What is a Low Carb Diet?

For years and years the classic calorie-counting diets ruled the roost, and indeed a huge industry has emerged, with companies such as Weight Watchers at the forefront.

As you probably know, a calorie is measurement of energy, and seeing as our bodies derive energy from food, the perceived wisdom was that if we had an excess of calories, our bodies would turn store it as fat.

Sounds logical, right? Well maybe, but as the science around weight loss and nutrition in general has advanced we've seen a major shift in thinking.

Research by diet pioneers like Dr Atkins and many others laid the groundwork for a whole new approach to dieting based not on calorie counting but on the regulation of blood sugar levels.

Simply put, our bodies require a certain amount of glucose to fuel them and create energy. The body makes glucose from a range of foods, and carbohydrates (like potatoes, pasta, bread and so on) are really great sources of glucose. These carb foods are broken down by our bodies into sugar, which is as it should be.

The trouble is that nowadays, especially in Western cultures, we eat way more carbs than our bodies actually require. Think of those huge baked potatoes, giant sandwiches like foot long subs, massive plates of pasta and deep pan pizza. We really are a culture of carb junkies!

All of the sugar that we need is stored for short term use, mainly in the muscles and the liver but our bodies just don't know what to do with all of the excess sugar that's floating around in our system as a result of over-eating.

So what usually happens is that an organ in the body called the pancreas pumps out a hormone called insulin whose job it is to do something with this sugar, so it sends an instruction out to convert it into fat and store it in the fat cells for future use.

The more excess sugar we put into our bodies, the more stuffed and bloated our fat cells become. So following this scientific logic, it's not actually the calories that are the problem when it comes to gaining weight, it's the overconsumption of sugar - either in the form of complex carbs like bread and potatoes or simple carbs sources like chocolate and alcoholic drinks.

The role of low carb diets

Now that we know that too many carbs in our diet can lead directly to more fat on our bodies, we can find ways to reduce our carb intake so that we get just the right amounts for a healthy lifestyle.

Many traditional calorie counting diets recommend that carbohydrates make up anything from 50-65% of our total nutritional intake, with the rest being mainly proteins and fats. Most low carb diets recommend the intake from carbs be around 40% so it's not as if low carb diets are all about stopping you eating carbs at all.

Of course, everyone's body works slightly differently so it's not possible to prescribe exactly how many carbs any one of us should be consuming each day. But there are various systems out there offering related but differing advice and it's best to check out all of the major low carb diets and see what works best for your goals and lifestyle.

It's really just a question of making sure that you're eating a more sensible amount of carbs and also choosing which kinds of carbs you eat, as carb-based foods release sugar into the body at different rates which has a major impact on the dieting too.

Read about low carb diets and the glycemic index for more on the effects of different carbs on fat production and weight gain.

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