Why Low Carb Diet is Healthy

Are you one of those who’ve cleaned out your pantry and decided to commit to low-carb diet? It’s currently one of the diets that people who wanted to slim down tries. Before, it was low-fat diet but now the new craze is low-carb diet although not everyone believes it to be a healthy. But low-carb diets do have proven health benefits.

Is Low-Carb Diet Recommended by Experts?

The thing is that it’s a difficult task to provide general health and diet advice that would actually apply to everybody. This is why public health guidelines are often focused on recommendations that guarantee everyone has enough vitamins, minerals and nutrition in their body. Such health recommendations also emphasize that physical activity is balanced with calorie intake.

The dietary guidelines recommend that one eats healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables, low-fat or fat-free dairy products, whole grains and seafood. On the other hand, one should eat less of trans fats, saturated fats, sodium, refined grains and added sugars. These were what the experts in nutrition and diet recommends.

But then when it comes to a person, each case varies greatly to another that one recommendation or solution applies to all. When it comes to health, several factors have to be taken account such as height and weight, metabolic function, etc. especially for individual recommendations. When you suffer from a specific medical condition, it is especially important that the dietary recommendations are tailored to your needs.

On that account, a number of diets emerged and developed to cater to individual’s varying needs. Two of the most common are low-fat diet and low-carb diet. Some individuals prefer the low-fat while there are some who do better with low-carb diet. With low-carb diet, there are some who are skeptical that there are health benefits to living a lifestyle that way when your blood cholesterol might elevate and the risk to coronary heart disease increase.

But in the last few years, there have been studies and researches about low-carb diets which have shown that it maybe actually helpful to those suffering from obesity. What’s even better is that it may not only just help you lose weight but also improve your overall health in so many ways. On that note, here you’ll learn of the health benefits of low carbohydrate, high fat diets to your health.

How Low-Carb Diet Works

So you’ve decided to try low carb diet. You now avoid refined sugars completely and you cut down on other types of carbohydrates in your diet by avoiding pasta, rice, bread, corn and potatoes. Now, the only carbohydrates you consume are those you can find in fruits and vegetables. In low-carb diet, the way you can provide your body with energy is by increasing the natural healthy fats you consume.

You can do so by eating plant-derived fat, animal fat and dairy fat but you’ll avoid low-fat dairy since they are usually full of artificial sugar. Afterwards, you start to selectively add carbs to your diet but only in the amount abided so you won’t start gaining weight again. It’s basically how low-carb diet works but it is important that you consult your doctor and ask for advice first.

Before anything else, you should research and read more about this type of diet. The doctor is the best person to talk to if you are planning on trying low-carb diet. Have test done and checked so you can be sure this diet is safe for you. This way, any individual issues can be addressed and the risk of worsening your health be prevented.

Health Benefits of Low Carb Diet

Here are proven and tested health benefits of low carb, high fat diet:

• Weight Loss

Studies and experience showed that low carb diet is able to foster weight loss. One should note, however, that the amount of weight loss varies individually. It depends on the individual’s health and how aggressive they are in ridding themselves of carbs and sugars.

• Improve Blood Pressure

With stroke and heart disease, high blood pressure is one of the known risk factors. As such, it is an important step for lowering one’s risk to heart disease that blood pressure is lowered.  In that note, studies on low-carb diets have shown that it effectively lowers blood pressure of those with obesity.

• Improve Blood Sugar

Apart from improved blood pressure, low-carb diets have also been shown to lower glycated hemoglobin and fasting glucose levels. If you are diabetic or pre-diabetic, this is extremely helpful. This health benefit is also quite helpful for those individuals with metabolic syndrome.

• Improve Upset Stomach

When you are on low-carb diet, it’s found out that it’s quite uncommon to experience stomach problems. It is specifically found that there’s often less gas, risk of diarrhea and stomach cramps. A lot of people have reported that they experience less heartburn.

• Reduce Sugar Cravings

Low-carb diet is especially effective in reducing your cravings for sugar. A lot of people find it hard to stay away from sweets which results to obesity, diabetes and all other medical complications. But with low carb diet, you can finally beat down your obsession with sweets.

• Reduce Acne Problems

Reduced acne problems are also one of the benefits of low-carb diet. People have improvements in their acne problems with low carb diet which isn’t surprising seeing that there’s a connection between acne and high carb diet which could be the effect of growth hormones.

• Increased Physical Endurance

This type of diet has also been found to provide increased physical endurance. This is because it gives you continuous access to all the energy there is in your fat stores. The thing is that the stored carbohydrates your body supplies only last for a couple of hours, especially when you’re doing intense training. But with low-carb diet, your energy can last for weeks, sometimes even months.

So these are the benefits of low-carb diet. It shows that low carb, high fat diet is safe and health improves your general health, even when it is unfamiliar as low-fat diet. Only that you must learn more about it first and consider a lot of things before you ever try this new diet.

by Kevin Angileri