Low carb diet

You have probably been dieting at least once in your life. You probably hate dieting. You are not alone. People love to be trim and healthy, but they hate to diet, and rightly so. Dieting deprives us but we must know all diets are not created equally. There is one type of diet that lets you eat well...

You have probably been dieting at least once in your life. You probably hate dieting. You are not alone. People love to be trim and healthy, but they hate to diet, and rightly so. Dieting deprives us but we must know all diets are not created equally. There is one type of diet that lets you eat well and still lose weight; it is the much-touted low-carbohydrate diet.

What is the low-carb diet?

People diet for two primary reasons - to lose weight, to improve health, or both. If you are a healthy adult, within weight limits and without obese family members, the food pyramid recommendations of the USDA will work fine. That will last as long as you remember that the carbohydrates that are recommended are those contained in whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. However, even those who are healthy and who are not overweight can maintain their health and vitality by following a reduced carbohydrate lifestyle to stay health. For those who are overweight or who have diabetes, the low calorie and low fat diets recommended by the government do not work well. For diabetics, they can actually worsen the condition. The only diet that strikes at the real cause of obesity, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, hypoglycemia, and type two diabetes is a low carbohydrate diet. Many doctors and nutritionists are now starting to recognize this fact. There are many different versions of the low-carb diets, such as Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution, Protein Power, Neanderthin, The Carbohydrate Addict's Lifestyle Plan, Life Without Bread, and many others. All of them have one thing in common, and that is a very strict reduction in the consumption of carbohydrates. Most low-carb diets replace carbohydrates with fats and proteins, and although diets vary in their recommendations, as a general rule, a low-carb diet is synonymous with a high-fat and moderate protein diet. Those on a low-carb diet should get at least 60 or 70 percent of their daily calorie intake from fat.

Carbohydrates should make up less than 10 percent, and in some cases, less than 5 percent of daily calorie intake. After being told for years to eat a low-fat, high-carbohydrate balanced diet, Americans are now the fattest people on Earth, and getting even fatter every year. The occurrences of adult-onset diabetes is also increasing, so we now know, because research has shown, that fat is not the enemy but carbohydrates are. On a low-carb diet, you can eat until you are full, as long as you eat only allowed foods. Allowed foods are meats, fish, poultry, eggs, and cheese, plus a limited amount of green vegetables. You should definitely stay away from foods that are on the not allowed list.

How does the low-carb diet work?

Low-carb diet could burn your fat. Many researches have proven that dietary fat is not necessarily converted into body fat. Carbohydrates on the other hand are converted into fat by the action of insulin. According to many experts, most of the overweight people became overweight due to a condition called hyper-insulinemia - elevated insulin levels in the blood. When you eat a high-carbohydrate meal, the increased blood sugar stimulates insulin production by the pancreas. Insulin is the hormone that allows blood sugar to be used by the cells, but a side effect of insulin is that it causes fat to be deposited, and it stimulates your brain to produce hunger signals. That is why you are forced to eat more carbohydrates, and the cycle repeats. In time, your body cells become resistant to insulin. That means that your pancreas has to work overtime, producing up to four or five times as much insulin just to keep up with the demand. It has been shown that high levels of insulin have a deleterious effect on the body, including premature aging as well. Restricting the intake of carbohydrates puts a halt to this vicious cycle, because when you restrict your carbohydrate intake, your insulin levels decrease and the levels of glucagon increase. Glucagon is a hormone that causes body fat to be burned and cholesterol to be removed from artery deposits. If you severely restrict carbs, your body goes into a state of ketosis - burning fat with the subsequent production of ketone bodies in the bloodstream. The condition is called ketonuria only if ketones are spilled out into the urine. The result of ketosis is that your blood sugar levels stabilize and your insulin level drops. Since your body is burning fat, you can lose weight. You can easily test to see if your diet is inducing ketosis with the use of inexpensive ketone test strips. When your diet causes your body to go into a state of ketosis, you are said to be on a ketogenic diet and for most people, restricting your carbohydrate intake to fewer than 30 grams a day will induce ketonuria. Most people on ketogenic diets will lose weight fairly quickly. However, although some diet experts believe that ketosis is a safe condition, it is not necessary to be in ketosis to lose excess weight.

