Many people have suffered from obesity since then. There are lots of factors why people experience overweight on their body. It can be the impact of an unhealthy lifestyle, doing fewer activities, or even eating too much junk food. To get rid of being overweight, you can do some types of diets. One of the diets preferred by lots of people for weight loss is a low carb diet.
Easy yet Effective! Get to Know Low Carb Diet
Low carb diet is a type of diet that require people to limit their consumption of carbohydrates. People who do this kind of diet usually restrict their carbohydrate consumption found in sugary foods, such as bread, pasta, pastry, and many more. What you need to know is this diet still allows you to eat carbohydrates but with small consumption.
Many people think our body needs lots of carbohydrates to energize them for a whole day. In fact, you can meet your nutrients by focusing more on other nutrients instead of carbohydrates. You can increase the consumption of foods, such as fruits and vegetables, that contain high protein.
This type of diet is loved by lots of its followers because it gives many benefits to our bodies. The benefits of doing low-carb diets besides weight loss are improving many health markers, such as HDL (good) cholesterol, blood sugar, blood triglycerides, and even blood pressure. Therefore, this kind of diet has many fans and followers spreading all around the world.
4 Highly Recommended Low Carb Diets for Weight Loss
1. Basic Low Carb Diet
A basic low carb diet is one of the best low carb diets for people who want to lose weight. Actually, this kind of diet has no fixed definition. It is simply referred to as a diet that limits the consumption of carbohydrates. This eating pattern allows you to consume more foods with high protein but consumes less carbohydrate daily.
To do this kind of diet is very easy. All you have to do is consume fewer carbohydrates every day. You can start to limit the consumption of food that may be considered carbs. Carbs itself is divided into some groups, which are simply natural, simple refined, complex natural, and complex refined.
Before you do this diet, you have to know the carbs you need to limit according to those four groups. Foods containing simple natural groups are such as the lactose in milk and fructose in fruit. Meanwhile, simple refined is contained table sugar, and complex nature is whole grains on beans. Then, complex refined, including white flour.
Why is this kind of low-carb diet considered the best method for weight loss? Apparently, our body will digest carbohydrates slower than other nutrients. Also, complex carbs have little effect on blood sugar than refined carbs. It also offers higher fiber than refined carbs.
Then, our body will make carbohydrates the main source of energy. During the digestion process, the body breaks down the carbs into simple sugars called glucose. Then, the glucose will be released into the blood, namely blood glucose. Meanwhile, there is insulin which came to help glucose enter the body’s cells that can be used for energy.
If there is extra glucose, it will be stored in the liver and in the muscles. Then, other extra glucose will be changed into body fat. This is the main function of a low-carb diet. Low carb diet will help the body to burn the stored fat for energy caused by carbohydrates. Burning lots of stored fat energy will help you lose weight effectively.
To do this, one of the best low carb diets, you have to eat less than 150 grams per day. But, if your main goal is weight loss, you can eat 50-100 grams of carbs per day. This consumption is perfect for those who are likely to make slow and steady weight loss. If you want to make fast weight loss, you must limit your carbs consumption to under 50 grams per day.
2. Ketogenic Diet
The second low carb diet you may find interesting and worth trying is the ketogenic diet. The ketogenic diet is an eating pattern that requires you to consume very low carbs yet high fats daily. This eating pattern is used to stimulate a metabolic state that is highly beneficial for weight loss. The metabolic state that is main goal of this diet is ketosis.
Then, what does ketosis mean? Ketosis shows that our body has lower carbs consumption. When our body has lower carbs consumption and enters the ketosis state, the insulin levels will extremely decrease. Therefore, our body will release more fatty acid in high amounts from its fat stores.
Then, this fatty acid, in significant amounts, will be transferred to our liver and changed into ketones. Ketones are molecules which water-soluble and have the ability to cross the blood-brain barrier. Not only that but also these molecules called ketones to act to be energies supplier to our brain.
After that, our brains will rely on ketones instead of using carbohydrates. Then, our body will produce a small number of glucose that is still needed by the brain via a process. This process, namely glucogenesis. Not only good for weight loss, but in fact, this diet also being one of the best low carb diets for treating lots of human conditions.
Surprisingly, the ketogenic diet is the traditional way to treat drug-resistant epilepsy in children. Other benefits of doing a ketogenic diet are for treating certain neurological disorders and metabolic types, including type 2 diabetes. This diet considering the best eating pattern for weight loss because it can make the appetite reduce lots.
If you are likely to do a ketogenic diet, what you have to do is reduce your carbohydrate consumption to fewer than 50 grams per day. Sometimes, people also cut off their carbohydrate consumption to 20 to 30 grams per day. This eating pattern or keto pattern is called SKD, which stands for Standard Ketogenic Diet.
