Is it true that … cutting out carbs helps you lose weight?

Weight loss is about consuming fewer calories than you burn, and reducing your intake of refined carbohydrates can play a part in that

This is a bit of a grey area, says Bethan Crouse, a performance nutritionist at Loughborough University. She wouldn’t advise the athletes she works with to completely cut out carbohydrates – foods such as bread, grains, potatoes and sweets. “However,” she says, “reducing carbohydrate intake can be beneficial for weight loss, if we can moderate total energy intake.”

Weight loss comes down to energy balance: consuming fewer calories than we burn. There are many ways to achieve this: exercising more, eating less, or choosing foods that are lower in calories. Cutting back on some carbohydrates can be one way to create this deficit, she says. Not because carbs are uniquely “fattening”, but because other macronutrients such as fibre, protein and fat tend to be more filling. “If we spend more of our calorie budget on these foods, we feel fuller for longer,” Crouse says.