why do ppl do low carb for weight loss?

ELVISDEAN

well just to help out who needs it and is open...I have tried every major eating regimen and "diet" but every time I have THE DISCIPLINE...yes its HARD.....to eat tons of potatoes pasta rice bread bagels fruits and veggies I get super skinny...super lean..but I lack this discipline mostly...and go back to protein foods and fatty foods and the pounds come back..


I AM JUST TELLING YOU FROM MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE STARCHY HEAVY RICH IN NUTRIENT CARBOHYDRATE FOODS ALWAYS ALWAYS MAKE ME LEAN AND THIN

hope someone here has learned something...sooo many people get this wrong

ELVISDEAN

teddabod

well just to help out who needs it and is open...I have tried every major eating regimen and "diet" but every time I have THE DISCIPLINE...yes its HARD.....to eat tons of potatoes pasta rice bread bagels fruits and veggies I get super skinny...super lean..but I lack this discipline mostly...and go back to protein foods and fatty foods and the pounds come back..


I AM JUST TELLING YOU FROM MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE STARCHY HEAVY RICH IN NUTRIENT CARBOHYDRATE FOODS ALWAYS ALWAYS MAKE ME LEAN AND THIN

hope someone here has learned something...sooo many people get this wrong

ELVISDEAN

To each his/her own I guess. Your diet works the opposite for me and I usually eat those during my bulk cycle in the winter.

Lowering carbs for a cutting cycle happens to work to shed fat/weight for me personally and is what I've done for years.

It's not for everybody, but you just need to find what works for you, or you, or you (looks around the room).... oh and you.

T

bcattoes

Just FYI, those of us doing low carb aren't stupid, and most of us have done extensive research to find what works best with our bodies.

I have absolutely no doubt that there are indeed stupid people doing low carb. Also, people who haven't done any research doing low carb. Also, people who have no clue what works best with their body doing low carb.

Fitnin6280

Just FYI, those of us doing low carb aren't stupid, and most of us have done extensive research to find what works best with our bodies.

I have absolutely no doubt that there are indeed stupid people doing low carb. Also, people who haven't done any research doing low carb. Also, people who have no clue what works best with their body doing low carb.

I am sure you are correct. I suppose there are stupid people doing the opposite too... But as for me, I am not. I have done my research, talked with my doctor, and I have found out what works for me.

Again, I am just saying it is a personal experience...

lmarshel

They think it's a quick way to lose weight, when really, as soon as you touch carbs again, you will probably blow up like a balloon

Speaking only for myself, this statement is completely false. I've had 2 carb-out days in the past 3 weeks and have still lost about 6 pounds during that time. Yesterday, I ate whatever I wanted including alcohol, cookies, chocolate, bread and cereal. So far today, I do not resemble a ballon

Scubanana7

I tried eating low carbs with the Atkins diet. It really worked for me as far as loosing fast. The only thing is that I really wanted the other foods that I used to eat like bread, pasta, and sweets. As soon as I started to eat them in proportion I gained all my weight back and then some. I guess whatever balanced diet that a person chooses for themselves, it has to work for "them" and be a lifestyle. It just didn't work for me. After reading this, I am however going to try to limit my intake of carbs because that's when "I" gain weight the most. I do agree with the person that said when you eat them you crave more, but I know for me, I like eating carbs and sweets so I don't think I can give it up completely but I am working towards limiting them in a balance way

Hey Tamika -- I found a bunch of recipes here and by just googling low-carb bread. I make pancakes, muffins, and different kinds of bread that have 1-2 net carbs. And they are tastier than the store-bought ones. They are made from ground flax and nut flours. I even grind my own almonds rather than buy the almond flour (cheaper). These treats have kept me from feeling deprived of breads or sweets. Try OOPSIE bread. There is even a uTube video demonstrating how to make it--very easy and delicious. Even my skinny hubby loves it. It is cheap to make: eggs and cream cheese only.

Good luck with your food management! Hey--we might be long lost cousins--I was a Thompson too. lol

TemikaThompson

I don't know why ppl are really Arguing on here about this. It is not that serious. I mean I can see if you are defending your reasons of why you choose this lifestyle, but for ppl to just be negative about others for their choices or lack of understanding, wow. It's not that serious....
@Scubanana7 Thanks I will try it.

