Our bodies need three primary macronutrients: carbohydrates, proteins and fats. These three main macronutrients are essential to achieve a balanced diet.

Proteins and fats maintain your daily bodily functions, such as the repair and creation of muscles, body tissues and keeping your nervous system healthy. That leaves carbohydrates to provide both complex and simple sugars as your source for the calories necessary to generate energy for your body.

Carbohydrates provide more than 60 percent of the required energy your body needs for both sleeping and daily activity. So why is there so much concern over low-carb, no-carb diets and such a big emphasis on carb-loading for exercise?

My answer is always the same to anyone that is trying to get healthy and jump-starting their fitness: "Beware of carbohydrates." Now that is a pretty generic statement, so let me dig into this carbohydrate issue.

First of all, there are a few schools of thought on the no-carbohydrate/low-carbohydrate vs. carbohydrates in your diet debate.

First, what are carbohydrates? Carbohydrates are defined as sugars in all their various forms. The most common carbohydrate is in the form of monosaccharide, which is glucose. Most fitness folks know that glucose is the primary fuel source for your body and transforms into ATP or Adenosine Triphosphate. The carbohydrate in the form of glucose is the body's first choice when it needs energy during exercise.

Carbohydrates are found in a wide range of foods like grains, breads, beans, milk, candy, baked goods, potatoes, pasta, soft drinks and corn to name a few. Carbohydrates consist of sugars, fibers and starches and make up one of the most abundant food sources we have on the planet.

Carbohydrates come in two forms depending on their chemical makeup: simple carbohydrates and complex carbohydrates. Simple carbohydrates are high in sugar and low in nutritional value and include sugars such as fructose, dextrose, glucose and sucrose. Complex carbohydrates have high nutritional value and are made up of fiber, starches and chains of three or more single sugar molecules linked together.

Nutritionally, complex carbohydrates are by far the healthiest to eat, while simple carbohydrates are often called empty carbohydrates and convert quickly into fat stores in your body.

When you consume carbohydrates, your blood sugar goes up, which triggers an insulin response in your body. Simple carbohydrates with their simple sugars create a quick insulin spike and then quickly drop again creating the craving for more carbohydrates after your insulin levels go down. Complex carbohydrates create a gradual insulin response. This gradual increase in insulin gives you the benefit of feeling more full for a longer period of time, typically two to three hours in duration between meals. It is very important to know what type of carbohydrates you are consuming, simple or complex.

Experienced health and fitness professionals have known for a long time we overconsume both simple and complex carbohydrates. How many carbohydrates should we eat daily? Here is what the USDA recommends: If you eat approximately 2,000 calories per day, you should take in based on USDA Dietary Guideline 250 grams of carbohydrates.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a column on fueling with fat. In that column, I wrote that you should limit your carbohydrate intake and if you have good levels of protein intake, your body's natural course is to use fat for fueling. The simple answer to this very complicated question is this. When eating carbohydrates, only consume complex carbohydrates. Then reduce your complex carbohydrate intake to ensure you eat no more than what is recommended based on your daily caloric intake. If you want to lean down, then adjust your carbohydrates to less than the recommended daily intake and increase your protein intake.

This will force your body to get additional fuel requirements from fat stores and in turn, reduce your BMI or Body Mass Index.

Judd Jones is a director for the Hagadone Corporation.