Is Low Carb a Starvation Diet?

For many people the idea of going low carb and eating no bread, pasta, potatoes, rice and no sugary desserts or drinks is anathema.  They simply can't imagine that life could be worth living without eating these scrummy foods.  Then perhaps their pancreas wears out from pumping out insulin all day long to cope with all those carbohydrates.  They are then faced with Type 2 diabetes.  That is when they really think about whether life is worth living or not.

Hopefully they decide that it is, and if low carb eating is going to prolong or enhance that life then it suddenly doesn't seem so awful any more.  Or let's hope if a person's metabolism was liable to take that course, then they thought about it earlier and avoided a Type 2 diagnosis.

Also, some people who need to lose weight badly have been on so many starvation or semi-starvation diets, where they could eat carbohydrates but they had to restrict the calories so much that they were hungry all the time, having sleepless nights as their stomachs rumbled with emptiness.  A person like this might decide that low carb doesn't sound so bad after all.  At least you only have to cut out one food group, albeit a major one.  And at least you can eat some fat, which is satisfying and makes food tasty.

Both starvation and low carb dieting create a condition known as Ketosis, where the body starts burning fat for fuel instead of carbohydrate.  It's a myth that people cannot have any energy without bread or pasta, but there is a period of adjustment.  If a person starves, they become thin. Anorexia is a tragic psychological disorder but there is no doubt that the people who suffer from it succeed in their aim of losing weight, although this is never to be recommended.  People who are starving go into Ketosis.  They deprive their bodies of food so they must use body fat as fuel, so they lose lots of weight.

The low-carb diet is a much easier way to achieve Ketosis (fat burning) without depriving your body of all food, going hungry, and becoming dangerously thin.  On a low-carb diet many people wonder what on earth they can eat.  Will they have to live on lean chicken breasts and egg white omelettes all the time?  On the contrary, most low carb diets advocate a moderate to liberal amount of fat consumption in the form of fatty meat, butter, cream and healthy pure oils.  The fat consumed fans the flames of your fat-burning metabolism.  Some low carbers can lose weight whilst guzzling quite large amounts of fat, others have to watch the calories a little because if their body is too liberally supplied with dietary fat it might neglect to burn the body fat.  Still, many low carbers lose weight safely on 2000 or even 3000 daily calories.

So, there are many great things you can eat on a low carb diet and so it can be said to be an alternative to starvation or semi-starvation, and to many people an improvement on most calorie-restrictive diets.  You get to eat genuinely tasty food, and most people can eat as much of it (fat and protein and leafy veg) as keeps them satisfied and satiated.

The High Protein Low Carb Diet

When many people think of low carb diets they imagine they must be very high protein.  Whilst the elimination of the majority of carbs almost inevitably leads to a correspondingly high consumption of protein foods such as meat, fish and eggs, the majority of the calories in a high protein diet, so called, should actually come from the fat in those proteinaceous foods.

So the high protein low carb diet is based around meat, fish, eggs, poultry, cream, butter, olive oil, coconut oil, lard, and nuts.  Great salads can be enjoyed including a drizzle of olive oil.  Lovely "full English" style breakfasts can be indulged in - bacon and eggs and high quality sausages, fried in olive oil or coconut oil.  Lovely dinners of duck, goose or rib eye steak can be had, succulent and tasty, with green leafy vegetables.

A high protein diet is not about counting calories and depriving yourself, in fact you should eat until you are satisfied, but that doesn't mean busting at the seams!  It is still a good idea to be aware of your eating and to only eat until you're no longer hungry, not wait until you are so full you can't move.  The combination of protein and pure fats ensures it is almost impossible to really overeat.  If you kept on eating the way you might do with carb and fat laden foods like ice cream, cookies, potato chips or cake, you would feel pretty sick much sooner.  Hence the idea is that the diet will be calorifically self-limiting anyway.

Ketosis is something you strive to achieve on a high protein low carb diet.  The state of ketosis is not a dangerous one (do not confuse it with a similar-sounding condition, ketoacidosis).  It is what happens when your metabolism, in the absence of excessive carbs, turns to burning fat for energy instead of carbs.  This means that the liver produces chemicals known as ketones, made from fat, and you burn these for energy instead of glucose and glycogen.  Ketones cannot be stored again as fat, so they are excreted in the urine.  Test strips can be used which reveal the presence of ketones in the urine and confirm whether you are in ketosis, and achieving healthy weight loss.

Make sure you don't avoid good fats on a high protein diet, so that you feel fuller for longer, and encourage ketosis and the burning of fat for fuel.  Some Doctors believe that the consumption of excessive protein puts strain on the kidneys but not everyone agrees with this.  As long as you don't go low-fat as well as high protein low carb, you should be OK for healthy weight loss.

