Quote:
Originally Posted by lkander2
Here is why low carb works. Your body uses carbs as its primary source of energy. On a low-carb diet, your body uses up these carbs and then moves to the fat stores for energy. This is called ketosis. That is why you lose fat on a low-carb diet, and why they are so successful. If you are smart about how you add the carbs back into your diet (by following a program, not just starting to eat pizza and pasta the day after you've reached your goal), then you will be able to maintain the weight with smart eating habits and moderate exercise. If you are on a low calorie diet, you need to maintain the same level of exercise and the low calorie intake in order to maintain your weight, or else you will gain it back. Low-carb isn't easy, but it is very good for you and helps you to develop eating habits that you need in order to maintain your weight. Watching your sugar and carb intake on ANY diet is important.
It's more than that though.
The only way to lose weight is to burn more calories than what you intake, including low-carb. This is evident.
The benefit of low-carb is that blood sugar is constant once the body switches into ketosis. Since protein, fat, and sugar alcohols don't really impact serum glucose, they're okay to eat in virtual "unlimited" quantities - but "unlimited" is not necessarily true. Your body reworks itself to maintain stable blood-glucose and insulin levels.
This is important because insulin controls hunger signals. A drop in insulin leads to a drop in leptin and an increase in ghrelin (there are other players involved, these are just the main ones). This triggers hunger and cravings. But in a low-carb diet, the glucose levels are constant, which means the insulin levels are constant, which means hunger is suppressed. This is why the first few days of Atkins are very rough, but once your body is in ketosis, you don't have a desire to eat that much. This leads to a decrease in caloric intake. There is little evidence to support the claim that diets such as Atkins have a net increase in metabolism.
If you eat 10,000 calories in beef daily, you're going to gain weight. The idea behind it is that you won't want to eat 10,000 calories in beef.
On the low calorie side of things, you don't have stable insulin levels, which leads to cravings which is the fall for most of us. Hunger is controlled by eating low-calorie, but filling foots (vegetables mainly).
If you lose all of your weight, you can maintain it without staying on a low carb diet, but you'll never be able to return to your eating habits which got you fat in the first place. You won't have to be on a continual diet, just a normal 2000 calorie diet.