Welcome to Part Four, the final article in a Four Part Series- this is a continuation of discussing how Carbohydrates break down in your system.

Eliminating carbohydrates is not only unhealthy, but can be downright dangerous. First, your body will turn to its lean muscle tissue for a source of energy, and instead of losing fat, you lose muscle. Many times on fad diets, when you see your weight drop fast from going without carbs, it’s because you’re losing muscle- muscle weighs more than fat. Even if you’re getting a good amount of protein, if you’re not getting enough carbs, your body will break down the muscle tissue to provide glucose (sugar) that it’s not receiving from the lack of carbohydrates. Since muscle helps burn fat, once you lose muscle, your body loses a significant amount of its ability to burn fat. In addition, your brain also suffers. Your brain is fueled by glucose, which comes from carbohydrates- without the carbs to fuel your brain, you will get weak, feel faint, spacey — you won’t be able to ‘think’ clearly enough to perform at school or your job. Operating equipment, as in driving a car, can absolutely become dangerous.

As you see, carbohydrates play a huge, important role in our body. Going on fad liquid diets, may make us lose weight initially- but that’s why we gain it right back, and usually more than what we initially lost. When we were on the fad diet, we lost lean muscle and we slowed our metabolism way down. Now we have to train our body to speed our metabolism back up, and let it know we are not in danger of starving.

Even though proteins are important to our body, as with everything, you need proteins in moderation. Your body cannot utilize a sixteen-ounce steak as well as it can a four-ounce chicken breast. Four ounces is about the limit on protein: any amount over that and the calories will usually get stored as fat, instead of being burned for energy. Of course different types of proteins are going to be utilized differently in your body- egg whites will be metabolized the fastest, while red meat, the slowest.

Fats are metabolized much slower in your body than other foods. There’s a reason it’s called fat, it’s because it gets stored as fat. Your body only needs small amounts of fat to keep healthy. If you find your hair or skin is getting dried out too easily, and then you may need to add just a hint, more fat into your diet- but other than that, you should be getting plenty of fats from the proteins you are eating.

The more we learn on how foods interact with our body, the easier it will be to learn how to combine the right amount of foods to lose weight. In these articles, we learned to combine protein with carbohydrates so that the protein will slow the release of insulin in your body. We also learned that sodium and fats are a big no-no. In addition, drinking a good amount of water- about 100 ounces a day, is still the best way to rid fat from your system.

We also now know that skipping meals will actually make us gain weight, instead of losing. Therefore, it’s important to eat every meal- just be smart in what you eat and the amount you eat. Doing these simple things will definitely help your metabolism speed back up, plus it will also build your lean muscle back up, which helps make a body lean and beautiful.

Getting older doesn’t mean we have to put up with a slowed metabolism. Making a few changes in how and what we eat can make all the difference in the world.

Tracey Criswell Wilson is an author on http://www.Writing.Com/
which is a site for Creative Writing. Many of Tracey’s writings can be found on this interactive site.