Some people believe that if you don't eat carbohydrates you must lose weight. Unfortunately this is not always the case. Of course, if you are really enormous and have always eaten loads of sugar and starch, the chances are if you go on an Atkins-type diet you will lose weight, and quite a lot of it.The first time you go on a slimming diet of any sort, you are likely to lose weight really well. If you have dieted many times in your life, losing and gaining weight through yo-yo dieting, you are likely to have become resistant to losing weight. You will find it more difficult, even if you do go very low carb. There are many other reasons you might find it hard to shed the pounds such as hormonal causes, particularly the menopause. Some versions of HRT can make it difficult to slim.
Some people are metabolically resistant or insulin resistant. This means that although their pancreas is producing insulin in response to the intake of moderate carbs or even protein foods, the tissues are resistant to the effects of the insulin. Therefore body fat is still stored, or not released as readily as we might like, from the fat cells. Insulin is the hormone responsible for the storage of fat in the body.
If you go low-carb and stop eating starchy bread, rice, pasta, cake, potatoes and sugars, you should not be able to put on an appreciable amount of weight, because you are not stoking the fire of insulin production and fat storage. Mind you, some low carb advocates would have you believe that calories don't count and you can eat as much as you like of fat such as cream and butter and fatty meat, and you still cannot gain weight due to the absence of insulin. Also it is thought that there is a point where you just can't consume any more protein and fat than is good for you because you feel sick.
The fact is, like Jack Sprat, or more specifically his wife, some people have a much larger capacity for eating fat than many people could believe, and they end up with so much dietary fat in their systems that they do not get to the stage where their body starts to scavenge on its own body fat. In this way, calories sometimes do count on a low-carb diet and some low-carbers find they still have to watch the amounts they eat if they want to shed kilos and not gain.
So, low carb is good for many reasons, not least of which is the lack of insulin response. It's great to give your poor pancreas a rest from pumping out all that hormone, and to prevent the storage of any more fat on your belly or thighs. You are probably preventing yourself from Type 2 diabetes in later life! There are some occasions however when chowing down on pork rinds and heavy cream is no longer appropriate if it is your intention to actually shed a dress size and lose weight. For some people, calories don't count - but for others, they do. This may be a case of the size of your appetite for fat and protein and whether your satiety switch is broken or not.
