Low Carb Diet Plan – The Science Behind The Low Carb Diet

Low carb diet plans are excellent for losing weight, but
as with all diets you need to take care and use some common
sense when undertaking such a diet.

With a little direction and knowledge a low carb lifestyle can
help you maintain your weight loss.

In order to pick a low carb diet that’s right for you, you first
need to understand what carbohydrates are and the
different types of carbs.

Carbs are made up of either single sugars (simple carbs)
or bound strings of sugar (complex carbs).

Some examples of simple carbs include sucrose (table sugar),
fructose (fruit sugar) and lactose (dairy sugar). Examples of
complex carbs are wheat flour or potato starch.

Carbs are one of the main nutrient groups your body uses for
energy along with fat and protein. All three are converted to
glucose or blood sugar.

The difference is that carbs are converted quickly, causing
quick spikes in the body’s blood sugar levels. These spikes in
blood sugar levels cause the pancreas to create and release the
hormone insulin until the blood sugar level returns to
normal.

Insulin lowers our blood’s glucose levels. It’s released into
the blood as soon as the body detects that blood sugar levels
have risen above its optimal level.

Insulin also runs the body’s fuel storage systems.

Eating too much of simple, refined carbohydrates leads to
over production of insulin, which leads to the storage of too
much fat in the body.

Excess sugar or fat in the blood signals the body to store it in
fat cells and tell these cells not to release it. Thus their
stored fat is unavailable for use by the body as energy.

By preventing stored fat from being released for use as
energy, insulin prevents weight loss. With higher insulin
levels, fat cells are prevented from releasing their stores and
it becomes harder to lose weight.

Basically, what it all boils down to is that carbohydrates,
especially simple carbs like sugar and starch, are quickly
released into the bloodstream, turned into glucose and trigger
the creation of large amounts of insulin.

By lowering your carb consumption, less insulin is produced
and fewer calories are stored as fat. Less fat storage means
less weight gain.

So the idea behind every low carb diet plan is that a body that
produces less insulin burns more fat because the body’s not
storing the excess glucose as fat.

Some plans encourage a period of extremely low carbohydrate
intake so that the body will enter a state of ketosis and burn
fat stores quicker.

Ketosis, the body’s survival mechanism during
times of famine, is the process of burning stored fat for energy
when glucose is not readily available.

When your body reaches ketosis, this is what’s referred to as
the “induction” phase.

The length of extreme carb control varies from seven days to
however long it takes you to reach your ideal weight.

After this period of extremely low carb dieting, maintenance
levels of carb consumption are followed to prevent weight gain.
The amount of carb you can safely eat will depend on your unique
body system and your level of activity. You’ll probably have to
experiment to find out what level of carb intake is right for
you.

The whole idea’s to cut out refined carbs such as white flour
and white flour products, reduce sweets and artificially
sweetened foods and consume smaller amounts of whole grains and
raw fruits and veggies.

So as you can see, with a little common sense and a little
willpower, you can lose weight with the right low carb diet
plan.

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