I tried eating low carbs with the Atkins diet. It really worked for me as far as loosing fast. The only thing is that I really wanted the other foods that I used to eat like bread, pasta, and sweets. As soon as I started to eat them in proportion I gained all my weight back and then some. I guess whatever balanced diet that a person chooses for themselves, it has to work for "them" and be a lifestyle. It just didn't work for me. After reading this, I am however going to try to limit my intake of carbs because that's when "I" gain weight the most. I do agree with the person that said when you eat them you crave more, but I know for me, I like eating carbs and sweets so I don't think I can give it up completely but I am working towards limiting them in a balance way

Hey Tamika -- I found a bunch of recipes here and by just googling low-carb bread. I make pancakes, muffins, and different kinds of bread that have 1-2 net carbs. And they are tastier than the store-bought ones. They are made from ground flax and nut flours. I even grind my own almonds rather than buy the almond flour (cheaper). These treats have kept me from feeling deprived of breads or sweets. Try OOPSIE bread. There is even a uTube video demonstrating how to make it--very easy and delicious. Even my skinny hubby loves it. It is cheap to make: eggs and cream cheese only.

Good luck with your food management! Hey--we might be long lost cousins--I was a Thompson too. lol

KarenisPaleo

well just to help out who needs it and is open...I have tried every major eating regimen and "diet" but every time I have THE DISCIPLINE...yes its HARD.....to eat tons of potatoes pasta rice bread bagels fruits and veggies I get super skinny...super lean..but I lack this discipline mostly...and go back to protein foods and fatty foods and the pounds come back..


I AM JUST TELLING YOU FROM MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE STARCHY HEAVY RICH IN NUTRIENT CARBOHYDRATE FOODS ALWAYS ALWAYS MAKE ME LEAN AND THIN

hope someone here has learned something...sooo many people get this wrong



ELVISDEAN

You are so funny!

Fullsterkur_woman

This is a well known phenomenon known as "carb flu" or "induction flu". While your body is becoming fat-adapted you may not feel as good for a week or two, but if you stick it out you will feel a-m-a-z-i-n-g after that.

Or maybe you won't. Some of us stuck out the many stages of Atkins, starting with the green veggie carbs, adding in each new kind after a week, and months later found our serotonin stores stripped out and impulse control at an all-time low. I know it works great for a lot of people and I'm thrilled about that, but please do not discount the possibility that it won't work out for a given individual.

jdm_taco

While some may need to go this route to lose, I would say the majority of people that go this route are simply uneducated and don't realize you can still enjoy carbs and lose weight.

AlabasterVerve

While some may need to go this route to lose, I would say the majority of people that go this route are simply uneducated and don't realize you can still enjoy carbs and lose weight.

Or maybe they're like me? I don't need to eat low carb to lose weight at all I just prefer it.

I know it's hard for people to wrap their heads around but feeling full and satisfied (all the while eating delicious food) is worth saving the sweets, potatoes, pastas and breads for special occasions for some of us. Especially when you factor in the health benefits and almost effortless weight loss or maintenance. Eating low carb isn't a hardship or some grueling ordeal for everyone. Truly.

jdm_taco

While some may need to go this route to lose, I would say the majority of people that go this route are simply uneducated and don't realize you can still enjoy carbs and lose weight.

Or maybe they're like me? I don't need to eat low carb to lose weight at all I just prefer it.

I know it's hard for people to wrap their heads around but feeling full and satisfied (all the while eating delicious food) is worth saving the sweets, potatoes, pastas and breads for special occasions for some of us. Especially when you factor in the health benefits and almost effortless weight loss or maintenance. Eating low carb isn't a hardship or some grueling ordeal for everyone. Truly.

Never said all low carb eaters, which is why I said majority.

rachelwarner32

My husband did Mark Sisson's Primal Blueprint and lost 45 and has kept it off for almost 2 years. Although he was very strict during the initial weight loss he now eats chips,cookies,drinks beer and doesn't gain weight. Obviously he doesn't eat them every day but he's proven that cutting carbs equals sustainable weightloss.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that low carb is not sustainable for anyone. Just that most do not sustain it.

But, if your husband now eats a lot of carbs, how did he prove that low carb is sustainable for him? It sounds more like he proved he doens't need to give up carbs to maintain a healthy weight.

When I said obviously he doesn't eat them everyday that means he occasionally has a treat. He stays on and has a cheat day is what I meant :drinker:

astartig

I tried a low carb diet, well I did lose weight within a month my kidneys actually hurt, like I could barely walk they hurt so much. High protein, low carb diets put a lot of pressure on your kidneys and can have adverse effects in the long run.

