First off, my girlfriend is a diabetic. She's also a celiac. That means
we are minutely aware of what kinds of ingredients we are ingesting in
this family. We read labels, we ask chefs to come out and tell us where
the vinegar or other foods came from. We call companies and get
clarification.
There is recently a growing number of companies advertising these
"low-carb" or "no-carb" food and beverage items for their product
lines. Subway Sandwich shops is one, Smirnoff vodka is another, and
Applebees Restaurant is yet another.
Carbohydrates are in a lot of foods and beverages. The reason you're
seeing these "no-carb" advertisements is due to pressure from people
using the fad "Atkins" diet (a highly dangerous diet, more on that in a
moment). The Atkins people do not count seem to be counting the carbs
found in foods containing fiber. A carbohydrate is a carbohydrate,
regardless of whether or not it is in fiber or sugars or other
ingredients. Not counting carbs found in fiber is a dangerous thing,
especially to advertise to the public, for people who RELY on the exact
number of carbs in their diet, to accurately gauge the amount of
insulin they should be taking at each meal.
The Atkins Diet, and others like it, trigger short-term weight loss
through a process called ketosis. Ketosis occurs whenever the body
lacks a sufficient supply of carbohydrates, a prime source of energy.
During ketosis, carbohydrate-depleted metabolisms turn to other
sources, including ketones from stored fat or protein, to satisfy daily
energy needs. (more of Ketosis later). The first bit of weight loss is
water weight, the carbohydrate that's in your muscles, and then as you
progress on the diet you will lose some fat, but you will also lose
some muscle mass.
According to Dr. Chris Rosenbloom from the ADA (American Dietetic
Association), she believe that this type of diet can have a negative
long-term impact on health. "It's so high in cholesterol and fat and
total fat -- the opposite of what all the health organizations, from
the American Heart Association to the American Dietetic Association,
recommend," she points out. And she noted that the diet "is also low in
fruits and vegetables and whole grains"-- foods with proven health
benefits. While some of the vitamins and minerals in these foods can be
obtained through supplements, other benefits -- like fiber or
phytochemicals -- can only be found at the source.
Low carbohydrate ketogenic diets (such as the Atkins' diet) are
often high in fat, which may increase cholesterol and lead to many
other health risks. The American Institute for Cancer Research has also
evaluated the Atkins' diet and their assessment is quite alarming. They
say that the high-protein, high- fat, low-carbohydrate Atkins diet
tends to promote the loss of water weight, and that if such an
imbalanced diet is maintained, the body soon reverts to the fasting
state of ketosis, in which the body begins to break down muscle tissue
instead of fat over the term.
Ketosis is one of the body's last-ditch emergency responses;
deliberately inducing ketosis can lead to muscle breakdown, nausea,
dehydration, headaches, light-headedness, irritability, bad breath, and
kidney problems. In pregnancy, ketosis may cause fetal abnormality or
death. It can also be fatal in individuals with diabetes! While
supporters of the Atkins diet concentrate so much on the fat burning
capability of ketosis they neglect to mention that over the long term
protein, and thus muscle, is also burned!
The basic building block of energy is glucose, and basic
carbohydrates provide that. The brain lives ONLY on glucose. You're
starving your body of the necessary building block of energy by
reducing the single-most important (and efficient) way to deliver
glucose to the cells; carbohydrates. Yes, you can get glucose out of
the remaining two nutrients found in food; fat and protein. On the
Atkins, they say, you can eat as much of those as you want, and refrain
from ingesting carbohydrates. Our bodies, for millions of years, have
been engineered to expect (and accept) carbohydrates as part of our
biology. We are efficient at digesting them and converting them to
glucose. By taking that away, you're forcing your body to relearn how
to digest fats and proteins into glucose.
By just ingesting fat and protein, you're stressing your liver and
kidneys out. You're severely reducing your bodie's water retention. An
excess of fat and protein will also cause your cholesterol to rise to
astronomical levels.
The reason people seem to lose weight on the Atkins, is because your
body has to use a completely different metabolic pathway to turn that
fat and protein into glucose. It takes a LOOONG time to turn fat into
glucose, and similarly for protein. Your muscle tone and fat stores are
severely depleted when you're on the Atikins diet. You starve your
brain of nutrients, your muscles of nutrients, your liver and kidneys
of nutrients. Basically you're killing yourself, slowly.
People have just up and dropped DEAD on the Atkins diet, because
their heart or liver could no longer function. The reason more people
aren't dying on the no-carb diet plans is because NOBODY has the
discipline to remove ALL carbohydrates from their diet, they only
decrease their carbs to under 35 grams per day. Do you know how many
hundreds of thousands of foods have carbohydrates in them? Probably
not. Nor does anyone else, and that's why it takes an enormous amount
of discipline to cut out carbs altogether. You can survive on a
low-carb diet if you want, but your body is slowly deteriorating;
liver, heart, and muscle. You're killing yourself by staying on that
diet.
If you want to lose weight, eat more frequently, and more nutritious
meals. This will increase your metabolism, and allow you to lose weight
fast. Your body anticipates the next meal, and digests the previous one
quickly, converting it into energy for your heart, muscles, and
most-importantly (for developers like ourselves), your brain. If you
want to do the most benefit to your brain, cut out gluten from your
diet, and you'll immediately notice a sharp spike in your awareness,
retention, and memory/recall.
Go search the web and find the studies out there that clearly point
out the Atkins diet and other similar "fad" no-carb diets are dangerous
to human physiology.
