Wheat vs White Bread, What's the Difference?

This week we’ll be discussing the difference between complex and simple carbohydrates.

Simple carbs are found in food or drinks high in sugar, such as soda, juice, candy, etc., white bread, white potatoes, pastries, etc. While complex carbohydrates are found in foods such as vegetables, beans, oatmeal, whole wheat bread, sweet potatoes, etc.

We can see clear differences between the simple and complex carbohydrate foods just based on what they are and their impact on your health. The pastries, candies, and sodas, are clearly not good for our health as opposed to the oatmeal, vegetables, and sweet potato.

But besides the obvious differences, we may look at the nutrition label and see that foods like white and wheat breads are fairly similar in calories.

Here we see the nutrition info back to back.

In this comparison, the whole wheat bread is actually higher in calories and carbohydrates. When tracking your calories and working towards loosing weight, this doesn’t seem like a very favorable option.

However, when we begin to look deeper into the nutrition, we can see that the whole wheat is higher in calcium, iron, fiber, and protein in comparison to the white bread.

Obviously, the vitamins are important but we will really see a difference in our energy levels, hunger, cravings for sugar, etc. when comparing simple to complex carbohydrates.

The simple carbohydrates will result in a rapid release of energy once digested. This raises our insulin levels which quickly crash, making us feel low energy levels and hungry.

In comparison, the complex carbohydrate is rich in fiber, making us feel fuller longer and with a healthy digestive system, higher in protein, also keeping us full, and take longer to digest, keeping our insulin levels stable, minimizing the rise and fall of energy and hunger.

I know I can say from experience that I can eat white bread (like when going out to eat and it’s on the table) without really filling up. But give me the same amount of something like broccoli or brown rice and I probably couldn’t finish half of the same size serving. You can also notice a difference when eating a serving of french fries that can be 1 or more potatoes vs a whole sweet potato.

This is where the difference lies in how important it is to make the right choices when picking our carbs. While we have the flexibility to make the choices we want to fit into our calorie intake for the day, it is really important to make the best choices that will make us feel full, satisfied, and healthy.

Hope this helps break down the differences! If any questions arise, please don’t hesitate to ask!

On another note, everyone is doing really great recently! We’ve seen huge improvements of strength gain and body fat lost, so keep up the good work!

Finally, I am currently accepting only 1-2 more additional clients on my schedule (until my school schedule opens up for the summer), so if you haven’t been able to make a session for a while or know someone who would love to start improving their health please let me know! I have a couple deals running for new/returning clients earning 5 free sessions or half priced sessions. Additionally, any current client who refers me to someone and who signs up for training will earn a free session as a reward!

Be on the lookout for this week’s recipe of the week!

Thank you as always and looking forward to another great week!