Have Your Carbs and Eat Them Too

It's time to get over the idea that all carbs are bad. Even the media are starting to forget that the no-carb craze existed, and you should, too. Good carbs do exist, and they should be a part of your diet.
"But Jillian," you ask, "how can that be when so many other diets have banished carbs?" Here's why: My program evaluates carbs differently from the way the Atkins and South Beach programs do. These diets define carbs as "good" or "bad" according to the glycemic index, a rating based on how quickly a carbohydrate breaks down and releases glucose into your blood. The problem is, these diets evaluate only the quality, not the quantity, of carbs in any given food. So you're not getting the whole story. As a result, these diets forbid you to eat many foods that actually belong in a healthy diet.
The poor innocent carrot is a perfect example of how the glycemic index can give a good food a bad name. The carbohydrates in a carrot turn into blood sugar quickly, which gives the carrot a high glycemic rating, making it a no-no on many popular diets. If you step back and look at the big picture, though, the total number of carbs in a carrot is low. Even though those carbs are turning into blood sugar quickly, there are so few that their overall effect on blood sugar is not very dramatic, so in fact they're okay to eat.