Welcome to The Eat This Not That Podcast, brought to you by Bob's Redmill. I'm John Hammond, and this is Megan Murphy.

Hi, everyone. And this episode is all about tackling one of the things that almost anyone I speak to these days are really thinking about and saying that they're trying to cut back on.

Carbs. Yep. And nobody said losing weight was easy, of course,

but a lot of us make it harder than it has to be, especially when it comes to cutting carbs, right? It's one of those things that weighs on your shoulder. And a lot of our favorite foods are carbs. So when you think about, like, I'm going to get rid of carbs, all I think about is I got to get rid of pizza. Pizza, pasta,

all my favorites, right? And you don't,

you don't have to get rid of it. Pizza, pasta, yeah, all my favorites, right? And you don't,

you don't have to get rid of it. And you shouldn't think in elimination terms, because that always backfires. It never works well. So just because you're looking to slim down, doesn't mean you have to torture yourself. And you don't have to remove all this stuff cold turkey either. That's, that's never a great plane of attack, by the way.

Not only is it possible to cut too much, actually, and deprive yourself of energy because that's what carbohydrates are, right? That's how you get through your day. And if you're exercising, you definitely need carbohydrates. Or if you just have like a very active lifestyle, maybe it's a, you know, maybe you work a very kind of like manual labor type of job or you're on your feet a lot during the day or you're walking a lot. Like you need energy to kind of get through that and carbs are important there. So you want to be careful of just ditching carbs, cold turkey, or eliminating it too much. Yeah, everything in moderation, right? Absolutely. And the best way to win the carb battle, really, it's just to keep it simple.

Incorporate healthy hacks, you know, a little bit at a time to get yourself used to life with less of the starchy stuff.

You don't need drastic measures, we promise.

Promise.

Just a few of these simple steps we've rounded up that'll push you towards progress with changes you can really handle.

Right.

Now, have you ever dealt with cutting carbs?

Have you ever had like the carb cutting moment in your life?

Yes.

I've never gone cold turkey like you mentioned.

I think everything in moderation, but I know that when I limit carbs or I'm smarter about the carb choices I make, I feel, you know, just a little tighter, a little less bloated. I definitely feel it. So day to day now, I don't load up on the carbs usually. Just, you know, once in a while. But what about you? I've done the same thing. It was a while ago. And it's just, you know, look, I feel like we go through these cycles where, you know, we get these food villains that are thrown up on the, the wanted poster at the supermarket or in the health food stores, right? And it's like, fats, carbs, sugar, you know, and like, that's the villain of the moment and you avoid it at all costs. And, you know, look, at the end of the day, everyone thought fat was the problem. So everybody was eating low fat products. And what they didn't realize is like you remove the fat and what do you pile in? Sugar. Sugar, artificial, everything. Right? So fat really wasn't the problem that it's a problem, but not as big of a problem, right? It's not an easy target. And carbs is the same kind of thing. What you really want to focus on and what I learned after trying to cut back on carbs significantly

is I was really having those kind of energy issues. So I really started to change my focus

and focused not so much on carbs, but on refined carbs. Yes, absolutely. Learned how to read

a nutrition label. And even though something might say it's made with whole grains or something

is whole wheat, if it's not 100% whole wheat, if you look at the nutrition label and that first ingredient is still enriched wheat flour, well, guess what? If it's enriched, it means something has been stripped away from it. So that's not really whole grain. That's not really what you're looking for. That means it's refined. So, you know, as we as we kick into these, just keep that in mind. Like don't, you don't have to run away from your favorite products, be a little smarter about reading the labels, look at the ingredients, stay away from things that are overly processed or refined. Now, if you love pizza as much as I do, and I do love pizza, you know, again, it's one of those foods where you hear cutting carbs and that's what you think about. You don't have to ditch pizza, but ditch the deep dish, right? Because you want to cut down on the crust because that's where all the carbs are. By going for a thinner crust, you get the taste that you love without sacrificing the unnecessary amount of carbs to get it.

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