my latest blog post - Low carb diets

So can be beneficial for short term weight loss (for a weigh in for example) but not recommended long term.

It's quite the opposite actually. Low carb is something people choose for a variety of reasons, people who have grain allergies, or gluten allergies often choose low carb, people who are treating a specific condition do it as well, these are perfectly valid reasons. but they are lifestyle choices, not temporary fixes. body builders do it sometimes right before competition to remove hydration and make the body tighten up, but that's something else entirely (and not something I specifically condone mind you). In the short term, essentially, all you lose is water. Well, let me rephrase that. You don't lose any more fat than you would with any other diet, AND you lose water, which doesn't really help anything and can become an issue if hydration levels aren't monitored quite closely.

Great post SHBoss, I've just started a low carb diet so this is a great help and an exceptional read. Would you mind if I added you so I can check out your other blogs?

Thank you

not at all. Feel free.

I have a question. Can you clarify what is considered a carb in a "low carb" diet? I never followed Atkins or any other low carb diet, but I thought the goal of that type of diet was to cut out bread, pasta, rice, AND any fruit/veggie/etc that might have carbs or sugars.

I am considering cutting out the breads, pastas, etc to an extent (allowing myself one small serving per day). I will still eat my daily fruit (usually a banana, strawberries, blackberries, or some mix of these) and vegetables (usually broccoli, salad, or other veggies). Would this be considered low carb and have the negative effects you mention?

it depends on how much veggies you're considering. Fruits generally have a decent amount of carbs (sugar, any type of sugar, is a carbohydrate), but fruits usually also contain fiber and other good stuff that can mitigate the carbohydrate effect (somewhat). Breads, rices, and pasta's are carbs yes, but I think you're thinking more of gluten than carbohydrates. The body doesn't care whether a carb comes from veggies or from wonder bread. The difference is mainly in how fast that carb can be broken down and re-built as glucose, and THAT depends on what type of carb it is. Excess simpler sugars can result in to much energy coming in all at once, the only option your body has at that point is to send it along, if there's to much for the body to use at any one point, it becomes free floating blood sugar, and that's fine until your blood sugar also gets to high, which causes the body to start storing it as fat. Thats a main reason why the medical community says eat "good" carbs, these are usually more complex sugars and/or are locked up with fiber (like lots of veggies, and whole grains that haven't been processed to remove parts of the grain husks), fiber forces the digestion process to take longer, and thus metering out the digestion of carbs.