Keep in mind that when you choose a higher level of carbohydrates than what is needed to bring on ketosis, so you may have to limit your total food intake or calories somewhat in order to lose weight. In addition, for diabetics who are not obese, it certainly is not necessary to induce ketosis to reap the benefits of a low-carb diet. It is quite possible to bring their blood glucose levels under control without being in ketosis, but if you must lose considerable weight, a ketogenic diet is the most efficient method for bringing your weight back down to where it should be.

Benefits of low-carb diet

This is definitely a healthy way to lose weight and many other diets are not. In general, while on a low-carb diet, you do not necessarilly need to count the calories. You could eat all you want, as often as you want, in order to prevent hunger. Do not stuff yourself, just eat until you are no longer hungry, but remember, there is a difference between being hungry and having an appetite. Hunger means your body needs more food, so you need to eat, while having an appetite means you have the feeling that you want to eat, whether your body needs more food or not. In some cases, for those who are metabolically resistant, reducing total food intake may help stimulate or maintain weight loss but it is the carbs, not the total calories that must be kept low. Because you are consuming fats and oils, your appetite stays under control. That happens because fatty foods are very satisfying. Eating a high level of fat actually causes you to lose weight faster than if you were fasting, which is because, during a fast, your body thinks it is starving, so it kicks into a very high efficiency state of metabolism. This slows down weight loss. However, with a high fat diet, combined with very low amounts of carbohydrates, your body knows it is not starving, and metabolism is maintained at a normal level. Although consuming fats is necessary for a healthy diet, try to limit consumption of trans-fats such as margarine and shortening. Good fats include olive oil, flax seed oil, canola oil, oils found in nuts, and real butter. Most fats should be the monounsaturated and saturated fats, but avoid the polyunsaturated fats when possible, except for those containing the essential omega-3 fatty acids contained in fish. You should also know that a low-carb diet is not necessarily a high protein diet, but it is an adequate protein diet, and it is primarily a high fat diet. In addition, there is no evidence that eating lots of protein will damage healthy kidneys.

Advantages of low-carbing

* sustained weight loss

* stabilized blood sugar, which is especially important for diabetics

* lower insulin levels

* better blood lipid profile with lower cholesterol

* lowered blood pressure

* more energy

Vitamins and minerals in low-carb diets

Many people are wondering if a low-carb diet was deficient in vitamins and minerals that are found in fresh fruits and vegetables. The fact is that a low-carb lifestyle used to control diabetes and not to lose weight can be quite balanced, so you should just stay away from refined carbohydrates. However, most low-carb diets used for weight loss are not balanced in terms of providing all the essential micronutrients, which is why it is extremely important to supplement your diet with good-quality vitamin and mineral products. It is also important to take a fiber supplement during a low-carb diet. All your life, your body has been constantly subjected to high doses of sugar, all in the form of refined carbohydrates. Your body recognizes only one carbohydrate or sugar. All carbohydrates you eat, except fiber, are converted into sugar, so eating a diet that is 70% carbohydrates means that most of what you eat is sugar. That type of diet is also unbalanced so the purpose of a low-carb diet is to bring your body chemistry and insulin sensitivity back into balance. To do that, you must use a diet that is unbalanced in the opposite direction of they way you have been eating for many years. Once the weight is off, and your blood chemistry, blood pressure, and energy levels are back in the normal range, then you may start adding some more complex carbohydrates back into diet. By eating a moderate amount of foods like vegetables and berries, and a limited amount of grain products your diet will then be balanced and you can stop taking the supplements, if you wish. Besides, the low-carb diet is not as unbalanced as you might think because meats, butter, nuts, cheese, and eggs contain a lot of essential vitamins and minerals. It would be good to cut out caffeine as well during low-carb diet.