I will never say that living a low/no carb lifestyle is a healthy way to go, BUT I believe in it as a tool to help with weight loss when used correctly. Before I go ahead and green light everyone to drop carbs from their diet I feel obligated to share some of the science, both good and bad news, so that all aspects of this style of diet are fully understood. There is a sample meal plan that you can get on the bottom of this page if you would like to try it,
- Low carb dieting has been proven to be an effective style of dieting, but it is not a lifestyle that is healthy long term. It has also been proven to cause chronic dehydration, kidney stones and bone loss. So use your brain on this and follow my directions!!!!
- Everything in your body runs on sugar. Think of it as the fuel that you put into your car. Even body fat, when used for energy, is turned into sugar first so that it can be used by your muscles or whatever else needs the energy.
- Your body is designed to use carbs as its primary source of energy throughout the day, and it will normally make up the majority of your diet. By lowering/removing carbs from your eating you are drastically reducing your total calories from a days eating, and just like any other diet, this is what creates fat loss.
- When you eat carbohydrates your blood sugar will rise as those carbs are turned into energy. Your body regulates that blood sugar by sending Insulin into the system so that your body will do something with all of that blood sugar. In some cases it pushes that blood sugar into your muscles and in other cases it stores it as fat for use later.
- Insulin regulates many other processes in your body such as protein synthesis (telling your body to turn proteins into muscle or anything else). Too little Insulin can negatively impact your results.
- Carbohydrates are the primary source of energy for anaerobic exercise. If you are low in blood sugar then your workout will suffer because you can't metabolize fat into sugar fast enough to keep up with your energy demands.
- Carbohydrates bond with water, 2.1 grams of water for every gram of carbohydrate. That means that when we cut carbs we are also cutting water. This sounds great BUT when you cut water you get dehydrated which is bad, plus when you do eat carbs again you will gain all that water weight back within hours.
- It is easy to confuse weight loss with fat loss when your carbs are low because the scale is not accurately tracking changes in your body, it is only tracking pounds, not pounds of fat.
- Eat 3 days low calories and low carbs in a row. You will see significant weight loss, but remember that water loss does not count so not all of that weight loss is real.
- During low carb days increase whole proteins SLIGHTLY to make up for about 20% of the carbs that you are not eating. Remember that a calorie is still a calorie and increasing protein still counts as increasing calorie count, so don't go crazy!
- Add good carbs (low glycemic carbs) back in on day 3. Use the glycemic index (follow this link if you want to use our copy of the index) to know what are good carbs. The lower the number the better. DON'T BLOW ALL OF YOUR RESULTS BY THINKING THAT YOU DESERVE A TREAT!!!
- Go back to low carbs for 3 more days and repeat.
- Drink tons of water because low carb diets will dehydrate you!
- You can not go half ass'd on this meal plan. You either go shopping and get what you need to do it right, or you wait until the time is right!!!!!
- After 4 cycles of low to regular carbs then you need to stop and let your body replenish for at least 1 week. DON'T BLOW ALL OF YOUR RESULTS BY THINKING THAT YOU DESERVE A TREAT!!!
Follow this link for your FREE LOW CARB MEAL PLAN. Remember to take all of the advice from this blog when you follow this plan. It will make you lose weight, some of that weight will be water so stay extremely hydrated, but make sure that this plan is right for you before you try it!
