The low-carb diet is getting popular day by day for all the right reasons, and thankfully, there is no shortage of options. Low calorie, whole grain, and low carb diets full of low starch vegetables have their benefits. These diets can eliminate carbs and sugar from your system and make it stronger and more efficient. These foods can help you reduce extra fat, maintain blood sugar, lower blood pressure and cholesterol. Still, the fats have to be good fat, that is, polyunsaturated and monounsaturated.
More fat is not typically bad for health. Still, good fat helps you feel full for a more extended period and are significant in the transportation of essential nutrients all over your body, and can fight inflammation. The problem arises when your diet’s fat is extra saturated, for example, the type of fat you get in bacon cheeseburgers.
We have taken suggestions from experts on what low-carb diets are best and which you can skip. Read on to know more about the best ways to shred that bit of extra calories. Here are the five most popular diets among health-conscious people that nutrition experts suggest: The paleo diet, low-carb Mediterranean diet, plain low carb diet, keto diet, and Atkins diet.
Paleo Diet
Paleo diet or the Paleolithic has its roots back in ancient times when humans hunted for their food and ate unprocessed food. Unlike today, the Paleolithic people well maintained the food’s sanctity as they consumed food in its natural form. Paleo diet includes legumes, fresh fruits, green veggies, seafood, nuts, edible seeds, oils, and meat. Our bodies correspond well to these foods and boost our health.
How Does It Contribute To Weight Reduction?
Given the paleo diet background and its evolution, the nomads relied on hunted food and ate many proteins to many extents. However, they justified their high-calorie intake with the amount of hard labor they used. But we neither eat that much amount of protein today nor have a laborious lifestyle like them.
High-protein diets should keep our bodies fuller for a long time, but it also adds to the overall calorie intake, which can be a downside of having a paleo diet. You may end up eating more saturated fat than fruits and vegetables. Keto and Atkin’s diets have similar disadvantages. So be very careful when choosing the paleo diet. You might want to balance the protein with some micronutrients to cut down on your calorie intake.
What Does The Expert Say?
Well, they recommend it with some caution. It’s a protein-rich diet in which you should consume grass-fed beef, wild fish, fresh fruits, herbs, and vegetables, and you cannot consume any processed foods. The paleo diet is an easy and maintainable diet for the long term as proteins, vegetables, and fruits are available everywhere.
Low-Carb Mediterranean Diet
The Mediterranean diet has its roots in Italy and Greece. These are the countries where the seafood is in abundance, and healthy fat takes over everything else. Red meat is generally not included in the diet, but you can moderately consume whole chicken, turkey, and dairy products.
How Does It Contribute To Weight Reduction?
The Mediterranean diet has been consecutively rated as the top diet for weight loss, as per Mcvoy. It’s beneficial for weight loss and very good for your heart and diabetic patients.
What Does The Expert Say?
It is one of the most sorted diets among nutritionists and highly recommended by them for reducing weight as it includes a nutritional balance of foods. It aids you in forming good sustainable eating habits as well for the long term. What makes the Mediterranean diet healthy is its fat source, which is mostly unsaturated. As per Mcvoy, a low-carb Mediterranean diet is an excellent combination of weight loss and heart-friendly.
Plain Low Carb Diet
A plain low carb diet is a practice of switching from high-carb foods to low carb foods. For instance, instead of consuming a whole-grain pizza crust, you can swap it with a nutrient-rich content homemade cauliflower crust. There’s no prescribed diet as such, but the most simple and easy thing that you can do is tweak your carb intake a little every day, which is why a low-carb diet is the number one way of reducing your weight. You can reduce your portion size, make it smaller, eat more frequently in less quantity, fill your plate with more greens, add healthy fats and more whole grains like quinoa.
How Does It Contribute To Weight Reduction?
A low-carb diet helps maintain the hunger pangs well as it keeps you fuller for a long time. You choose healthy protein and fat, which helps in reaching satisfaction.
What Does The Expert Say?
According to Dr. Rothberg, eliminating carbs like bread, sugary cereals, and pastries and swapping them with legumes and fibrous vegetables more often is a sustainable and long-term model and the primary way of reducing significant weight.
Keto Diet
Initially created as a medical diet plan to support children with epilepsy to control their seizures problem, the keto diet became quite famous among keen dieters for its not-so-real advantages in reducing fat. Typically, when you are on a keto diet, you tend to consume high-fat foods like cream, cheese, red meat, and coconut oil that is not at all beneficial at any given point in time. A problem arises with the keto diet since it’s low in carbs and high in fat.
Nutrition experts advise having less than 50 grams of carbs every day. It leaves a tiny room for nutrition powerhouses as fruits and vegetables. That’s the main reason keto diets are impossible to continue. On a proper keto diet, calories from fat must be 70% and more, and carbs must be below 10%. This ratio implies that a significant part of the diet, 70% of calories you are getting from fat, and if you are not careful enough to select unsaturated fats, it may lead to high cholesterol and danger of heart disease all along.
How Does It Contribute To Weight Reduction?
Not sure. Primarily yes, but excellent results can not be expected for long or cannot make you healthier. Short-term: It is proven effective to reduce fat; a study says that weight comes back with the bounds after a certain period due to how hard the food sources continue for a long time.
What Does The Expert Say?
Experts never suggest such a diet without monitoring by medical experts. If appropriately taken, the keto diet may result in diuresis, anorexia, electrolyte shifts, and in the meantime, your diet becomes fat-enriched. The drastic drop in carbs may lead to vomiting, nausea, dizziness, and more. Any sign you see in increasing fats, you should immediately stop having a keto diet.
Atkins Diet
In 1960 the Atkins diet was created to reduce fat by not fewer foods but having the right foods. Atkins is quite similar in outline to the keto diet, decreasing carbs and increasing fat and protein sources. As you work closely towards your fat loss goal, you can start adding in fruits, vegetables, and gradually carbs again. However, it should not cause you to add extra weight you have reduced.
How Does It Contribute To Weight Reduction?
Yes, in theory, but the same side effects that the keto diet has. Weight loss would not stick as you are not supposed to maintain an extreme low in carb forever.
Weight loss results don’t last long with the Atkins diet, too, at a max of 12 months.
What Does The Expert Say?
As per experts, Atkins is not the right diet because it removes carbs and doesn’t swap it with anything high on nutrients; this is also not a perfect balanced diet. Atkins diet promotes unhealthy foods as it just removes carbs, so even a cheeseburger is useful if you don’t take the bun.
All the people, their body and metabolism differ, so diet has to be different, it can’t be the same for all, and macronutrients like carbs should not be substituted or replaced with something else. Diet has to be perfectly balanced, so your body and mind matrix remains balanced.
Final Word
Nutrition experts and weight management clinics all have their preferred diet plans for weight reduction. The most popular diets are keto, Atkins, paleo, low carb Mediterranean, or plain low carb diet. A drastic drop in carbs consumption may lead to nausea, vomiting, headache, insomnia, and much more sickness. Make sure to do proper research before diving headfirst into one of these diets and monitor your body’s response to them.
