Posts Tagged ‘Excess Weight’

Dieting The Low Carb Way

Monday, August 17th, 2009

A lot of people are now searching for ways to look good and improve their health. People who are obese are now realizing that if they don’t lose weight their health will deteriorate and their life span will be shortened.

With so many diets out there based on various principles and methods, it should not be surprising to know that there has also been extensive critique about their effectiveness and long-term safety.

Low carb dieting remains one of the most popular and well-known diets. While many diet plans have been evolving nowadays, many people still prefer this diet because it provides the body with the basic nutrients it needs; does not deprive you of all the foods that you wish to eat and is based on sound medical and scientific principles.

Depending on your body weight, fitness targets and general lifestyle, low carb dieting can help you lose weight, and can also help you develop the overall health, or possibly both. Because this diet provides the body with what it needs and what is safe for the long term, some healthy people follow it to enhance and maintain their wellbeing. In addition to helping lose weight, this type of diet also helps you stay healthy and remain that way, while looking great.

Improved Health

Low carb dieting directly works on the real cause of the main health concerns and risks; namely:

* High cholesterol
* Obesity
* High blood pressure
* Diabetes

These diseases are related to being overweight; and are very fatal. Low carb dieting is effective because it generally improves one’s well-being and thus increases your body’s ability to fight diseases. It is important for those who are overweight and plagued by these main diseases to know that they need to seek safe diets that do not worsen their condition.

It is widely believed that a lot of excess weight comes from the carbohydrates we eat, particularly the highly refined ones such as potatoes, baked goods, bread, pasta and other convenient foods. Cutting out the carbs is therefore an effective way of losing weight. Lack of exercise also exacerbates the weight gain.

Basic Discipline

The basic discipline behind low carb dieting is to limit the consumption of foods, which are rich in carbohydrates. There are various low carb diets; with the main ones being the Atkins, South Beach, Zone and Carbohydrate Addict Diet – and they are all based on the same principle.

If you start on this diet plan, you must substitute the carbohydrates with fats and proteins. It is recommended that the majority of your daily calorie consumption come from fat, while carbohydrates account for a very small fraction of your calorie needs.

Benefits

Many medical and scientific experts recommend the low carb dieting plan for improving:

* Overall health and vitality
* Losing weight
* Fighting disease

Proper Food Choices

The other attraction of this regimen is that you can eat as much as you want until you are full; as long as you are eating the right foods, such as meats, fish, poultry, eggs, and cheese, plus a limited amount of green veggies like asparagus, spinach, and broccoli. Hunger and strong cravings for food are some of the reasons why people quit their diets, so basically this diet enables people to stick to it, lose weight and keep it off indefinitely.

It is therefore recommended to follow this regimen by eating less of the processed carbohydrates which cause rapid changes in blood sugar, trigger hunger, thereby encouraging overeating that ultimately leads to obesity.

Low carb diets encourage us to:

* Eat well
* Be healthy
* Have a better quality of life
* Look great!

What great benefits you can gain while reaching or maintaining your weight loss goals.

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Lana Hampton is the publisher of www.177fastweightlosstips.com. Visit weightlossfantasy.com to subscribe to her free weight loss tips newsletter and also receive a copy of Lana’s “Confessions of a Weight Loss Expert” report today.

Low Carb Diet – Weight Loss Benefits

Sunday, August 9th, 2009

A low carb diet, as the name implies, is a diet that is low in carbohydrates (bread, rice, sugar, especially the refined variety) and high (or rather adequate) in fats and proteins (meat, eggs, cheese, butter, nuts, etc.). A number of variations of the diet exist (most well known, Dr. Atkins Diet), but the one thing that is common to all is the drastic cutback on the intake of carbohydrates in the diet plan.

Most of these plans substitute the outgoing carbohydrates with fats and proteins. Although different types of these diets may vary in the recommended intake of carbohydrates, fats and proteins, as a general rule a low carb diet is tantamount to a high-fat and moderate protein diet.

In a low carb diet at least 60 to 70% of the daily calorie intake must come from fats, contrary to a normal diet where a major portion of the calories comes from carbohydrates. The carbohydrate calories should not constitute more than 5 to 10% of the daily calorie intake. The remaining 20 to 30% calories can come from proteins.

Why a low carb diet?

How often have you come across overweight people feeling frustrated at not being able to lose an inch of the stubborn abdominal fat in spite of exercising and in spite of being on the traditionally recommended low fat, high carb diet for months? Too often to even remember! The reason, obviously, has to lie in the wrong approach to attack the problem underlying excess weight and excess inches.

Scientific research has shown that dietary fat is not necessarily converted into body fat, whereas carbohydrates readily convert into fat by the action of insulin, a hormone produced by pancreas in response to elevated sugar levels in the blood (as caused by carbohydrates) to allow blood sugar to be used by cells.

However, insulin also aids in fat deposition and stimulates the brain to produce hunger pangs. The vicious cycle of more carbohydrates, more and more insulin repeats, resulting in cells becoming insulin resistant with time. Consequently, excess sugar either stays in the blood (causing diabetes) or starts converting to fat (causing obesity) instead of being used up by cells to produce energy, leading to obesity, fatigue and lethargy.

Benefits of a low carb diet

A low carb diet helps prevent hyperinsulinemia (i.e., elevated insulin levels in the blood) and increases the level of glucagon, a pancreatic hormone that reverses the action of insulin, stabilizes blood sugar levels, and helps burn fat to energy and remove cholesterol deposits from arteries.

And because the body gets into the fat-burning mode, sustained weight and inch loss occurs, accompanied by lowered blood pressure, better lipid profile and raised energy levels.

Due to the consumption of fats and oils, the appetite and hunger pangs stay in control, because fatty foods are more satisfying and take longer to digest. And since limited amounts of complex carbohydrates do accompany the fats (obviously, the healthy types), the body metabolism does not switch to starvation mode. A vitamin/mineral supplement and a fiber supplement may be added if necessary.

Once the body chemistry is back to normal and the excess weight knocked off, complex carbohydrates and some vegetables/fruits can be added to the diet. But if one does not want to go back to the earlier state, one has to kiss goodbye the white bread, pastries, cakes, ice creams and things like that, except for an occasional binge.

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Michael J. Harris is an avid weight lifter and adheres to a low carb diet as a part of an overall health routine. Find out more about how a low carb diet plan can help you. lowcarbdietreview.blogspot.com/