What the Low Carb Diet is All About ?

We're assuming here that you're new to the low carb diet.  Doubtless you have loads of questions about how low carb diet plans work, and you are seeing lots of different - but similar - low carb diet plans online and in books.  You are wondering what the advantages and pitfalls might be, and precisely - if you can't eat bread, potatoes, rice, grains, etc - what exactly you can eat on a day to day, hour to hour basis?

You may be of the belief that low carbing, popularized by Dr Atkins in the late 20th Century, is a faddy, short-term thing.  This is propaganda meant to put you off low carb diets, which are quite the reverse.  Before man was able to mass-produce carbohydrate-stuffed foods such as bread and pasta, man had evolved to eat meat, berries, nuts and a few seeds.  In evolutionary terms, the excessive consumption of refined carbohydrates such as white flour and sugar is definitely the new kid on the block.

Most diets claim to be lifestyle changes, and recommend that you should stick to a semi-starvation ration for the rest of your life.  Cynically, the originators of these diets know that is not possible and you will "fall off the wagon" sooner or later, and go back to eating cake and sweets and pizza.  Thing is with low carb, it really is a diet for life.  But that doesn't mean misery and deprivation - once you have kicked your addiction to high-carb foods and learned to enjoy healthy fats and proteins, you will not have to count calories, starve yourself, or live on tasteless, low-fat fare ever again.

For yes - a low carb diet should be a relatively high-fat one, and fat causes us to feel full and satisfied and puts the taste back into foods.  The low-fat dieting lobby has convinced us for years to live on this dry, tasteless fodder, yet once pure fats like butter, extra virgin olive oil, virgin coconut oil, meat fats and cream are reintroduced to our diet, we enter a whole new world of flavor and satisfaction from food.

We have been told, at school and beyond, that carbohydrates are for energy, and erroneously we believe that we will have no energy if we cut the carbs.  In fact, on a low carb diet, we burn fat for energy, and this is like stoking a furnace.  By consuming dietary fat in the absence of excessive carbs, we turn off the insulin response which caused us to store body fat.  We turn our metabolisms around to burning fat instead of glycogen for energy, so our bodies turn to body fat as well as the fat we have eaten, burning it away for fuel instead of storing it and locking it into fat cells.

It is only dietary carbohydrate, sugar and especially starch, which provokes insulin to be produced by the pancreas.  It is only insulin which enables sugars and starches to be converted to body fat and stored by the body.  Therefore on low carb diet plans it is not possible to store any more body fat, and over time body fat should be burnt for energy.  This is the basic premise upon which the low carb diet is built.

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.

Low Carb Breakfast Options for a Low Carb Diet

OK, so you are looking for a low carb breakfast as you have embarked upon an Atkins-style low carb diet?  Atkins is the name usually associated with low carbing even though there are a good number of other low carb diet advocates and regimens.  The basic principles are the same though - cut out starches and sugars and instead eat a combination of protein and fat.  The current thinking on the balance of the low carb diet is that a substantial quantity of fat should be eaten with the protein, although gorging it is not recommended as this may slow weight loss.

So, what not to eat: breakfast cereals such as cornflakes and muesli, waffles with syrup, croissants and their ilk.  The concept, brought about by continental Europe, of a sweet breakfast of pastries with chocolate and such, is out.  Savory is in, especially in the form of what is known as the full English breakfast, with such great low carb options as bacon, eggs and sausages.

The Full English has had such a bad press in recent years due to the cholesterol-heart hypothesis which asserts that eating saturated fats and cholesterol leads to atherosclerosis, heart disease and death.  It has been given such names as "artery-busting".  The advocates of the low carb diet believe this is wrong: as long as you don't eat bread with it, or potatoes, or toast, or baked beans, the fried bacon and eggs are good for your heart health.  The debate rages on, but if you have chosen the low carb option then this is the way for you.

Sausages should be good quality, check the labels, or if you are out in a hotel, make sure they are the higher-end, really meaty sausages, not cheap pap filled with breadcrumb and fillers.  Eggs should be free range and organic if possible.  Bacon is better not pumped full of water so that it fries properly instead of stewing in its own juices.

Other ways of eating this low carb breakfast are in the form of an omelette, or scrambled eggs with lovely cream and butter, salt and pepper.  If you are eating in a hurry (and do try to avoid this as much as possible) you can put fried bacon or sausage into an egg muffin the day before, and eat the muffins straight from the fridge the next morning.  All you do is combine 6 eggs, 60ml double cream and 60ml water, and whisk plenty of air in.  In muffin tins put pieces of fried bacon or sausage, pour over the egg mixture and sprinkle grated cheese on top.  Bake at 180 degrees for about 20 minutes.  These faux muffins will puff up like souffles and are absolutely delicious, particularly cold the next day.  Ideal for a low carb breakfast on the run!

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.

Finding Low Carb Recipes for the Low Carb Diet

So many people are seeking low carb recipes to fit into their low carb diet.  These need to be quick and easy to fit into busy lifestyles as well.  Information is available from a number of different sources, particularly books and websites.  Here are a few ideas to get you started:

First of all, wherever you are doing your research, you need to think seriously about the principles and rules of the low carb diet you have chosen. What is your maximum carb count?  20, 30, or 60 grams per day?  How strict the carb count is will restrict or expand the amount of carb-substitutes you can use.  The carb count will decide on how indulgent you can be with treats such as chocolate or fruit, as well as what veg to eat and which to avoid.

At the same time, a low carb diet is usually for life - as soon as you re-introduce a substantial amount of carbohydrate, any capacity for weight gain will be reactivated.  There is no getting away from that - but take heart in that the low carb diet usually begins strict and then eases off and allows you to eat a few more carbohydrates in the later, maintenance stages.  You should take advantage of the fact that low carb recipes can be really tasty as it is fat and not carbohydrate which imparts taste and texture to food.

Unless you want to live on plain pasta for the rest of your life, much tastier recipes involve low carb foods like meat, seafood, fish and poultry.  Choose the tastier, more succulent cuts such as rib eye steak, trout, duck or goose.  Some low carb diet regimes still insist you use lean cuts of pork or beef, but they miss the point: within reason, you can have fattier cuts of meat, and use olive oil fairly liberally in your salads (in comparison to the usual low fat diets).  You should not be gorging yourself on fat, but don't go out of your way to avoid it, in fact, embrace it as much as possible.

Chefs have always had the advantage over those of us trying to cook allegedly healthy foods for home consumption.  They always say they are cooking for special occasions, so they use butter and cream and goose fat and all the really tasty, yummy things most of us try to avoid in our cooking.  No wonder their recipes taste so great!  Well, take heart those of you who have adopted a low carb diet - all these low carb recipes are now available to you for home cooking.  Rich creamy sauces, succulent fatty meats, lovely unctuous stews.  Just avoid the potatoes or dumplings or pie crusts which might accompany them in their original incarnations.

Fiber is also an important ingredient.  In the US, carb counts also include fiber, so you should look for the split between net carbohydrates and fiber.  For example, flaxseed flour, used in low carb recipes for bread, is almost all fiber - and this is a good thing for bowel health as well as filling you up with "good carbs" which do not have to be avoided on low-carb diets.  It's the starchy, sugary carbs you need to steer clear of, that contribute to your carb count.

In conclusion, look through your cookbooks and use all the meat, poultry, fish and egg recipes but avoid any flour, pastry, potatoes, dumplings, pasta, rice and regular bread.  Explore high-fiber substitutes for carb foods in your low carb recipes - enjoy your food immensely and still stick to your low carb diet.