carbs and making the body treat them like healthy fiber.