Extreme Weight Loss trainer Chris Powell just squashed everything you thought you knew about carbs.
The personal trainer shared a myth buster video about the connection between carbohydrates and body fat on Instagram Saturday, August 19.
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He shared the video to show “how carbs REALLY work,” speaking to followers with a stack of cups for visual aid.
In the one-minute video, Powell explains that when you ingest carbs “in the tune of oatmeal, cereal, bread, pasta, sugar, whatever”, your liver absorbs up to 60-100 grams before they’re sent elsewhere in the body (the top cup in his video). Your liver sends those carbs to the brain and organs for proper function, boosts your metabolic rate and keeps a steady flow of glucose in your bloodstream, he says.
Once your liver absorbs the carbohydrates it needs, the rest moves to the bloodstream to be used by the muscles (middle stack of cups). “These are tanks for carbohydrates,” Powell says, pointing to his biceps. The muscles can require 250-400 grams of carbohydrates for fuel, he says.
Finally, any remaining carbs in your system is converted to triglycerides and is stored as body fat, he tells fans in the video, pointing to the bottom stack of cups.
To keep those carbs from overspilling into the bottom “fat” layer, Powell says you need to drain the liver and muscle tanks so carbs can also be of use to your body. How do you do that? Exercise.
“Exercise and continuous movement drains the carbs out of our muscles so that we can eat carbs and don’t overspill into body fat!” he writes in the video caption.
This line of thinking, Powell says, is why carb cycling is an effective method for weight maintenance or loss. “By cycling between high and low carb days, we keep draining the muscles (and liver) on low carb days, then fill them back up on high carb days,” he writes. “It is kinda like an ‘insurance policy’ against overspilling!”
Though he mentions that other factors can influence your body’s ability to digest carbs or the grams you can hold in each ‘tank’, this visual explanation debunking one of the most well-adopted myths for dieting is a solid explanation for how it all works.
Long story short, Powell says, “The more active you are, the more carbs you can eat.”
Anyone up for a run?
