A Low Carbohydrate Diet Can Powerfully Boost Your Health

A low carbohydrate diet - is it good or bad for you? Some sources say they're good for you, others say they're dangerous and they're fads that make your breath smell bad.

The conflicting information about diet and nutrition can be so confusing it's enough for you to give up and go have another ice cream, right? Well nutritional science is evolving all the time with more and better research being carried out, so let's shed some light on the latest about a low carbohydrate diet.

The Purpose Of Low Carb Diets

The purpose of low carbohydrate diets initially was to help people shed extra pounds and not just any pounds, but mainly pounds from fat.

With obesity on the rise in the West low carbohydrate diets were designed as fat loss diets. Because if we want to shed fat we need to avoid increasing insulin production in the body which is what a low carbohydrate diet does.

When we eat foods that raise our blood sugar levels significantly insulin rushes to the rescue and removes the excess from the blood. The trouble starts when insulin must deliver to the body's cells more sugar than they can use. When this happens, the liver converts the sugar for medium term storage into glycogen and any excess is converted for long term storage into body fat.

When we eat foods that keep blood sugar levels even, we avoid excessive insulin production and fat storage.

Why Should You Avoid Eating Lots Of Carbohydrate Rich Foods?

Eating too many carbohydrate rich foods elevates blood sugar levels the most as the digestion of carbohydrate rich foods triggers high insulin production that leads to fat storage.

Low carb diets work to avoid too much insulin being produced and to help fat loss. A low carbohydrate diet emphasizes low starch vegetables and fruits, protein, healthy fats and water, along with daily moderate exercise. This helps to keep blood sugar levels even and to switch on fat burning in the body.

This means that on a low carb diet a person consumes 6 serves of low starch vegetables a day; 3-5 serves of protein; 2 serves of healthy fats; 1-2 serves of low starch fruit; 2 liters of water or equivalent (such as herb teas), minimizes starchy fruit and vegetables, dairy and grains, eliminates sugar and artificial sweeteners and takes daily moderate exercise (for example - a thirty minute medium to brisk pace walk)

Moderate Low Carb Diets Promote Excellent Health

A low carbohydrate moderate diet appears similar to what our distant ancestors ate.

Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, studying diet evolution and aging concluded that genetically we are still very similar to our distant ancestors and so our bodies are better suited to the above diet than to the one we have been eating since the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago and since industrialization only 200 years ago.

Your Body Is Designed To Eat Quantities Of Vegetables And Fruit

These researchers found health problems are caused through the shift away from eating the plant foods that our ancestors ate such as wild grasses, leafy greens, some tubers, fruits, berries, seeds and herbs.

The modern grain based diet (breads, rice, and pasta) with high sugar and table salt levels we now consume, has created a deficiency of potassium alkali salts in the diet. This causes an increased acid load on our systems which has a poor effect on our health.

This can, for example, result in retardation of growth in children, and decreased muscle and bone mass, decreased growth hormone production, and kidney stone formation in adults.

Follow A Moderate Low Carbohydrate Diet

Now, it is important to understand that there is a world of difference between extremely restrictive low carb diets and moderate healthy low carbohydrate diets.

Extremely restrictive low carbohydrate diets that promote high protein, very few vegetables and various processed and unnatural foods, cause the production of high levels of ketone bodies in the blood. Ketone bodies are a by-product of fat break down. The gases these expel through the lungs make your breath smell. Not a good look!

Whereas healthy low carbohydrate, fat burning diets containing plenty of fresh low starchy vegetables, some low starchy fruit, plenty of pure water, moderate levels of protein, and healthy fats are excellent for our health.

Low carbohydrate healthy diets do not cause excessive ketone production and maintain proper acid- alkaline balance in the body that benefits our health.

For a food list, a shopping list, a detailed eating plan, and delicious recipes and for a healthy low carbohydrate fat loss diet see our recommendations (yet to come).