Nope its terrible. You build up way more urea, ammonia, and creatinine levels in your blood. Your body goes through a complete change when you cut carbs out like that. You increase ketone body synthesis and may even induce acidosis if it gets bad enough. Carbs + fats are your body's #1 goto source for energy, proteins are the last. You get way too much waste that cab build up to toxic levels. The reasoning behind this is that proteins don't generate the same amount of energy as carbs do while making you feel full. Substituting some of your carbs for protein is good, but the whole "I just won't eat any carbs " crap is just stupid. Simple sugars like candy bars and soda? Yea its better to cut those out but complex carbs and wheat need to be providing you with most of your energy.
What are your thoughts on Joel Fuhrman's "Eat to Live" book? Just read it recently. Pretty damn eye-opening.
That sounds like an effective and very healthy approach to weight loss. For the record though as I mentioned, you might not be as skinny as you would want to be with a balanced diet as opposed to an atkin's type of approach, but you will be healthier. Being skinnier and losing more weight in these scenarios often means taking a toll else where, there is a price to pay. Apart from the other problems with such a big protein:fats & carb ratio I mentioned above there is a also a really scary trend with LDL levels and oxidative stress with people on the atkins diet. I know people that have been on it and had some great results but were told by their physician to stop because of the toll they were putting on their body. Everybody is free to do whatever they want, but generally safest and best way to approach problems like these is to take the simple and gradual approach. (expend energy) > (Consume energy) with a balanced diet, exercise , and proper lifestyle changes. My first two years in college I put on about 30 lbs, became slightly overweight and only just lost it all about a year ago by re enacting a proper and active lifestyle. I'm 5'10" and weigh 145 lbs.
You guys are absolutely right, it's normally not healthy to just cut out carbs completely. I'm using this as a more temporary solution than anything. My view is that when activity level is low, 20-30g of well-timed carbs per day is plenty. Your body can work to extract the rest of your energy from the protein you consume and from your body fat since you don't need large bursts of energy. At the moment my schedule consists of driving + sitting at a desk when at work + working on a laptop after work. Aside from that, I work out about 3 hours per week. I consider that inactive so can't really justify any average amount of carbs until my activity level becomes average. Plus, even when trying to hit 0 carbs, you will end up with 10-20g anyway. Moreover my body has an issue with insulin regulation + a severe sleeping disorder (which induces day time sleepiness), so carbs really kill me when I'm not working out regularly. I'm talking about a little bowl of quinoa making me pass the f*** out. I think it will take me less than a month to drop the 10lbs this way, at which point I'll have more time to work out, and then I will reintroduce good carbs and start lifting again. I'll also note that many people make excuses for eating carbs which are more applicable to olympians than themselves. Yes you need carbs, but it's all relative to your lifestyle and to your body. There is really no reason for today's average (desk job) human being to have a sizeable amount of carbs except for breakfast and post work out, and always good carbs. Unless you're training HARD, there is literally no sensible reason to have bad carbs like white bread.
Don't think of this kind of diet as cutting carbs so much as cutting sugar. While the initial phase of diets like Atkins and (I think) South Beach have you drastically cutting carbs down to something like 20 Grams per day it's to get your body to stop craving sugar. Once you've gotten down to close to your goal weight you start eating carbs again but you never go back to what you did before or you'll start getting fat again. So you can start eating some fruits in moderation (like berries) along with nuts and a wider variety of vegetables. But you really shouldn't go back to eating bread or pasta on a regular basis. Two or three times a month you can indulge yourself but just not every day or even every week. And what most people find is that they really don't miss those kinds of food like they thought they would. After you get over your sugar addiction those foods just don't have the same appeal. I've been on a diet like this since January and have gone from 190 + to hovering between 165 and 170. On Valentine's day I had french fries and on my birthday I ate pasta and cake. They were good but it wasn't like I was a prisoner getting my first real meal in years. I had one serving and was totally satisfied whereas before I would have wanted seconds or thirds. But I don't think anyone would say cutting cake, pasta, fries and bread from your diet is "unhealthy". Even in the initial phases you still eat vegetables. Just make sure the vegetables are not starchy like potatoes or carrots. Have a steak or chicken (with the skin on!) and eat that with asparagus or green beans. Broccoli is good as well as salad and peppers. Strangely buffalo wings (that aren't breaded with hot or medium sauce) with celery and a salad is good under this diet. You can still drink booze! Just not beer. Scotch, Vodka, etc... all have zero carbs so don't mix them with sweet mixers and just learn to appreciate scotch on the rocks or "real" martinis. So you still eat carbs, you just get them with vegetables and not from bread, french fries or cake/frosting.
