How to succeed with low carb diet once and for all
How to succeed with low carb diet plans?
If you have followed the “diet” tradition in the fitness community. You’ll find people who believe low carbs work for weight loss and those who are against it.
It’s almost like both camps have cult like following. With the kind of information overload you can really get confused with what to follow… So I am going to settle this once and for all.
Let’s talk about first question…
Does Low carb help you lose weight?
The answer is yes, Low carb can help you lose weight really fast if you know what you are doing. If you drop the carbs, your body will be forced to use fat for fuel, which is true. But…
What about slow metabolism with these diets?
Yes, that’s what I was coming to… You see the truth is they work like gangbusters, but most people stretch this advice too far. A lot of people not only limit themselves to a low-carb diet; they also ingest very little fat. This will led to muscle loss and lack of energy.
Mostly people go wrong by assuming that if they cut out fat from their diets too, then they’ll burn much more fat because the body will have to scavenge its own fatty acid reserve. It will, to some extent.
But the thing is when one energy source is disproportionately high compared to the other ones, your body will adapt to use it as its main fuel source. So if your protein intake is way higher than the other nutrients, your body will become good at using protein for fuel.
Now protein isn’t an efficient fuel source, which will lead to breakdown muscle tissue to produce the energy required. Thus shutting down your metabolism.
So remember, with a low-carb approach, fat intake should be high enough for your body to avoid burning proteins. During a low-carb diet, your fat intake should be pretty close to your protein intake. You can gradually drop your fat intake (as your body adapts using fat as fuel) as your diet progress.
How to find out if your metabolism slowed down?
I learnt this from Coach berardi. Its really a handy tool for guessing metabolism slow down. Take temperature every morning. There is a direct relationship between body temperature and metabolic rate in a healthy individual.
When your body temperature drops down by more than 1 degree it indicates a metabolic slow down of around 10%. If the change in drop is consistent for few days, you should increase your calories for a day.
So here’s how to succeed with low carb diet once and for all
1. Eat more good fats
2. Start weight training (more of strength training)
3. Avoid long hard cardio (ie. 1 hr of jogging). Rather spend more time in strength training and a session or two of HIIT per week.
Sources :
Lyle Macdonald (Expert on Low carb/ketogenic dieting).
Related Articles:
Feb 5th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
[...] my article on Low carb diet or how to lose abdominal [...]
Feb 10th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
[...] intelligent approach to nutrition and training (which almost all bodybuilders and fitness/figure competitors use), is to train and diet in a [...]
Feb 10th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
[...] 2) The second important principle to rid yourself of that flabby belly revolves around your nutrition. The first thing you need to realize is that “diets” only work against your body in your effort to lose the stomach fat. You see, if you follow any of these fad diets like low-carb, or low-fat, or the grapefruit diet, the soup diet, or anything else that restricts 1 or more of the macro-nutrients (protein, carbs, and fat), most of the time you will actually lose lean muscle and lower your metabolic rate. This only makes you fatter in the long run, when you start to eat normal again! (READ How to Succeed With Low Carb Diet once and For all) [...]
Aug 9th, 2008 at 11:09 am
[...] usted después de esta especial baja en carbohidratos de la dieta rápida pérdida de peso Resultados? Varun Pratap publica un diario de buena forma compartir su blog especial 10 minutos [...]