Were you drinking a ton of water. you have to drink more than they recommend per day for a normal person/diet to keep your kidneys flushed.

astartig

This is just in from National Geographic:
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/08/sugar/cohen-text

It confirms that the boogeyman is Fructose, also known as fruit sugar. Fructose is in almost every fruit and plant we eat, although obviously the percentage is highest in fruits. When you eat low carb, you automatically eat low Fructose as well as long as you properly count the carb in fruits.

Yeah, fructose is something that some researchers are looking into.

Having done a lot of reading on the subject (I can be geeky that way) the issue with fructose doesn't seem to be saying to run screaming from fruit. It is perhaps a good reason to start wondering about high fructose corn syrup being placed into so many things these days. From what I've read, the center of research on the subject seems to arise from the way that fructose is metabolized by the body. (And I'm going to be really oversimplyfing this. I realize there's all sorts of things concerning ATP that I'm bypassing. I know that I'm over simplifying to an extreme degree, but it's complicated).

Fructose can only be metabolilzed by the liver, which does so by more or less splitting fructose into both glucose and fat. So basically, in order for your body to deal with fructose at all, part of it has to be turned into fat. The rest is turned into glucose.

Glucose can be absorbed without being shunted off to your liver the way that fructose is (where, again, fructose is turned into glucose + fat as the method of dealing with it). All the heavy work out folks complaining about low carb diets, saying that they have to have the carbs for their workouts, there's truth to that. Aerobic exercises depletes your glycogen stores in your muscles. If you're eating carbs, your body has a quick, efficient way to smoothely replinish the glycogen.

Where you start running into some of the low carb concept is that when glucose isn't readily available to replenish glycogen, your body can begin converting part of your consumed protein or consumed fat or can even start burning your body fat (or muscle) to do so. But, as your body prefers to use glucose -- and there are reasons for that that I'll get to in a minute -- if you have a lot of glucose available, you're body is going to default to the glucose first.

Burning fat or protein is far less efficient than converting readily available glucose, so if your focus is on athletic performance, you probably prefer the readily available carbs. If your object is to burn off fat stores that you already have, you may be willing to sacrifice atheltic performance for fat burning.

Where fructose comes in is that, again, the only part of your body capable of dealing with fructose is your liver. Fructose cannot be converted into glycogen without first having been metabolized by the liver which "splits" it into fat and glucose.

Sucrose (old fashioned table sugar) is metabolized by first splitting it into fructose and glucose, with the fructose then having to be split into fat and glucose.

Factoring this out into an equation (that is NOT proportionally accurate, it's just a 'thought experiment' representation), in order for your body to metabolize these sugars what you roughly have is something like

glucose = glucose
fructose = glucose + fat
sucrose = glucose + (glucose+fat)

So if your object is to replish glycogen stores for atheltic performance, best choice may be starchy carbs. Your body can metabolize it most efficiently and your liver doesn't immediately convert part of it to fat.

Flipping this around, though, fructose -- PURE fructose -- which is handled by the liver isn't regulated by insulin, meaning it's going to be far slower to trigger an insulin response than something starchy (after all, your liver has to 'convert' fructose into fat and glucose first). This is why less starchy fruits are lower on the glycemic index than starchy ones.

Once you start getting into insulin issues, however, you start talking about a whole host of other things.

Excesss glucose in your bloodstream is bad. It's toxic. That's diabetes. A healthy body prevents there being too much sugar in your bloodstream by releasing insulin which tells your body to stop poking around,burning your fat, etc, and burn this excess blood sugar instead. Right NOW! It keeps your blood sugar in the heathy range by your muscles using what they can burning through glycogen, your body fat absorbing/expanding as it can, and other parts of it converted into triglycerides (fat) in your blood. When you're body more or less goes '*ahem* I'm aborbing all that I can!' and there's still yet. more. suger., your body makes yet MORE insulin trying to try to make your cells absorb the excess... and now you're on the way to insulin resistance, requiring more and more insulin to accomplish the same result until your pancreas cries uncle because it's taking more insulin than it can produce to lower your blood sugar... at which point you are the owner of Type 2 diabetes.

So the resulting contradictions are that glucose stimulates your insulin faster than fructose, which stimulates your body to deal with the blood sugar NOW, which -- if you're taking in more sugar than your brain and muscles need -- is stored as fat.

