Carbophobia, Part I: The Truth About Low-Carb Diets

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We live in a world of extremes. For those who want to follow the Rambam’s sensible way of living, the middle path as far as diet and exercise go seems elusive.

We’ve been through low carb, high protein, low fat, low sugar, no sugar, high carb, and every other conceivable radical diet trend. It’s as if the quick fix is the only way to achieve what we want. But the statistics are telling us that most people who are trying these approaches to diet are not achieving much of anything.

Let’s look at the facts. Ninety-seven percent of people who are following an organized diet plan based on a book or program of some kind without making any other lifestyle changes will fail. Yes, many will lose pounds while on their program, but a few years down the road they will either weigh in at close to their starting weight or even more.

The Western world is obsessed with weight loss. In the United States alone, more than $60 million per year is spent on weight loss products and programs. Yet the amount of overweight or obese people continues to rise.

Remember the low-fat diets we were bombarded with a few years ago? Everything on the supermarket shelf was marked in big, bold print: “low-fat” or “non-fat.” The result? Americans continued to get fatter.

Then Dr. Atkins arrived on the scene, and did he make a revolution. Carbs were out; fat was in. Everyone stopped eating things that were good for them, and then lost weight until they couldn’t stand it anymore. And then they ended up eating every carbohydrate in sight, in addition to steaks, burgers, eggs and cheese.

Reverse Results

After the 1972 Olympics, physical fitness became popular. By 1978, according to U.S. News and World Report, America was in the midst of “fitness mania.” But it was also about this time that obesity rates began the rise that continue to this day.

Yes, there is a genetic predisposition for many, which makes them more prone to being overweight. And yes, some people do have a naturally faster metabolism. But, irrespective of how easy or difficult it is to do, the mechanism of weight gain works like this: If we consume more fuel than we burn, we get fat.

Does this happen from the occasional binge, the extra slice of pizza or the extra scoop of ice cream? In most cases, no. Weight gain is a slow and gradual process.

Let’s say, for example, you eat 2,300 calories a day and use only 2,000 or so. Every day you are left with 300 extra calories that turn into extra pounds every few weeks. Driving instead of walking twenty minutes every day means a gain of five pounds per year. Drinking a single can of Coke every other day will add another four pounds. It’s just a few extra grams a day and a few pounds a year, but that’s enough to create the epidemic which includes a wide range of disease and illness and kills 350,000 per year just in the United States.

Low-Fat, No-Fat

It is no accident that about the time that this epidemic started, the low-fat and no-fat phenomena began. People believe that because their food is lower in fat or fat-free, they can eat as much as they want.

Not true.

You can get fat on brown rice and whole wheat bread if you eat enough of it, let alone reduced-fat cookies, frozen yogurt and dietetic cakes. These foods tend to have more sugar and can even be higher in calories than their non-dietetic fatty counterparts. (The American Heart Association has adopted this position.)

Now, let’s talk about these not-so-evil carbs. In our eternal search for the perfect diet, carbohydrates became the culprit. It is estimated that up to 20% of Americans are participating in a low-carbohydrate diet for weight loss or maintenance. In these diets, carbs are shunned while protein consumption is encouraged. Two of the more popular low-carb diets are the Atkins Diet and the South Beach Diet, but there are many variations.

Does it work? The National Weight Control Registry is a long-term study of individuals 18 years and older who have successfully maintained a 30-pound weight loss for a minimum of one year. Currently it has about 4,500 members. An analysis of the diets of close to 3,000 people listed in this registry found that fewer than 1% who had maintained at least the 30 pounds of weight loss for a year or more followed a low carbohydrate diet (with less than 24% of the daily calories from carbohydrates).

Because so few dieters following Atkins were found in the registry, which includes only long-term dieters, researchers concluded that very low-carb diets do not offer any weight loss advantage over the long term. In addition, not eating enough unrefined carbohydrates carries certain health risks because they contain nutritional value and energy that we need.

No diet is worth going on if it compromises your health. Whether it is Atkins, Sugar Busters, Protein Power, South Beach, or any other variation on the high-protein theme, there is more scientific evidence than ever that a diet high in fat and animal products is strongly linked with heart disease, prostate cancer, breast cancer, type 2 diabetes and other diseases.

