15 High Carb Foods to Lose Weight

Most people are taught to be afraid of eating carbohydrates, and avoid a high carb diet. There’s really no reason for that. You can add more carbs to your diet and still lose weight.

How do high carb foods help with weight loss?

Carbohydrates do not inhibit weight loss, as many low carbohydrate diet and keto zealots would want you to believe, but actually assist weight loss.

Meaning that carbohydrates are not bad, but instead complex carbohydrates in particular are really good for you, speed up your weight loss. Yes, you can increase your daily carb intake and lose more body weight!

Carbohydrates Vs Protein

People think that they should be eating more protein. And the problem is not promoting protein. Protein is wonderful for multiple reasons, one of them is the ability to retain more muscle mass as you’re losing fat. The problem is promoting protein while excluding or radically reducing other macronutrients.

Actually, a few months ago, I had this new client who was afraid of pre-diabetes because of her lab results. Yet her concerns went away after her new set of lab results in just a couple of months of following a high carbohydrate diet following the Fitness Reloaded program.

With Fitness Reloaded we don’t exclude anything. We have no banned foods or macros. We eat carbohydates, protein, and fat (but we are not big on saturated fat and definitely not on trans fat.)

Simple carbs, complex carbs: Not all carbohydates have the same effect on satiety

One of the habits we have at Fitness Reloaded is we keep a Habit Diary. We also measure our fiber content. Why? Because fiber helps you stay satisfied for longer, fills you up in fewer calories, and it’s also extremely healthy. Yes, you’re gonna live longer with less chances of heart disease, diabetes, and cndadncer!

So if you were looking for the green light to eat more refined carbohydrates, then you won’t find that here. Now that doesn’t mean you can’t eat them, you totally can. But the foods we encourage you to eat more of are the complex carbs so you get to increase fiber.

Most people do not get enough fiber. The minimum guideline for dietary fiber is 25 grams on a daily basis. The majority of Americans eat only 12 to 15 grams per day. Less than 5% of people meet that minimum guideline.

Everybody should be eating more fiber. And just because it looks like you’re eating a lot of, say, vegetables, does not actually mean you’re eating a lot of fiber.

You have to look at your meal plan from a calorie perspective. You might think by eating a big salad with your steak or fish that you are eating enough vegetables. But, out of your 600 calorie meal, only 80 calories came from vegetables.

So you might be thinking you’re eating a lot of vegetables. But are you? The Two Metrics we use at Fitness Reloaded:

If you look at meals from a calorie intake perspective, you can clearly see you are not.

There are two metrics that we use internally at Fitness Reloaded to measure if fiber is adequate enough.

Metric #1: Is your food in the high yield group?

The first metric applies to specific foods that are amazing for weight loss. If you have 6 grams of fiber or more per 100 calories then fiber is also high volume. That means, that for example, a fiber bar wouldn’t be in the high-yield category because it’s not a high volume food (unlike for example an eggplant that provides a ton of volume in just 140 cal!) This is extremely important for weight loss.

Learn more about the high yield food and Calorie Investing at the Counting Calories For Weight Loss article.

Metric #2: Is your meal high fiber?

The second metric is about meals. I call it the Meal GPA. When you combine a lot of things together, ideally you want to get at least 10 grams of fiber per 400 calories.

You might be wondering, how do I measure them? First of all, if you Google the nutrition facts, you will see the amount of fiber. Also, if you’re logging your food in an app, most apps give you the fiber content of foods so you can know specifically how much you are getting.

Now we can move onto our list of…

15 high carb foods that assist with weight loss.

1. Lentils

And the first one is lentils! Lentils are high in fiber. It’s very easy to make a lentil soup and get 15 grams of fiber straight off of that.

You can make lentils in soups, you can make them in salads, you can make them in appetizers, you can put them in lunches, and you can add them in dinners. And they’re very easy to make. They need no soaking.

2. Beans

Beans are full of fiber, especially great northern beans. Not all beans have the same fiber content per calorie. You can look that up on the label. Beans, just like lentils, are very versatile. You can use them in salads, you can make them in soups, you can make burritos, there are different types of dishes that you can make.

