Low Carbohydrate Diet
The low carbohydrate diet has been
tweaked a million times and been given a million different names over
the years it seems, The Atkins Diet, The Paleolithic Diet, South Beach
Diet etc etc
So what is a
low carbohydrate diet? well it's exactly what it says on the tin.
You keep your carbohydrate intake below a 50 grams maximum a day, which
you may need to lower until you began to lose weight e.g if you eat only
50 grams a day but you still don't lose any weight then you need to
lower your intake to 40 grams and so on each week until you're regularly
losing weight. The people who find that even with only 50 grams of carbs
they are still not losing weight are usually 'Carbohydrate sensitive'
which basically means their bodies struggle to deal with ingested
carbohydrates and maintaining their blood sugar levels on an even keel.
Do I have to avoid all carbs for the
duration of the diet? No not really, you're allowed (and should
have) one cheat day each week. There are two reasons for this, the first
is that it satisfies your desire for your favourite 'bad foods' which
you may have been craving throughout the week and prevents lapses during
the diet. The second reason is that it may prevent your metabolism from
slowing down too much and it serves to keep your body guessing. The big
danger with your metabolism slowing is that when you add carbohydrates
back into your diet and your overall calorie intake raises once again
your in danger of putting weight back on, which usually happens which
most calorie restrictive diets.
So what's the basic idea behind the diet? Well
Carbohydrates are your primary energy source so if you take away your
primary energy source your body has to tap into it's stored energy
source which is fat and that's what most of us on any diet want to lose.
You don't really need to keep tabs on the rest of your food intake as
the body finds protein and fat difficult to convert into energy and has
other uses for those two e.g repair of muscle tissue.
What about fibre? You should be eating
plenty of dark green veg while on this diet so you will be getting
enough fibre (probably more than the average person) but if you're still
worried you can buy some soluble fibre tablets from most health food
stores on the high street.
Here
are some examples of what you should avoid and what you can eat while
following this diet:
Avoid:
Rice, Potatoes, Pasta, Fruit, Bread, cereals, milk, Sugar, soft drinks,
baked beans etc
Allowed:
Fish, Beef, eggs, unsweetened soya milk, hard cheeses, broccoli, coliflor, stir
fry etc
In conclusion, I've
found that this diet works really well for about 90% of my clients and I
even use it for myself when I want to lean up quickly for my holidays
etc if I'm carry a few extra pounds (yes me too!) and apart from a
little bit of tiredness in the beginning i've never seen or heard of any
adverse health effects, in fact research has recently shown that people
on low carbohydrate diets reduced their cholesterol more than people on
low fat diets, how's that!