“Even if you manage to lose weight and keep it off on an Atkins diet, you may be mortgaging your health in the process,” says Dr. Dean Ornish, author of Eat More, Weigh Less.

Some recent research has shown that a high-protein diet also prevents maximum absorption of calcium into the system, leading to osteoporosis. Additionally, people with even slight abnormal kidney function can be harmed by high-protein diets. Liver disease and gout are now found to be more common in those eating a high-protein, low-carb diet.

Furthermore, low-carb diets tend to be imbalanced. If all carbs are bad, then the consumption of basic foods such as fruits, vegetables and whole grains becomes minimal. This deprives the dieter of essential vitamins, minerals, and nutrients.

Now that we’ve established what isn’t good for you in the long run, stay tuned for Part II, where you’ll learn about the many benefits of consuming the right carbs.

 

Alan Freishtat is an A.C.E. certified personal trainer and a lifestyle fitness coach with over 17 years of professional experience. He is the co-director of the Jerusalem-based weight loss and stress reduction center Lose It!  He can be reached at (U.S. Line) 516-568-5027, 02-651-8502 or by email at alan@loseit.co.il.

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COMMENTS
  • http://www.facebook.com/pasturedbeef Michael Kovacs

    3 years on a high fat, low carb regimen and down 100lbs. haven’t been sick since, not even a cold. No more asthma, sleep apnea, no more snoring or acid reflux, no more wild swinging blood sugars, good bye diabetes. I eat meat, fish, poultry, eggs and game, plenty of dark leafy green vegetables, heavy whipping cream, butter, cheese, coconut oil and olive oil. I drink Coffee with HWC and no sweetner. I eat no bread, pasta or cereal grains, I dont drink fruit juice or soda pop, I dont drink milk. I dont eat fruit except berries with HWC on occasion.

  • http://www.facebook.com/danny.j.albers Danny J Albers

    Funny how the only clinical trials Ornish does well against Atkins in is the ones run by… ta da… Ornish. Although he definately gets more favorable press with fewer success stories. There is a reason that Atkins continues to live in even though the man himself past (and no it was not heart disease that killed the good Doctor, it was a slip and fall on ice head injury, followed by a coma)

    You are right, people lost a tonne of weight IN GOOD HEALTH on Atkins that they regain if they go off Atkins. This does not make the diet at fault. No diet works if you do not stay on it!!!! Not even the sainted Ornish diet! The fact people get sick and fat again when they go off Atkins should actually tell you alot about how good it is to just stay on it.

  • Karen

    Actually all low-carb diets include vegetables and some fruit. Research has actually shown that when you avoid simple carbohydrates (sugar) and refined grains (complex carbs without fiber) you actually reduce your risk of heart disease, diabetes and other diseases by an extreme amount. To force the body to lose weight, in the beginning the grains and more “sugary” fruits and vegetables aren’t allowed. The reason that the weight control registry found so few people still following a strict low carb diet after maintaining their weight for a year is that the extreme anti-carb diet that people picture when they think of low-carb is only used during the weight loss phase. To ensure the user maintains their healthy weight, what they do is slowly add in carbs at an ever increasing carb:fiber ratio. So while in the beginning this carb:fiber ratio might have been 2:1 at most, it slowly rises to 4:1, 6:1, even 10:1 in the most active individuals. This increase in the ratio means that more calories from the person’s diet are going to come from carbs when they are maintaining weight loss in comparison to when they are actually losing weight, not meeting the definition used by the weight control registry for a low-carb diet. Also in the process of allowing in more carbs, the first thing that these diets add in are the more “sugary” fruits and vegetables. So while things like peppers and apples are not allowed during the initial weight loss stage, they are the first things added back into the diet when one is nearing their ideal weight. The ones that are added back in last would be white potatoes and grains that have really high carb:fiber ratios.