How to Choose a Variety of Low Carb Foods

So, you've decided to embark upon a low carb way of eating, and now you are checking out low carb foods.  The most obvious of these is meat: only the most processed of meats contain any appreciable amount of carbohydrate, so avoid cheap burgers and sausages which are stuffed with fillers such as breadcrumbs. Home-roasted or fried meat or chops are a great choice, but if you must have a processed meat, choose something like Polish Kabanos, or salami, as these are nearly all lean meat with a healthy - yes, healthy - amount of fat too.

Low carb foods will contain a good deal of protein, or fat, or both, if they are to be at all filling.  Low carb vegetables such as salad greens or cabbage are great additions to the low carb diet, but nobody is suggesting you live on just these and pretend you are satisfied!  For satiety (that feeling of fullness) you must have foods containing protein, and particularly fat.

So the best low carb foods are fish, meat, poultry, dairy products, eggs.  Choose the oilier fish or the fatty meat on a low carb diet regimen, as the fat contributes to your feeling sated, it also enables your body to become a fat burning machine by changing your metabolism from one which burns carbs to one which burns fat - including body fat - for fuel.  Protein is needed for building the body, sure, but don't choose low-fat, ultra-lean protein on this regime as proteins eventually turn to glucose in the body just as carbs do, it just takes longer.  Also some experts theorize that excessive protein intake puts extra strain on the kidneys, but this is still contentious.

The only carbohydrate you should be having, especially in the early stages of a low carb diet (which tend to be stricter) is found naturally in fruit and vegetables.  Fruit should be severely curtailed, particularly if you are diabetic and trying to get blood sugars under control, as fructose is a sugar found in fruit which produces high blood sugar levels quicker than anything else.  Still, a few berries like strawberries, blueberries, blackberries or raspberries are fine - a few, that is, not a bowlful, and not after every meal! 

The most low carb foods among fruits and vegetables are those high in fibre.  If the majority of the carbohydrate content of a food is in indigestible fibre, then that will not elevate your blood sugar or stimulate insulin to take that blood sugar and convert it to body fat.  Therefore the most low carb of the vegetables are leaves, be they salad greens, or green veg such as cabbage, broccoli or cauliflower.  Generally, the sweeter a veg, the more carb-laden it will be, so carrots are to be avoided. 

When you get to the later stages of most low carb diets, a larger variety of low carb foods are available to you, such as low carb potato substitutes, notably creamed cauliflower or celeriac.  You can also make breads - yes, breads - using faux flours made usually from nuts and seeds instead of grains, like ground flaxseed, ground almonds or hazelnuts, or pumpkin seeds.  There is no limit to the ingenuity of the low-carber when finding low carb foods, and all these things are generally much more palatable than dry, low-fat alternatives.

Defend Your Low Carb Diet Plan

If you are about to embark upon a low carb diet plan, you need to really read up on it and educate yourself, not only so that you know what to eat and not to eat, that's the obvious stuff (once you know it).  Also you need to bone up because you will encounter so much prejudice from other people, including many members of the medical profession, that you are best forewarned and forearmed for this.  It is quite a radical step to go on a low carb diet plan, especially as lobbies from the mass food producers have tried to discredit this way of eating as dangerous and faddy.

The contentious part is that low carb should mean relatively high fat, and fat, particularly saturated fat, has been given such a bad press in the last forty years that it is anathema to most people to eat it.  However, on a low carb diet plan, your body needs to burn something for energy in the absence of carbs.  And this is fat.  If you eat a reasonable amount of fat, you will burn this for energy - along with taking fat from your own fat cells as well and burning that.  This is how the low carb diet plan works to create low carb weight loss - you become a fat-burning machine.  This has to go on for life though, recidivism means that you would re-introduce carbs, replenish your fat stores, and put the weight back on again like all low-fat semi-starvation dieters do.

So, if you are going to share your low carb diet plan with others, be prepared for some opposition.  You need to learn about the insulin response, so that you can explain this to your detractors.  The hormone insulin is produced by the pancreas in response to starch and sugar consumption.  It deals with the rush in blood glucose caused by eating these foods, by converting some to glycogen to be used as a relatively instant source of energy by the cells of the body.  It then takes the rest of the blood sugar and stores it away - in fact, locks it away, in your fat cells, particularly around the belly area.  Beer bellies are caused not by alcohol but by sugars and starches. 

If you don't eat many carbs, as on a low carb diet plan, you will not store body fat, because without carbs there is no surge in blood glucose so insulin need not be produced.  It is only insulin which can store fat.

Of course when you explain this to many of your friends and family, you will find that their eyes glaze over:  it's so much easier to believe the janet and john version of metabolism which is so simplistic it's ridiculous: eat fat, get fat.  The human body is much more complicated than that, metabolism is a complex subject, but you may not be too surprised how many people just don't want to hear it.  It's too difficult for them, they have been so indoctrinated by the fat bad, carbs good lobby they can't turn around their thinking and drop the scales from their eyes.  Remember that is their loss not yours: your loss will be fat, not muscle wastage or water, and if you stick to that low carb diet plan you will stay slim and healthy for longer.