Why Avoiding Carbs Is Compromising Your Health & Performance

Carbohydrates often get vilified in wellness circles—but context matters. Your body’s carb needs shift depending on factors like stress, movement, light exposure, and even hormonal status. While reducing carbs can help certain individuals with blood sugar regulation or metabolic flexibility, there are times when going too low-carb can backfire. Here are five situations where carbs may actually be your ally, not your enemy:

1. If You’re Physically Active

Carbs are your body’s most readily available source of fuel—especially during high-intensity training. When you're lifting, sprinting, or doing longer bouts of endurance work, muscle glycogen (stored carbohydrate) is the dominant energy source. If you consistently train hard while chronically restricting carbs, you may experience:

Decreased performance and recovery

Increased cortisol (your stress hormone)

Thyroid downregulation over time

Refuelling with carbs post-workout helps restore glycogen, support muscle repair, and reduce stress hormones [1,2].

🧠 TLDR: If you move a lot, don’t be afraid to eat for it.

2. During Times of High Stress

Chronic stress increases your body's demand for glucose. Your brain alone burns through about 120g of glucose per day, and during stress, your need for stable energy and neurotransmitter support goes up [3]. Low-carb diets can sometimes amplify the stress response by increasing cortisol and adrenaline to maintain blood sugar levels [4].

Adding in strategic carbs—especially earlier in the day—can help:

Lower cortisol

Support serotonin production

Improve sleep and parasympathetic nervous system activity [5,6]

🕒 Front-loading carbs earlier in the day aligns better with your natural insulin rhythm. Our fat loss diet protocol aligns with the natural circadian rhythms.

3. If You Live in a High UV Environment

Your environment informs your metabolism. In equatorial or high-UV regions, light exposure increases carbohydrate metabolism by enhancing insulin sensitivity and mitochondrial activity [7,8]. This is likely part of our evolutionary adaptation: in the summer or in bright climates, carbs are abundant and well-utilized.

Low-carb diets in these settings can create a mismatch between light signals and fuel availability, which may cause circadian confusion, lower energy, and hinder recovery [9].

Learn to eat in alignment with your light environment to support energy, metabolism and hormones.

☀️ More sun = more carbs. It’s how your body evolved to thrive.

4. With Low Thyroid Function

Thyroid hormone is a master regulator of metabolism—and it loves carbs. Glucose availability helps convert T4 into active T3, your body’s main usable thyroid hormone [10,11]. Chronically low carbohydrate intake can impair this conversion, especially in women.

Low-carb + low thyroid = a recipe for:

Fatigue

Hair thinning

Cold intolerance

Slowed metabolism

🍠 Sweet potatoes are thyroid-friendly. Don’t fear them.

5. When Leptin Is Low

Leptin is your body's satiety and energy-sensing hormone. When leptin is low—due to under-eating, overexercising, or very low body fat—your brain thinks you're starving. This slows your thyroid, decreases reproductive hormones, and increases hunger [12].

Strategic refeeding with carbs can help restore leptin levels, signal safety to the brain, and reboot the metabolism—especially in women who’ve hit a fat-loss plateau or are experiencing hypothalamic amenorrhea [13].

🧬 Sometimes the fix isn’t cutting more—but eating enough, especially carbs.

Still Avoiding Carbs? You Might Be Slowing Down Your Fat Loss

Successful fat loss depends on more than just eating less—it requires a solid plan, consistency, and a healthy metabolism. Two key players in keeping your metabolism running efficiently are leptin and thyroid function. And here’s the twist: carbohydrates actually support both. When you avoid carbs for too long, you risk slowing down your metabolism, making fat loss harder over time.

Ready to burn fat without cutting out carbs?

Our Fat Loss Diet Protocol is designed to help you lose fat while keeping carbs in your diet—because sustainability matters.

Bottom Line

Carbs aren’t “good” or “bad”—they’re contextual. Instead of fearing them, learn how to use them as a tool to support your physiology, not fight it.

🔁 Save this post if you're training hard, under stress, or feel stuck in a low-energy state. Sometimes, adding carbs back in is the thing that helps everything else click.

All our Blog posts are Not Medical or Personal advice & are not intended to cure, treat, prevent or diagnose any medical conditions. The information in this blog post is for Educational & Research purposes only. If you wish to engage with anything written in the Blog posts, you agree to do so at your own Risk & Responsibility. Results may vary. This blog post contains affiliate links.

📚 References

1. Burke, L. M., Hawley, J. A., Wong, S. H. S., & Jeukendrup, A. E. (2011). Carbohydrates for training and competition. Journal of Sports Sciences, 29(Suppl 1), S17–S27.

2. Ivy, J. L. (2004). Regulation of muscle glycogen repletion, muscle protein synthesis and repair following exercise. Journal of Sports Science & Medicine, 3(3), 131–138.

3. McEwen, B. S. (2007). Physiology and neurobiology of stress and adaptation: central role of the brain. Physiological Reviews, 87(3), 873–904.

4. Cahill, G. F. (2006). Fuel metabolism in starvation. Annual Review of Nutrition, 26, 1–22.

5. Christ, Tabea, et al. The acute effects of pre-and mid-exercise carbohydrate ingestion on the immunoregulatory stress hormone release in experienced endurance athletes—a systematic review. Frontiers in Sports and Active Living 6 (2024): 1264814.

6.Wurtman, Richard J., and Judith J. Wurtman. Carbohydrates and depression. Scientific American 260.1 (1989): 68-75.

7. Buhr, E. D., & Takahashi, J. S. (2013). Molecular components of the mammalian circadian clock. Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology, (217), 3–27.

8. Lu Y, et al. Light modulates glucose and lipid homeostasis via the sympathetic nervous system. Science Advances. 2024, 10:eadp3284.

9. Ruiz, et al. (2022). Nutritional entrainment of circadian rhythms under alignment and misalignment. Clinical Nutrition ESPEN, 51, 50–71

10. Kim, B. (2008). Thyroid hormone as a determinant of energy expenditure and the basal metabolic rate. Thyroid, 18(2), 141–144.

11. Bianco, A. C., & Kim, B. W. (2006). Deiodinases: implications of the local control of thyroid hormone action. Journal of Clinical Investigation, 116(10), 2571–2579.

12. Ahima, R. S., & Flier, J. S. (2000). Leptin. Annual Review of Physiology, 62(1), 413–437.

13. Loucks, A. B. (2007). Low energy availability in the marathon and other endurance sports. Sports Medicine, 37(4–5), 384–387.