Can Carbohydrate from Our Diet Become Body Fat?

Since the potential to store carbohydrate as glycogen is somewhat limited, we need another means of storing excessive diet carbohydrate energy. As our liver and skeletal muscle is busy making glycogen, our liver and fat tissue will also begin to convert some of the extra glucose to fat. The fat that is made in our fat cells is stored within those cells. Meanwhile, the fat that is made in the liver is transported in the blood to fat cells and to a lesser degree other tissue such as muscle, breast tissue, etc.

Excessive carbohydrate intake can be converted to fat and decrease daily fat use leading to increased body fat.

Interestingly, scientists have determined that our ability to convert excessive carbohydrate to fat might not be as efficient under normal conditions as we once thought. It now seems that consuming excessive carbohydrate can increase the level of body fat by decreasing our use of fat as a daily energy source. That’s because our body is forced to use more carbohydrate as promoted by insulin. This situation tends to happen more when people eat too many calories and have type 2 diabetes (or prediabetes).