Low Carbohydrate Diets

Achieve Your Weight Goal

Can Low Carbohydrate Diets Lead Us On The Road To Heart Health?

The purpose of a diet is to give you the proper boost, giving you the tools you need to live a healthy active lifestyle. As each person is different, with individual needs, wants, cravings strengths and weaknesses. You should choose a diet or technique that helps you in your unique way to achieve the goal you want to obtain.

The goal that you should focus on is ."You want to live a happy active lifestyle. You want to avoid heart disease. You want to be healthy and fit".

The means how you will acheive your goal will depend entirely on you.

This article discusses the pros and the cons of Low Carb Diets

Low Carbohydrate Diets

Low carbohydrate diets are diet programs for weight loss that advocate restricted carbohydrate consumption, based on research that ties carbohydrate consumption with increased blood insulin levels, and increased insulin with obesity.

Under these various dietary programs, foods containing carbohydrates like sugar, grains, and starches are limited or replaced in favor of foods containing more protein and fat.

Vegetables, though classified as carbohydrates, are thought to be far healthier than grain-based carbohydrates.

Programs such as the South Beach diet, the Atkins Nutritional Approach and Zone diets, are claimed to "work" because they reduce insulin levels, which in turn causes the body to burn its fat for energy.

Although these low carb diets can help achieve weight loss they have been controversial, and their relative safety has been challenged.

Differences Between The Low Carbohydrate Diets

Low-carb diets are largely distinguished by the proportions of carb intake they recommend, and the methods used to determine which source of carbohydrates should be consumed and which should be avoided.

While all agree that processed sugar should be eliminated, or at the very least greatly reduced, they often differ on the recommended levels of grains, fruits and vegetables, though there is broad agreement that, in general, vegetables are better than fruits, and fruits are better than grains.

Arguments For Low Carbohydrate Diets

Some advocates of low carb diets believe that humans did not evolve to eat the typical modern Western diet, reliant on processed grains, starches, and refined sugar, and that their consumption causes undesired and largely unknown effects.

Specifically, it is argued that they cause the body to produce excess amounts of the hormone insulin, which tells the body to store rather than burn fat, hence causing obesity and its complications (heart disease, cancer, diabetes).

They claim that humans evolved to eat a diet which consisted mainly of meat and that the current "epidemic" of obesity is due to the popular assumption, reinforced by the food industry and the new field of dietary medicine, that the low-fat approach is healthier.

Supporters claim the exclusive focus on reducing fat is oversimplified, and that low-fat diets are not automatically healthy ones.

The western world is not suffering from a collective failure of will to exercise, but has been encouraged to eat more carbohydrates, which in turn stimulate appetite and more eating.

The recent rise in western obesity rates has coincided with a widespread belief in low-fat, high-carbohydrate as a healthy way of eating.

By contrast traditional, high-fat French cooking has led to a much lower incidence of obesity, morbid obesity and chronic heart disease than the high-sugar American diet, despite overall energy intake and exercise levels being the same.

Advocates point to scientific trials demonstrating the efficacy and safety of low carb diets.

Several independent clinical trials have shown that low carb diets can successfully be used to lose weight.

These trials found that, in the short term, risk factors for heart disease and diabetes such as blood serum cholesterol and insulin levels tended to improve in spite of increased consumption of saturated fat and cholesterol.

The trials were of short duration, and were not able to assess the long-term health effects of the diet.

A study conducted in 1965 at the Oakland (California) Naval Hospital used a diet of 1000 calories per day, high in fat and limiting carbohydrates to 10 grams (40 calories) daily.

Over a ten-day period, subjects on this diet lost more body fat than did a group who fasted completely. Some advocates of Low carbohydrate diets have termed this the metabolic advantage of such diets.

Arguments Against Low Carbohydrate Diets

Critics contend that low carbohydrate diets are not without harmful side effects. Very low carbohydrate consumption can lead to the metabolic state called ketosis, which may cause headaches, tiredness, nausea, dehydration, dizziness, and an unusual sweet-smelling breath odor.

The lowered intake of dietary fiber that often accompanies dramatically reduced carbohydrate intake such as in the Induction stage of the Atkins diet can result in constipation if not supplemented.

Replacement of calories from carbohydrates with meat may result in high consumption of saturated fat and cholesterol, which many authorities believe will increase the risk of heart disease.

Moreover, it has been hypothesised that the kidneys can become overworked and that a related change in blood acidity can lead to bone loss, but trials testing the hypothesis have found no evidence of kidney damage or loss of bone.

The text in this article is licensed under the Gnu Free it was taken from the Low carbohydrate diets article