Are Carrots Paleo Friendly? (Low Carb or good for weight loss)

The paleo diet is well known to make people who do it feel a lot better.

Diet plays a big role in how you feel, but due to the wide variety of foods and how delicious they are it can be tempting to eat whatever you feel like.

Carrots are a root vegetable and when doing the paleo diet you may want to know if carrots are recommended, here’s what I found.

On the paleo diet, it’s recommended to eat as many vegetables as you like.

The one caveat is that some vegetables are very high in carbs which can lead to weight gain which can be undesirable for some people.

this article, I will explain if carrots are good carbs or bad carbs and if carrots are good for weight loss.

Are Carrots Good Carbs or Bad Carbs?

Most of the foods that a person will consume contain carbs.

Some of these carbs are defined as good carbs and bad carbs.

Here’s what category the carbs in carrots fall into, good or bad.

Carrots are particularly high in:

• Vitamin A
• Vitamin K
• Vitamin B-6
• Niacin
• Potassium

Cooking foods is believed to remove some of the nutrients.

I did a comparison of the nutrients in carrots based on whether they’re raw, boiled, baked, or fried.

You can see the results in this article about whether carrots have more sugar when raw.

How to tell good carbs from bad carbs?

A good way to differentiate processed foods that have bad carbs and unprocessed foods that are good carbs is to think about where the food came from.

The closer the food is to coming directly from an animal, or plant the less processed it is.

For example, fruit comes directly from a tree.

Between when it’s picked, and when you eat it it’s not changed in any way.

Here’s a really good Ted Talk, where Megan Kimble explains how she removed processed foods from her diet:

Comparing that to bread. With bread the grains are first harvested from the grass plant such as wheat, they’re then dried, cooked, crushed, and sieved to produce flour.

After that, the flour is mixed with other ingredients such as milk, eggs, yeast, and salt.

After that, it’s cooked.

Some of the other ingredients in bread are also processed, such as milk which is generally heat-treated and pasteurized which makes it last a lot longer.

In this process many of the nutrients in the food are destroyed through heating, crushing, and drying, according to medical professionals at Web MD.

The end result is they have carbs but overall fewer nutrients, making them bad carbs.

Also, sometimes called empty calories.

Based on this way of determining good carbs and low carbs, it can be seen that the following foods are bad carbs, highly processed sugars such as high fructose corn syrup, baked goods, fried foods (in batter), candy, and candy bars.

While these foods are OK from time to time, if you eat them regularly it can lead to weight gain.

Many of these foods are also very calorie-dense.

This will generally give you more calories than your body can burn, which it then stores as fat.

Various foods are known to be bad for putting on weight because they are calorie-dense.

Whereas, others can help with weight loss.

So, how do carrots fare, and are they good for weight loss?

Mark Sisson who wrote the book the Primal Blueprint, considered to be one of the best paleo diet books has said that there is a sweet spot for daily intake for weight loss.

He says this range is 50g to 100g.

“Minimizes insulin production and ramps up fat metabolism.

By eating nutritious vegetables and fruits (easy to stay in 50-100 gram range, even with generous servings), and staying satisfied with delicious high-fat foods (meat, fish, eggs, nuts, seeds), you can lose one to two pounds of body fat per week and then keep it off forever by eating in the maintenance range.”

– Mark Sisson, from high website Marks Daily Apple (source)

Carrots contain 10g of carbs per half a cup carrots.

This is equivalent to 1 and a half average-sized carrots.

This means you can eat a lot of carrots and still be within the 50g to 100g carb range.

Generally, vegetables are the most delicious when mixed with other foods.

So, most people won’t eat a lot of carrots in a day.

But, as an example let’s say you did, you could eat a maximum of 15 average-sized carrots and still be in a carb range that would burn excess fat on your body.

Eating only one type of food limits the nutrients your body gets.

As you may know, each type of vegetable and fruit has different levels of beneficial nutrients such as calcium, and vitamin C.

If you only eat one type of fruit or vegetable, or only a few chances are that you won’t be getting one or a few beneficial nutrients that your body needs to stay in good health, and fight off diseases.

There are a few different types of carrots, and carrots come in a range of different colors.

In stores, you’ll generally only find orange carrots.

But, at farmers’ markets, you can find different colored ones.

There are yellow, orange, and purple carrots. I explained how orange and yellow carrots differ in nutrients in this article about which is better yellow or orange carrots.

Belly fat can begin to form due to eating too many calories, and not exercising your body.

Because diet plays a big role in putting on or reducing belly fat, here’s whether carrots help or lead to the accumulation of body fat.

Exactly what fat your body uses when you’re in a calorie deficit is genetic.

For example, some people will lose fat from other regions of their body such as their arms more than from their belly.

And your belly can be the last place that your body utilizes fat for energy.

But, on balance provided you’re in a calorie deficit eventually the fat from your belly will be used up.

And won’t accumulate again provided you’re in a calorie deficit.