carbs spike your blood sugar, leading to insulin resistance and eventually diabetes a neat thing to do is purchase a cheap blood glucose meter at a drug store or from Amazon, and see how your body responds to various carbs and check out the glycemic index http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Glycemic_index_and_glycemic_load_for_100_foods.htm You will see that whole wheat bread is not your friend in this regard. But go right ahead, eat a piece of toast every morning and have elevated blood sugar for a good portion of the day.
first we had a fat phobia..OH NOZ. FAT MAKES U FAT...we need low fat foods then all that fat in food got replaced with junk carbs/sugar. now it's oh noz..carbs make you fat. how about we reduce the overall intake of CALORIES!!!!??
Well said, 6 pounds the first week is my total so far 1/10th of the way home. When I first did this thread, I got down to my ideal weight and kept it off for more than year, but started bad habits again. It really is a lifestyle choice - you don't cut everything out entirely, just moderate them. You do cut carbs out for the most part during the weight loss though to force your body to burn fat to supply those carbs, and thus releasing Ketones into the body as the fat is burned. And that is what is measured by the Ketostix - when they are purple you are burning fat, and I find that incredibly motivating. Just this AM for instance, I got two breakfast tacos - one with Charizo egg and cheese, and the other with bacon egg and cheese - I tossed away the tortillas and ate them like an omelet. And that works. DD
yeah, Fuhrman says whole wheat bread is basically only marginally better than taking white bread and dyeing it in brown food coloring. eat whole grains bread if anything. i'd encourage everybody to read his book...you will get at least something out of it. if you care about your health at all, it's pretty much impossible to read it and not make a conscious effort to eat more vegetables and fruit. don't mean to preach, just a ton of eye-opening stuff in the book. at the same time, it seems like it would be pretty tough to maintain his lifestyle.
I just started dieting too. Cut out drinking... Although I did have some scotch this weekend, and have been watching what I eat. Greek yogurt and fruit for breakfast then usually lean meat with a salad for dinner. Been hitting the gym hard and dropped 2 pounds my first week and I feel a lot better already. Almost hit a home run at softball yesterday . I'm hoping to get down to 175 by June, I'm at 193 right now. Not the craziest goal but when you work in the food industry some times it's hard to extreme diet .
Dang. You're fat again, or you just added a few pounds you lost? I can haz the CARB diet. I don't lose a lot of weight, but when I do, it's because I exercise. Just work out more... and it will go off a lot faster than just stopping the carbs. Well, at least it works for me. That's what SHE said.
I gained it all back and then some, fell hard off the wagon into seriously poor habits. If you work out AND do the carbs the weight flies off - and those sticks turn a dark dark purple.....so that is definitly in the cards, basketball at lunch at the YMCA here I come. DD
Darker purple just means you aren't hydrated enough, not that your burning more fat. No different than having darker urine when you are dehydrated. As long as it's any shade of purple, you are in ketosis.
You can lose weight on a diet, but you will gain it all back again and then some when you get off the diet. You have to change your LIFESTYLE if you want to keep it off. I lost 40 pounds several years ago and have managed to keep most of it off because I stopped going on diets and just changed my lifestyle. Not eating carbs is a diet, not a lifestyle.
