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How to Start A Low Carb Diet

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Here is another post to help you get on your way to starting a low carb diet. It’s not going to be easy, but once you start a low carb diet and stick with it for at least 30 days your body doesn’t crave those carbs as much. I know because I’ve been there. So here is how to start a low carb diet.

Start a Low Carb Diet

How to Start a Low Carb Diet:

1. Start by cutting out all the carbs you can and know of: breads, crackers, sugars.

Limiting your carb intake may prove to be difficult in the beginning, but it is easier and more efficient than trying to reduce your fat or caloric intake. If you continue to limit your carb intake, after a while you will find that your cravings will greatly reduce and stop. The addiction lessens as your low carb eating becomes easier and your lust for carbohydrate rich foods subsides.

2. Do not limit your fat intake along with carbs.

Simply limiting your calorie intake or limiting your fat consumption for a few weeks or months may result in temporary weight loss, however the weight can quickly return as old eating habits do too.

3. Eat foods high in protein.

One of the main reasons why a low carb diet allows you to achieve sustainable weight loss is because the fats and proteins you eat are two components for satiety. Eating protein foods doesn’t make you crave more protein foods. Once you have eaten your meal, you won’t be almost immediately craving for another one. You will feel full.

4. It has to be a life choice.

For my husband and I this is now our lifestyle. If you want to sustain your weight loss, your diet should also be something that you are prepared to continue with. If long-term weight loss is truly your goal, make a lifestyle choice to reduce the amount of carbs you eat every day. You will lose weight, feel better and improve your health considerably.

5. If you are ready to go hard core, cut all carbs, and all sugar.

When I was finally ready to hit this diet with all I had I gave up all sugar and all carbs for the entire month. It wasn’t easy, I had some not so desirable side effects but once I got through those 30 days everything had been working quite well for me. My diet satisfies me and I find plenty of options to stay on course.

What is A Low Carb Diet

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I wanted to start sharing with everyone my journey of being on a low carb diet. I started last year and when I started and while I was watching my macros I lost 35 pounds and my husband has lost 50 pounds and is still losing. I’m not doing as well because I’ve been having some sugar here and some carbs here. I need to get back into Ketosis, and if all of this is unfamiliar to you I’m going to spend the next few weeks walking you through all these key words. Let’s start with the basics of what a low carb diet is.

low carb diet

 

The Low Carb Diet

A low carb diet is closely targeted at weight loss but has additional health benefits for reducing both the risk and effects of conditions such as type two diabetes. Type two diabetes us strongly linked to being overweight. It has been proven that by limiting your consumption of carbohydrates your body will be reducing the impact of excess insulin in the body. This means that instead of storing extra carbs as fat in your body, it will use your that extra fat as fuel. This is a very quick way to start losing that weight.

Unless you exercise a lot, your body only needs a low calorie diet for its needs. Of the food you eat, all the extra calories consumed are stored as fat. It’s our body’s way of preparing for starvation, which in this day and age is very unlikely to happen.

In contrast protein and dietary fats are digested and released slowly, carbohydrate metabolic release is much faster. This means that our body has been trained to burn carbs before fat or protein. The simpler the sugars, or higher the glycemic index of the particular carb, the faster the release into the bloodstream occurs.

Blood sugar levels over what the body needs will be quickly dealt with by released insulin. Therefore, consuming foods high in carbohydrates, foods more than your body needs for immediate energy requirements will almost certainly be stored as fat.

Understanding this basic physiological process, combined with knowing how saturated with high-GI carbohydrate foods our modern western diet is, makes it easier to understand why obesity and lifestyle disease rates continually grow.

Here is the KEY:

Most carbohydrate foods contain far more ‘too-readily’ usable calories than our bodies need or can use, while often providing little in the way of nutrient value, that is, all they provide is mostly energy (calories).

This why a low carb diet is excellent for weight loss.