Q & A: What should I limit carbs to if I want to lose weight?
A: Don’t worry about grams of carbs if you want to lose weight, worry about total calories if you want to lose weight. Low carb diets can cause a quick drop on the scale, but this is a mirage. The quick drop is because you’ll have used up your stored carbs and the large amount of water bound up in your stored carbs. It is not fat. In fact, even in a calorie deficit, low carb (and necessarily high fat) diets are 40% less effective than low fat (and necessarily high carb) diets.
Fat is not filling
Forget the nonsense on the internet about how “fat makes you feel full,” or “healthy fats” and use your eyes and common sense. Low fat foods take up more room in your stomach because they don’t have much fat in them. Fat is dense with calories, meaning big calories come in small packages. We feel full, to a large extent, when our stomach’s stretch reflex is triggered. You don’t want to try and fill your belly with avocados, butter, etc. Not for your waistline, heart, pancreas, liver, or any other organ.
Visual:
2 pounds of strawberries = 300 calories vs. 1 whole avocado = 300 calories
2 medium russets = 320 calories vs. 4 tbsp of oil = 480 calories
1 cup cooked rice = 200 calories vs. 3 tbsp of almond butter = 294 calories
40% less effective?!?
What 40% less effective means is that per calorie of deficit a low carb/high fat diet results in 40% less fat loss vs a low fat/high carb diet. The same amount of weight is lost, but a higher fat diet reduces fat lost. This is particularly cruel since losing weight is already hard AF. (You can read more about that here.)
Weight loss is calories in vs calories out. However, fat loss is fat in vs fat out, so the more fat you consume the more fat you have to burn to break even.
Why is low carb necessarily high fat?
Math. Let’s say you are a woman eating a 1200 calorie diet and getting 100 grams of protein. A low carb diet is less than 100g of carbs per day, and let’s say you are doing 50g a day because you really want to see colors on your ketone urine strips (and to see how low you can get your energy levels lol).
· 100g protein is 400 calories
· 50g carbs is 200 calories
· You have 600 more calories to eat to get to 1,200 and fat is the only option left
· This means your diet would be 50% fat by calories
The definition of a high fat diet is 30% or more, so at 50% you’re eating a very, very high fat diet and your liver, blood vessels, heart, etc are being put at risk.
Bottom Line
If you want to lose weight, calories in vs calories out determine weight loss (or gain). Consuming less fat than you burn determines fat loss (or gain). Keto diets are both unhealthy and deceptive.
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