The Low Carb Diet Craze

In the past several years, the popularity of diets low in carbohydrates (Atkins, Zone diet) has soared. A lot of my clients at the Diversified Health and Fitness gyms ask me advice about these diets; in fact, it’s this type of diet that I get the most questions about. I love to answer questions about this topic, as I feel that most people are uninformed about how this kind of diet works and will look to it as a “quick fix”. And when you’re trying to achieve your best body ever, I know there’s no such thing.

Low carb diets are generally structured around eating minimal carbohydrates (breads, grains, rice, starchy vegetables) and lots of protein. Proteins that people usually go to when on this diet include poultry, fish, beef, pork, nuts/seeds, and cheese products. Unfortunately, a lot of people will ditch the leaner sources of protein on this list and eat a lot of bacon and cheeseburgers. I know firsthand – my father went on this diet and pretty much ate bacon the entire time. Not exactly a super healthy diet, right?

The idea behind these diets is that ingesting carbohydrates raises your blood sugar, which thereby causes a release of insulin into the bloodstream. The theory is that insulin then drives blood sugar into the cells, where it inhibits the breakdown of fat in the body, which will prohibit you from burning fat and losing weight.

The proponents of this diet feel that if you don’t eat carbohydrates, your blood sugar and insulin levels will be lower. And as carbohydrates are the body’s main source of energy, if there is less of this to use, the body will turn to fat as its main source of energy, causing you to lose weight.

Sounds like a great theory, right? Initially, when you begin this kind of diet, you will end up losing more weight than if you had tried a more traditional, restricted calorie, low fat food based diet. However, most of this initial weight drop off is due to water loss. When the body needs to use protein as its main source of energy, a large amount of water is needed to convert the protein into a usable source of energy. In essence, it’s not fat you’re losing, its water. Eventually, though, this diet becomes like all others – a restricted calorie diet. Carbs make up the majority of the American diet, so when you remove those you end up eating less.

It might sound great to eat solely bacon and cheeseburgers every meal, but it can actually be pretty difficult to maintain this kind of diet without getting bored with your meal choices. So although you’ll see some initial weight loss, studies show that eventually most people who adhere to this diet for a little while will eventually go back to eating carbs at some point.

The safety of this diet is also in question with experts. In the case of my father, he had way too much saturated fat, which led to gallstones and emergency gallbladder removal. Other drawbacks of this diet include foul breath, low energy levels, and unhealthy looking skin.

Most people are also not “carb sensitive” as a lot of these low carb diet gurus would like you to believe. Those that are do often benefit from this kind of diet, but for the most part, it’s a better bet for long term weight loss if you go it the hard route – exercise, eat properly, and take care of yourself all around.