Even though this type of diet requires you to eat very low carbohydrates, there are still other variations that involve strategically adding carbs for some conditions. First, targeting the ketogenic diet or TKD. By doing TKD, you will add a small number of carbohydrates around the training or workouts.
The second one is a cyclical ketogenic diet or shortened to CKD. People who do a cyclical ketogenic diet will allow doing a ketogenic diet on most days. But, you will switch your eating pattern to a high-carb diet, which requires you to eat more carbohydrates for one or two days each week.
3. Atkins Diet
The Atkins diet is also considered one of the best low carb diets you may try. Atkins diet is an eating pattern discovered by an American physician and cardiologist namely, Robert Atkins, in 1963. He did research that explored the theory that cutting starch and sugar in the diet will lead the body to effective weight loss. This is why the atkins diet is named such.
In fact, this diet is very similar to a ketogenic diet, which was already explained before. Both of ketogenic diet and the atkins diet allow you to increase the higher amount of fat and protein consumption but limit carbohydrate consumption. However, the main differences between these eating patterns are the number of protein allowed to consume per day.
There are four different stages you will go through while doing the Atkins diet. The first phase is named the induction phase. In this phase, you will start the atkins diet by cutting off almost all of the carbs consumed from your daily diet. However, you are still allowed to eat carbs per day, but not over 20 grams of carbs per day.
While in the very first stage of the atkins diet, your body will rely more on fats to produce more energy for you. Then, you will tend to lose the majority of weight in this phase. You will do the induction phase for at least two weeks before moving to another phase, namely the second stage.
When you succeed in the induction phase, you may move forward to the second phase, called the second stage. In this second stage, you will focus more on continued weight loss, and you are allowed to increase the small number of carbs consumption, which is between 25 and 45 grams of carbs daily. It is aimed at avoiding the risk of weight gain.
The next phase in the atkins diet is the pre-maintenance stage. The pre-maintenance stage means you will still re-introduce back the carbohydrates to the diet and reach the five main objectives and goals. Those goals are losing the last 10 pounds, testing the tolerance for forbidden foods, and maintaining weight loss.
The last phase is namely the lifelong phase. Just like the name, this phase is simply maintenance. If you are already in this final phase, Atkins suggests that you were supposed to discover how much carbohydrates consumptions you can add back to your diet without making your body gain more weight.
If you are interested in doing the atkins diet, you may focus more on foods with high protein and fats. You are suggested to eat meat, seafood, eggs, poultry, butter, oils, cheese, and others. Then, you may avoid foods with starchy and sugary carbs, such as pasta, bread, potatoes, chips, candy, cookies, and many more.
4. Zero Carb Diet
Another diet that is considered one of the best low carb diets is zero carb diet or a no-carb diet. Just like the name, this eating pattern requires you to cut off all of the consumption of carbohydrates per day. By doing this kind of diet, you will no longer eat foods containing carbs, including whole grains, some vegetables, and even fruits.
No wonder this diet is also known as an extreme version of a low-carb diet. People who make this eating pattern will avoid eating most foods containing carbohydrates, such as legumes, fruits, vegetables, milk, pasta, bread, beans, grains, and baked goods. Instead, they are eating food with high protein, like meats, cheese, oils, fish, and butter.
This eating pattern has many followers because it is considered the best way to lose weight. It is because reducing your carbs consumption is perfect for weight loss. Instead, replacing carbohydrates with protein or fat will help you to feel more full and satisfied, which makes you eat fewer calories and help to lose weight.
Zero carb diet is also beneficial for other health conditions besides weight loss. Zero carb diet is perfect for improving heart health, improving your blood sugar control better than before, lowering blood pressure, reducing belly fat, and even lowering your risk of metabolic syndrome.
If you are interested in doing zero carb diet, what you have to do is limit your carbohydrate consumption to between 20 and 50 grams per day. Also, you can avoid all of the foods that may be high in carbohydrates. You can eliminate whole and refined grains, fruits, milk, yogurt, beans, pasta, legumes, and starchy vegetables such as peas and corn.
But you are allowed to eat these foods such as meat, eggs, cheese, butter, oils, and fish. Then, the drinks you are allowed to consume while doing zero carb diet are water and plain coffee or tea. If you are not very strict about doing zero carb diet, you can also eat seeds, nuts, and non-starchy vegetables. You can also consume high-fat fruits, including avocado and coconut.
But make sure to pay attention to the nutrients you consume while doing zero carb diet. It is because zero-carb diets also have some downsides. The bad sides of zero carb diet may cause low energy, constipation, and lacking some essential nutrients. Those are the main reasons zero carbs are not recommended for a long-term diet.
You can do many diets, including a low-carb diet, as mentioned above. But, if your target is weight loss, then those 4 mentioned above are the best low carb diets for you. You may note that this diet requires you to be consistent because you have to limit the consumption of carbohydrates daily.
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