My Take on Low-Carb Diets for Fat Loss

My progress pic: Evolutionary Nutrition + low carb

While the effects of low-carb dieting on health can be impressive as well, especially for people with metabolic derangement (insulin/leptin resistance), I want to stick to low-carb for fat loss at the moment. Just to be clear, an evolutionary or paleo diet is not by nature always a low carb diet, though it can be. 

Why are low-carb diets so effective for fat burning?

Without going in to the underlying hormonal causes, the real advantage of low-carb diets is the resetting of satiation signaling pathways. 

What I mean by this is that when you eat a diet low in carbohydrates, your bodies ability to send the signals to your brain that you are full, is greatly increased.

The end result of this is that people will feel full on less food.

In fact, several clinical studies show that subjects eating a low-carb diet until they are full often eat less than people on high-carb diets that are actively restricting calories.

This makes it relatively easy to lose fat when compared to a high-carb diet, because you simply aren't as hungry. 

However, it's important to remember that even if you are eating low carb, if you constantly eat past the point of feeling full, it is still possible to gain body fat. 

The other thing I want to emphasize about low-carb diets is that the majority of the health benefits that people see from them are likely because of the things they are not eating; the grains, legumes, sugars, etc. You will get a lot of the same effects of a low-carb diet by replacing these foods with safe starches.

Weight loss on a high-carb diet is possible, although I wouldn't recommend for most people. It usually leads to feelings of constant hunger, deprivation, and possible malnutrition due to a decrease in consumption of the most nutrient dense foods (meat, eggs, animal fat), which can results in fat-soluble vitamin deficiencies.

I will examine the underlying hormonal and metabolic effects of low-carb diets, and their relationship with longevity sometime soon.

Precision Nutrition on Low Carb Diets

PN on Low-Carb Diets

Precision Nutrition is a pretty good resource for most people, and it's what got me in to nutrition in the first place, over 6 years ago. I like that they are staying pretty up to date with the research, and are not afraid to say "New evidence has come out and we're updating our approach."

Although they haven't fully caught on with the grains and fats, it looks to me like they are heading in that direction. John Berardi (founder) is a smart guy and I'm guessing they will start implementing some of this stuff in the next couple years. 

Check out this article for a great summary of low-carb diets: Lean Liver With A Low-Carb Diet.

They also explain NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease) and look at a study that used low-carb diets to treat it. 

I really like that they acknowledge that the increase in LDL cholesterol seen on a low carb diet is most likely NOT a bad thing, because it is the friendly Type A, large fluffy LDL, and these do not cause any damage to the blood vessels.

Here's what they say in the conclusion: 

In this study, a lower carbohydrate diet had a metabolic advantage over other diets due to more liver lipid oxidation, higher ketones and higher whole body fat oxidation.

Low carbohydrate diets in general have been shown to:

• lead to weight loss
• lead to fat loss
• improve blood triglycerides — a key risk marker for cardiovascular disease
• improve HDL-C — a key risk marker for cardiovascular disease
• increase or cause no change in LDL-C, though it seems to change the size distribution to a more favourable pattern (more large lower density LDL-C).