So, we recommend that you have beans at least three times per week. Beans, and especially great northern beans, are a great food to add to your diet. Other options are kidney beans and chickpeas, or garbanzo beans.

3. Split Peas

And another option that’s extremely high in fiber is split peas. They have 26 grams of fiber per 341 calories.

So if you had a split pea soup for lunch, you already got 26 grams of fiber just like that. From one meal, you already met the minimum requirement.

4. Whole Wheat Pasta

Let’s start with pasta, but not just any pasta. Whole wheat pasta, or, maybe even lentil pasta. What really matters with the pasta is that you look at the label and you see how much fiber there is per the calories. Because you can find whole wheat pasta with just 3 grams of fiber per 180 calories. And you can also find the same amount of calories per serving size and get 6 grams of fiber.

So you really have to check the label because that is going to really make a difference.

And, you can combine pasta with other high fiber foods like broccoli or other vegetables. You can make a pasta salad. And pasta salad can be really high in fiber and very filling, and make you happy. Meaning, you can lose weight eating more pasta. You could eat pasta every day if you wanted to!

5. Whole Wheat Bread

The same thing with bread, just like with pasta. You have to check the label to see how much fiber are you getting.

Look for whole wheat bread, or something similar. So, not as processed as white bread. But just because it looks good on the front of the package doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look at the back of the package and read the label. That way you can really see how many fiber grams there are per serving, and this is what’s gonna make a difference.

6. Oats

Oats are a great choice, especially for breakfast. Oats fill you up. They have soluble fiber, which is amazing. Soluble fiber cleans cholesterol out of your system, so it lowers LDL.

7. Farro

Another option is farro. It’s a grain. Farro has 5 grams of fiber per 170 calories. You can put it in a salad. You can actually mix it with lentils to make some amazing salads. I recommend you check out recipes with farro for salads or for soups.

8. Apples

Now we move on to fruits. So some fruits you should definitely be eating more of are apples. They have about 4 grams of fiber per fruit and they’re very filling. They take a while to eat. If you like apples, go eat an apple.

9. Pears

Pears are another great option. Pears have about 6 grams of fiber per fruit.

10. Bananas

Now, bananas are not as high in fiber, but of course, they’re very healthy. And very high in potassium. They have multiple benefits. But what I really like about them is they are convenient. It’s just so easy to grab a banana and go. And convenience really matters with weight loss, because naturally, we navigate to doing what’s most convenient.

11. Sweet Potatoes

Now let’s talk about vegetables. When looking at high carb options, I’m going to recommend using the sweet potato. They have three and a half grams of fiber per 100 calories. And they also taste delicious, especially if you can bake them and caramelize them. You can also steam them. And you can combine them with all sorts of other vegetables that are really good.

12. Beets

Beets have 7 grams of fiber per 100 calories. Plus, they’re really healthy.

13. Spelt Flour

And finally, we are gonna finish off with baking. If you like baked goods, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be eating them when you’re losing weight.

My recommendation is to replace your normal flour with high fiber flour. You can find multiple choices. You can go to the store and see where they have all the flours and see the back of the package to see what it is that package says. Spelt flour is a great high fiber flour.

14. Buckwheat Flour

Or try buckwheat flour. You can also find some flours on Amazon that are really high in fiber and are good replacements for white flour.

This way you get to make your muffins, or cookies, whatever it is you’re making. And it’s a much healthier choice.

15. Monk Fruit

You can also replace sugar with an alternative like monk fruit. This way you get zero calories from your sweetener. And that concludes our list of 15 high carb foods to lose weight.

Now you can throw out that low carb diet and still shed fat. A high carb meal plan is the way to go.

You can keep being happy while losing weight and beyond. Remember that weight loss is self-care.

Start your free trial today. Please leave a comment below letting us know what type of foods are you gonna be eating more of now that you know it’s okay to eat carbs while you lose weight?