- Low-carb diet?
Today, many people are on low-carbohydrate diets, such as the Atkins Diet, which require them to carefully tally exactly how many carbs they are ingesting per day. High-carbohydrate diets have been linked with weight gain. Usually, people will consume carbohydrates in the form of wheat flours, white (processed) flours, corn flours (tortillas, corn chips), and potatoes (potato chips, mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, and boiled potatoes)
- Learning about nutrition
To decide how to distribute carbs and calories in your personal diet, talk to your doctor, who may have some recommendations for you that are based on your own family medical history and previous health issues. You may also want to consider seeing a qualified nutritionist, who can create healthy meal plans for a range of purposes, from athletic training to weight loss to pregnancy. Understanding your own body is very important - for example, if you find that wheat makes you feel puffy or sluggish, you may have an allergy or intolerance - some people basically cut out most carbs if they have celiac disease or wheat intolerance, because these gluten-based carbs make them feel ill. If you need help figuring out which foods don't agree with you, a scratch test at an allergist's office may shed some light.
There are thousands of great books on nutrition available, but there are also some questionable tomes, written by laymen (or women) who really aren't qualified in a medical sense. If you read many diet and nutrition books, be sure to look for those that are written by medical doctors.