Without question, wholesome carbohydrates are the best choices for fuelling your muscles and promoting good health. People of all ages and athletic abilities should nourish themselves with abundant fruits, vegetables, and whole-grain foods, with adequate protein and health-ful fats balanced into the meals and snacks.

Some athletes mistakenly think that honey is nutritionally superior to refined white sugar. If you prefer honey because of the pleasant taste, fine. But it’s not superior for health or performance! Sugar in any form has insignificant amounts of vitamins or minerals, and your body digests any type of sugar or carbohydrate into glucose before using it for fuel.

Plants store extra sugars in the form of starch. In contrast, fruits tend to convert starches into sugars as they ripen. (Remember all the stuff I was saying about bananas? ) The potatoes, rice, bread, and other starches that you eat are digested into glucose, then are either burned for energy or stored for future use. Humans store extra glucose mostly in the form of muscle glycogen and liver glycogen. This glycogen is readily available for energy during exercise.

Sugars and starches have similar abilities to fuel muscles but different abilities to nourish them with vitamins and minerals:

• The carbohydrates in sugary soft drinks provide energy but no vitamins or minerals.
• The carbohydrates in wholesome fruits, vegetables, and grains provide energy, vitamins, minerals, fibre, and phytochemicals – the fuel and spark plugs that your body’s engine needs to function best.

Carbo Loading for Endurance Exercise
Carbo Load Daily
Your daily diet should be carbohydrate-based and balanced with adequate protein and appropriate fat. A daily 55-65% carbohydrate intake prevents chronic glycogen depletion and allows you not only to train at your best but also to compete at your best.

Do Not Fat Load (Note to self)
To reduce your fat intake to 20-25% of your calories, have toast with jam rather than butter, pancakes moistened with maple syrup rather than margarine, and pasta with tomato sauce rather than with oil and cheese. A little fat is OK, but don’t fat load.

To achieve a 55-65% carbohydrate diet, you have to trade some of the fat calories for more carbohydrates. For example, trade the fat calories in two pats of butter and a dollop of sour cream for a second plain baked potato. When you trade fat for more carbs, you need to eat a larger volume of food to obtain adequate calories.

Carbohydrates for Building Muscles?
Carbohydrates are fundamental for athletes because unlike protein or fat, carbs are readily stored in your muscles for fuel during exercise. Adequate protein is important for building and protecting your muscles, but you should dedicate only one-third of your dinner plate to protein-rich foods.

Are Carbohydrates Fattening?
Fad diets preach the message that carbohydrates are fattening. Wrong! Carbohydrates are not fattening. Excess calories are fattening, in particular excess calories of fats are fattening – butter on bread (meep L), oil on pasta, mayonnaise on sandwiches, cheese on crackers. Fats provide 36 calories per teaspoon, compared with 16 for carbohydrates. But the conversion of excess carbohydrates into body fat is limited because you burn the carbs when you exercise. Your body preferentially burns the carbohydrates and stores the fats. But be aware that a continuous intake of excess calories from carbohydrates will eventually contribute to weight gain. When your glycogen stores are filled, the excess calories will be stored as body fat.

Rather than try to stay away from breads and bagels and other grains, remember these points:
Carbohydrates are less fattening than fatty foods.
You need carbs to fuel your muscles.
You burn carbs off during hard exercise. Carbohydrates are a friendly fuel; the enemy is excess calories of fats.
When dieting to lose weight, you should energize with fibre-rich cereal, whole-grain breads, potatoes, and other carbohydrate-dense vegetables but reduce your intake of the butter, margarine, and mayonnaise that often accompany them.