Pass the bagels.

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BuzzFeed Life consulted two experts for this story: Dr. Holly Lofton, director of the Medical Weight Management Program at NYU Langone Medical Center, and Brian St. Pierre, MS, RD, CSCS, director of performance nutrition at Precision Nutrition.

First let's talk about what carbs actually are.

Simply put, carbohydrates are sugars that our body uses for energy. Carbohydrates fuel everything we do, from thinking and other mental tasks to anything we do with our bodies — walking, twiddling our thumbs, or going hard in a workout. Eating carbs is like putting fuel into your body's gas tank.

The carbs we eat are made usable as energy by the digestive system, which breaks down carbohydrates into glucose, the sugar in blood that powers the cells in our brains and bodies.

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You should eat carbs (and be wary of advice to avoid to them).

St. Pierre and Lofton believe that one of the biggest misconceptions about carbs is that they're inherently bad for you, particularly when it comes to weight management. St. Pierre says that not only are carbs important for giving you energy and keeping your body functioning properly — from keeping cortisol in check to helping to regulating the thyroid — but they're not inherently unhealthy or even fattening.

In fact, Lofton says that carbs are important especially if you're trying to keep your weight in check with diet and/or exercise, because avoiding carbs altogether can leave you without energy to work out or lead to cravings, which in turn results in bingeing on or overeating other foods.

If you have specific body-composition goals, check out some of BuzzFeed Life's recent reporting on fat loss, gaining muscle, and burning calories.

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