The interest in low carb dieting for weight loss has been very popular over the past 25 years especially since the republication of the original Atkins diet. Losing weight as quickly as possible is a goal for so many people and everybody wants an easy diet to follow.
Some people do not need to lose weight at all but still get stressed over a couple of pounds increase. Others need to lose for medical reasons and may have one hundred pounds or more that they want to shed.
There are many different diets out there including low carbohydrate diets and the truth is that most of them will achieve weight loss if they can be followed correctly. The main problem is that many people get easily sidetracked when they go out for a meal or get invited to an event.
They get tempted to overeat or eat all the wrong things and then feel guilty and cannot seem to manage to get back to the original diet. Everybody has those days but the important thing is to let them go and accept them as just another blip on the road to permanent weight loss.
It is also important to find a diet that you can easily follow. Low carb diets suit many people because the rules are quite simple. As the name suggests, the diet consists of avoiding or limiting foods that are high in carbohydrates.
People often find this quite hard to begin with as the carbs you have to limit include favorites like bread, pasta, potatoes, rice and other grains. Sugar is also a carbohydrate that can be quite hard to avoid as it seems to be in everything. Once you understand what these foods are, it is a simple matter to choose dishes that avoid them.
Is saturated fat a problem?
Most criticism of low carbohydrate dieting is based on the fact that the dieters will get most of their daily calories from meat, dairy and other high fat products. This can lead to concerns over high cholesterol and other problems related to a high intake of saturated fats.
However, although cholesterol figures may become higher that at the start of the diet there is usually a decrease in triglycerides, blood sugar, blood pressure, an improvement on insulin resistance and of course there is a reduction in weight which are all good things. There is a lot of controversy about the danger of higher LDL (bad) cholesterol.
If you eat grass fed meat and free range or organic poultry is eaten then the saturated fat is not so much of a problem and intensively reared animals because the composition if the fat is healthier. Coconut oil consists of saturated fat but because it is largely medium-chain fatty acids it has health benefits. Medium chain fatty acids or triglycerides, as they are often called, specifically reduce stored body fat as they also raise your metabolic function
Sometimes weight loss is good in the early stages but people cannot handle the restrictions in the longer term and start to deviate from the diet.
One of the problems that many people have with low carb dieting is the elimination of bread and pasta. No more toast, spaghetti or pizza! Many of the foods that are quickest to prepare are based around carbohydrates – burgers in their buns, fries, sandwiches, pasta and sauce. Beer and other alcoholic drinks are high in carbs too. It is true that alcohol is generally restricted on any diet, because it is high in calories and very low in nutritional value, but low carb diets put particular emphasis on this.
Still there are many foods that can be enjoyed on a low carb diet. If you are fond of meat you will relish the opportunity to consume beef, chicken and other animal products. The popularity of these diets is clear from the length of time that they stay on the bestseller lists. It is just a matter of what suits you. Low carb dieting results in weight loss so works for many people.
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