Fructose on the other hand, doesn't immediately stimulate insulin, but to handle it at all, part of it is metabolized as fat ...and part of it is turned into glucose which in turn stimulates insulin, and so on.

So basically, what you're left with is: your body needs glucose but not too much glucose (and how much you need is going to depend on how much you're burning). Try to avoid sugar spikes. You don't want to over-stimulate insulin. You don't want more glucose in your bloodstream than your body can use. So yeah, calories in/calories out is part of the equation.

Now the pro-side of fruit is that between the FIBER they contain and the fact that fructose doesn't immediately stimulate an insulin response, fruit it a bit of a time release capsule. Your blood sugar load is strung out over a longer period of time which minimizes sugar spikes by spreading it out. This was the way that your body was meant to behave (and it's the way that your body deals with fructose, but yeah, to metabolize it, it's still going to be split into fat and glucose).

Glucose is handled far more efficiently by the body, but excessive amounts of it are going to cause sugar spikes that will stimulate insulin that... well, we've been there already.

Basically, don't overconsume.

Eat fruit. It has a lot to recommend it.

But maybe think about avoiding high fructose corn syrup. It looks like it could possibly be the worst of both worlds... but that hasn't been proven which why they're researching the subject.

Excellent and interesting post, thank you for taking the time.

natwallace94

To put their bodies into a state called ketosis.
Look it up!

Basically, when you consume carbs, your body turns it into energy or glucose.
So, if you're restricting your carbs, your body needs something else to use as energy. Therefore it goes for consumed protein, and fat storage, burning up your fat cells!

Eventually your liver will start producting ketone cells which help fuel the body since you have a lack of glucose.
You will experience fatigue for the first few weeks but once you're body gets used to it you should be fine!

jhiqui

Completely agree with the effect on bloating! On 4th day of low carb and feel so much better because my huge bloated belly is gone. It also cuts down my appetite and stops me grazing every time I walk through the kitchen. Have also tried it before and lost lots of weight, but just couldn't stick to it because I have kids and sometimes the smell of pizza and garlic bread and the other things they love to eat just gets too tempting...

AnneTanne0

For some people it may work...
for some people it doesn't work,
and for some people it seems to work.

When you start eating low carb, your glycogen-storage is depleted. Because glycogen is water soluble, you loose lots of water together with that glycogen. And some people think: 'look, only two days on low carb, and the fat is already melting' (however, it isn't fat, but just water.
When they start eating carbs again, glycogen-storage is filled (and a few pounds of water too), so they are sure: Look! eating carbs again, and there my weight is going up again.

At least for me, I have not the slightest problem loosing weight on 'high carbs'. I eat bread twice a day (home baked, wholegrain ryebread), love pasta (whole grain) and (whole grain) rice. Indeed, not all carbs are created equal. The so-called 'post prandial dip' is a typical consequence of a meal heavy on refined carbs...
But when choosing 'unprocessed' carbs it's perfectly possible (for me) to have a filling meal...

hookilau

but a lot of people dont eat low carb and arent overweight?
so then why would carbs make some humans fat but not all of them?
just had this thought today at work
corworker is doing a low carb diet to lose weight
and there i was shoveling rice in my mouth and just shrugging. works for me.

Because if there are lots of reasons why people can be overweight, just as there are lots of ways to lose weight. Uour question is akin to asking why someone would choose aspirin over NSAIDs for pain.

kimbtaylor1

Everyone is different in how they process carbs. Also, not all carbs are created equal. When I started my journey I couldn't drop weight even with loads of exercise and a balanced diet. So I took the drastic measure of cutting out ALL of my carbs. That did the trick the weight started coming off. Now, I'm not recommending anyone to do what I did...I was learning what was and wasn't healthy. After about two months of nothing but meat and green veggies I realized I just didn't feel well. I had lost weight but my energy to workout really wasn't there. So I started eating carbs again....except this time I did it right. I do not eat white bread at all and the only sugar I alow myself is in my sweet tea (I'm from Georgia and sweet tea is like water to me.) Any bread I do eat are whole grains but even those I keep limited to toast in the morning or a sandwich here and there. Thats still very little carbs when you look at it as a whole, but I eat veggies that have carbs and the one thing that makes it all work....FIBER!!!!! If I eat carbs that doesn't have fiber I mine as well just bee applying that roll to my rear end.