The Low-Carbohydrate Diet

A healthy diet should provide you with all the essential nutrients necessary to maintain good health. These include carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals and water. Carbohydrates is defined as “all starches and sugars, including all grains, cereals, potatoes and the foods that are made from them.” The low-carbohydrate diet is low on these foods and relatively high in proteins and fats. The thinking behind this diet is that some carbohydrates, although not all types, cause our bodies to create and store fat which will ultimately lead to unhealthy weight gain.

The low-fat/high-carbohydrate diet , the favoured fat-burning diet by many today, starves the body of fat and muscle in order to provide itself with fuel. This type of diet will lose weight, but the loss of muscle tissue not only shows up physically, making you look flabby and untoned, but it also reduces the body’s metabolic rate. The low-carbohydrate diet in contrast, the body burns mostly fat and preserves lean muscle tissue. And if you do any exercise, you will add lean muscle while still losing fat. Exercise will increase your metabolic rate and help to increase the loss of fat. It is also very important to drink plenty of water when following a low-carbohydrate diet.