    Another thing is that you should look at the research – one of the things I’ve noticed when looking at the research as a whole is that you can be healthy and get the bulk of your energy from either fats or carbs, not both. So a low-carb diet has protein and fat, very little carbs. A diet with carbs (complex ones, especially with fiber) and protein that is low-fat is also good. Both of these will actually help you not only lose weight but also reduce inflammation in the body, which is the root cause of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, etc. Today’s American diet includes both carbs and fat without much nutritional value. Consuming both the carbs and fat together actually is what causes the cascade that thickens the blood and causes a lack of arterial function. If you consume sugar that is actually what is most associated with high blood pressure and gout, which both have their origins in uric acid. Excessive uric acid in the blood = high blood pressure; excessive uric acid in the blood depositing in the joints = gout.

  • http://www.facebook.com/archie.robertson Archie Robertson

    This article contains several errors, I’m afraid.

    The most egregious is the perpetuation of the simplistic notion that “calories-in minus calories-out equals weight-gain-or-loss”. This takes no account of the different effects of the various macronutrients when digested by the body—which is, after all, NOT a bomb calorimeter. A gram of protein, for example, while representing four kilocalories of heat energy when burned, may actually contribute 1 kilocalorie of heat energy (through gluconeogenesis), while the remainder is used for rebuilding damaged muscle cells. A gram of fat can also be partitioned in the same way, as fat is an important structural element in cells and, particularly, brain tissue. Only carbohydrate has no function other than to be used as fuel or stored for a rainy day. Equating all of them with “fuel” is foolish. Furthermore, “calories-out” is not a constant, even with constant amounts of physical activity, but depends on many factors.

    The numbers of people in the various diet categories of the National Weight Loss Registry do not indicate anything of statistical value, as it is not a valid random sample of dieters. Instead, it is simply a self-selecting group of people reporting their results, with greater or lesser assiduity.

    A further error is made by describing low-carb diets as “high-protein”. This is a fundamental misunderstanding. Low-carb diets are predominantly moderate in protein, and high in fat. Not all fat is harmful to the body, and to suggest otherwise is to ignore several million years of human evolution. The claim that “there is more scientific evidence than ever that a diet high in fat and animal products is strongly linked with heart disease, prostate cancer, breast cancer, type 2 diabetes and other diseases” is completely unfounded, and would be more at home in vegan propaganda than in a sober review of dietary options. Similarly, the claim of a link between high protein, low carb and kidney disease, liver disease, osteoporosis or gout is completely unjustified.

    The claim that diets low in carbohydrate are short on essential vitamins and minerals because of low fruit and vegetable consumption is also spurious. Most “low-carbers” eat far more vegetables, in greater variety, than people eating “standard diets”, and their vitamin and mineral status is consequently better, not worse.

    Without a clear understanding of the role played by sugars (i.e. all dietary carbohydrate, including “complex” and starchy varieties), in raising insulin levels, the role played by insulin in stimulating fat storage, and the role played by glucagon in releasing fat from storage, no one can possibly hope to analyse various dietary options scientifically. This article reveals no such clarity of understanding.

  • Margaretrc

    While I agree with the author that the promotion of low fat/non fat lifestyle was seriously misguided and largely responsible for the obesity epidemic raging today, I do not agree with much else. I have to second everything that @Archie Robinson said. A low carb diet is not and should not be high protein at all (side note–the South Beach Diet IS low carb, high protein and IS dangerous) and is NOT short on the most nutrient dense carbohydrates, such as leafy greens and non starchy vegetables. Please get your facts straight before writing an article such as this. A low carb, high fat diet is scientifically proven to be a) what the human species evolved to eat and b) by far the most effective weight loss strategy. And it’s been proven over and over again to be safe for cardiovascular health. It alleviates or eliminates symptoms of diabetes and metabolic syndrome. I don’t know why health and fitness professionals such as this author refuse to acknowledge the many benefits one can garner from following a low carb lifestyle for life.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1566172437 Elizabeth Hinely

    I’ve lost over 50 pounds on a high fat low carb diet. I’ve kept it off for going on 2 years. My blood sugar went from pre-diabetic to a perfect 75 consistently. My other health indicators are all improved, including my blood pressure. There are many studies that show that a low carb diet has an advantage for health indicators. Your information is simply old or bad science. There are even new studies that show that high fat low carb is protective of the brain against Alzheimers disease. Haven’t you noticed that many of these diseases (diabetes, ADD, Alzheimers) have become epidemic after the “government nutrition guidelines”?