Whenever someone like you and me starts something new it is always good to have rules to follow. Without rules we can tend to pick what we want and leave the rest. This is not a good path to follow if you are trying to lose weight or to control your glucose levels.
Let me give you an example of taking a legitimate idea and only using part of the rules that go along with the plan. My daughter wanted to be a vegetarian for ethical reasons. She did not want to eat meat any more. From a health standpoint I don’t agree with this but I respected her decision. Here is the problem. The rule she took from this was that she couldn’t eat meat. But she didn’t accept the other side of the coin that says a person on a diet that does not contain protein from animals will need to get it in another way.
Consequently, instead of eating a wide selection of vegetables and fruit in order to get the nutrients she needed, she mostly ate food with processed grains and sugars. As you can imagine, she gained weight on this high carbohydrate – low protein diet and felt terrible. Our bodies are not meant to operate effectively without proteins and fats and this was proof.
Along with her mistaken beliefs about what a vegetarian ate, she also bought into the organic food story. I don’t have a problem with organic, in fact I have a garden and orchard that are organic. I also buy beef from a lifelong friend who raises them on grass instead of in beef factories. But, my daughter believed that everything that said organic on the labe. was good for her. One day she brought home “organic” cookies which were filled with organic processed wheat flour and organic processed sugar. Her body didn’t care whether it was organic or not. The high levels of carbohydrates from the processed grain and sugar still had the negative effect of weight gain.
How Many Carbs Per Day Do You Need
The rules she missed were,
One, a vegetarian diet will work for people because they eat a lot of vegetables and fruit. Not because they just don’t eat meat. I think the added amount of carbs is actually worse for you.
Two, just because something is organic does not mean it is good for you. Large amounts of carbohydrates from processed grains and sugar are not healthy no matter if they have the organic label or not.
A far as the rule for the number of carbs eaten it ultimately depends on your own body and how it reacts. Everybody is different and each will react differently to the same amount of carbohydrates. That being said, when you start the Atkins diet it is recommended that you keep your carb count below 30 grams. This is called the induction stage and the idea is to jump start your weight loss and really see some results fast
For a lot of people this level is too low. They just can’t stay committed to eating only 30 grams of carbs a day. I can and I really like the feeling I get when I have cleared the majority of the carbs out of my body. I am more alert and less moody. I also have absolutely not liked the feeling I got when I fell off the wagon for whatever reason and ate more grams of carbohydrates than I usually did. I felt sluggish, bloated, and stressed out.
If you are looking for a weight loss plan then trying to stay between 30 and 50 grams would be a good place to start. If you are consistently eating only 50 grams of carbs and you are not losing weight then one of two things may be happening. First, you may need to reduce your carb intake. Second, you may have taken the idea that you can eat until you are not hungry to an extreme that counteracts any benefit from counting carbs.
The fact is, a low carb diet is not a license to stuff yourself and eat as much as you can. Nobody needs two pounds of bacon or a complete pork roast just because there are no carbs
As with any deiting ideas you should talk to your doctor before making any changes to your eating habits. Many doctors are starting to come around to the idea that a low carb or very low carb diet can be beneficial for people who need to lose weight or who need to control their blood glucose levels.
Low carb diets got a bad rap, I think precisely because of the tendency for some people to gorge themselves on massive amounts of high saturated fat meats. If you explain that you want to cut out carbs and eat more lean meat then he or she is much more likely to give their blessing. Also, as more and more studies are done to prove the many benefits of a low carbohydrate – high protein diet, the medical community is reevaluating dieting and nutrition.
I think eating more protein, fat, and complex carbohydrates and less processed grains and sugars is the answer to our current obesity epidemic and run away diabetes levels.