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.
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.
