In study after study, the paleo diet, also called the ketogenic diet, which is about getting most of your calories from fat/protein instead of carbs/sugar, beats out the standard American diet with its abnormal carb intake.
All carbs turn to blood sugar and sugar needs to be processed quickly, since too much is poisonous for the blood. When you eat it the insulin hormone spikes and stuffs away as much of it as possible in your muscles, organs etc. But what to do with the rest? It is stored away in fat cells, and that's how you get fat. And then you get hungry again after just a few hours, and since you have trained your body to rely on sugar, you get sugar cravings. You try to ignore the hunger, but hunger always wins. You try to "just eat less," but hunger always wins.
Fat/protein on the other hand takes a longer time to break down, thereby providing a bit-by-bit energy source over many hours. After a few weeks of teaching your body to burn protein instead of sugar - which is how humans have lived for hundreds of thousands of years - your body looks to its fat reserves when it gets hungry. You burn fat throughout the day instead of snacking on carbs/sugar. Your blood stream develops ketones, which are cells that use your body fat for fuel. Sugar kills ketones.
You have three ways of developing fat-burning ketones: eating mostly fat/protein for energy, or starving yourself, or an extreme workout schedule. The latter two are not feasible for most people.
Read the link below. Click on the links to the studies.
http://www.healthline.com/nutrition/how-many-carbs-per-day-to-lose-weight#section2
For the past few decades, the health authorities have recommended that we eat a calorie restricted, low-fat diet.
The problem is that this diet doesn't really work. Even when people manage to stick to it, they don't see very good results (1, 2, 3).
An alternative that has been available for a long time is the low-carb diet. This diet restricts your intake of carbohydrates like sugars and starches (breads, pasta, etc.) and replaces them with protein and fat.
Studies show that low-carb diets reduce your appetite and make you eat fewer calories and lose weight pretty much effortlessly, as long as you manage to keep the carbs down (4).
In studies where low-carb and low-fat diets are compared, the researchers need to actively restrict calories in the low-fat groups to make the results comparable, but the low-carb groups still usually win (5, 6).
Low-carb diets also have benefits that go way beyond just weight loss. They lower blood sugar, blood pressure and triglycerides. They raise HDL (the good) and improve the pattern of LDL (the bad) cholesterol (7, 8, 9, 10).
Low-carb diets cause more weight loss and improve health much more than the calorie restricted, low-fat diet still recommended by the mainstream. This is pretty much a scientific fact at this point (11, 12, 13).
..........................................
Low-carb diets greatly reduce your blood levels of insulin, a hormone that brings the glucose (from the carbs) into cells.
One of the functions of insulin is to store fat. Many experts believe that the reason low-carb diets work so well, is that they reduce your levels of this hormone.
Another thing that insulin does is to tell the kidneys to hoard sodium. This is the reason high-carb diets can cause excess water retention.
When you cut carbs, you reduce insulin and your kidneys start shedding excess water (14, 15).
It is common for people to lose a lot of water weight in the first few days on a low-carb diet, up to 5-10 pounds.
Weight loss will slow down after the first week, but this time the fat will be coming from your fat stores.
One study compared low-carb and low-fat diets and used DEXA scanners (very accurate) to measure body composition. The low-carb dieters lost significant amounts of body fat and gained muscle at the same time (16).
Studies also show that low-carb diets are particularly effective at reducing the fat in your abdominal cavity (belly fat), which is the most dangerous fat of all and highly associated with many diseases (17).
If you're new to low-carb eating, you will probably need to go through an adaptation phase where your body is getting used to burning fat instead of carbs.
All carbs turn to blood sugar and sugar needs to be processed quickly, since too much is poisonous for the blood. When you eat it the insulin hormone spikes and stuffs away as much of it as possible in your muscles, organs etc. But what to do with the rest? It is stored away in fat cells, and that's how you get fat. And then you get hungry again after just a few hours, and since you have trained your body to rely on sugar, you get sugar cravings. You try to ignore the hunger, but hunger always wins. You try to "just eat less," but hunger always wins.
Fat/protein on the other hand takes a longer time to break down, thereby providing a bit-by-bit energy source over many hours. After a few weeks of teaching your body to burn protein instead of sugar - which is how humans have lived for hundreds of thousands of years - your body looks to its fat reserves when it gets hungry. You burn fat throughout the day instead of snacking on carbs/sugar. Your blood stream develops ketones, which are cells that use your body fat for fuel. Sugar kills ketones.
You have three ways of developing fat-burning ketones: eating mostly fat/protein for energy, or starving yourself, or an extreme workout schedule. The latter two are not feasible for most people.
Read the link below. Click on the links to the studies.
http://www.healthline.com/nutrition/how-many-carbs-per-day-to-lose-weight#section2
For the past few decades, the health authorities have recommended that we eat a calorie restricted, low-fat diet.
The problem is that this diet doesn't really work. Even when people manage to stick to it, they don't see very good results (1, 2, 3).
An alternative that has been available for a long time is the low-carb diet. This diet restricts your intake of carbohydrates like sugars and starches (breads, pasta, etc.) and replaces them with protein and fat.
Studies show that low-carb diets reduce your appetite and make you eat fewer calories and lose weight pretty much effortlessly, as long as you manage to keep the carbs down (4).
In studies where low-carb and low-fat diets are compared, the researchers need to actively restrict calories in the low-fat groups to make the results comparable, but the low-carb groups still usually win (5, 6).
Low-carb diets also have benefits that go way beyond just weight loss. They lower blood sugar, blood pressure and triglycerides. They raise HDL (the good) and improve the pattern of LDL (the bad) cholesterol (7, 8, 9, 10).
Low-carb diets cause more weight loss and improve health much more than the calorie restricted, low-fat diet still recommended by the mainstream. This is pretty much a scientific fact at this point (11, 12, 13).
..........................................
Low-carb diets greatly reduce your blood levels of insulin, a hormone that brings the glucose (from the carbs) into cells.
One of the functions of insulin is to store fat. Many experts believe that the reason low-carb diets work so well, is that they reduce your levels of this hormone.
Another thing that insulin does is to tell the kidneys to hoard sodium. This is the reason high-carb diets can cause excess water retention.
When you cut carbs, you reduce insulin and your kidneys start shedding excess water (14, 15).
It is common for people to lose a lot of water weight in the first few days on a low-carb diet, up to 5-10 pounds.
Weight loss will slow down after the first week, but this time the fat will be coming from your fat stores.
One study compared low-carb and low-fat diets and used DEXA scanners (very accurate) to measure body composition. The low-carb dieters lost significant amounts of body fat and gained muscle at the same time (16).
Studies also show that low-carb diets are particularly effective at reducing the fat in your abdominal cavity (belly fat), which is the most dangerous fat of all and highly associated with many diseases (17).
If you're new to low-carb eating, you will probably need to go through an adaptation phase where your body is getting used to burning fat instead of carbs.