Why Low-Carb Diets are Bound to Fail You

A low-carb diet is an eating program that advocates a drastically reduced consumption of carbohydrates. In order to achieve weight loss, you must burn more calories than you consume. Depriving your body of carbohydrates will force your body to reach out to stored fat for energy, causing you to lose weight.

The late Dr. Robert Atkins almost single-handedly educated Americans about the low-carbohydrate diet concept when he introduced the popular Atkins diet, the most well-known low-carb diet. The main principle behind the Atkins diet is that carbohydrates increase the rate of insulin in your body, which promotes the storage of fat.

While Dr. Atkins work helped establish the link between obesity and insulin, here are 4 reasons why the Atkins diet won’t help you keep off weight in the long run, nor help reduce your risk of diseases:

1.       The Atkins diet is a low-carbohydrate, high-fat and high protein diet. However, it’s a single program designed for the entire population and is basically a “one-size-fits all” diet. But one man’s food may be another man’s poison. One-third of Americans actually need a high carbohydrate diet, and, following the Atkins diet means they would be depriving their bodies of the ideal fuel that they need.

2.       Dr. Atkins labeled all carbohydrates as bad. Vegetable carbohydrates are different from the carbohydrates that come from grains, and as such, do not need to be restricted to effectively achieve weight loss. Some people actually need two-thirds of their food to be vegetable carbohydrates; so in essence, they are on a high-carbohydrate but no-grain and no-sugar diet.

3.       The Atkins diet and the South Beach Diet make the same mistake of advocating the use of the glycemic index, a tool which helps you select foods that would have a minimal effect on your blood sugar levels. However, it is an unreliable and inconsistent tool because glycemic index values just have too many exceptions. Fructose, for example, has a low glycemic index, when in reality, too much of it is a prescription for obesity.

4.       Low-carb diets like the Atkins diet, will not address the emotional factors behind a person’s poor eating habits. For Dr. Joseph Mercola, one of the keys to effectively losing weight and living a truly healthy life is by overcoming the emotional challenges that are sabotaging your food choices.

The No-Grain Diet is a healthy way to achieve weight loss. It explains why restricting grains and sugars is one of the most important things you can do to achieve good health. But before trying any specialized diet, here’s a reminder from Dr. Mercola: there is no perfect diet for everyone or every condition. Diet needs to be modified to fit a specific person based on his or her own unique genetic requirements.

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