Monday, October 16, 2006
Low Carbohydrate Diets
If you’ve dieted at any time within the past few years, there’s a good chance that the diet you went on was one of the many low carb diets that are around these days. It's hard to believe that the very first of the low carb diets, the Atkins diet, has actually been around for about 30 years, because the huge trend for low carb diets has only taken off comparatively recently.
The major trend can be accounted for by media hype plus the fact that there appear to have been a number of genuine success stories. Then if you throw in a celebrity or two to the mix, you can see why this trend has grown so much in recent years. Provide enough positive coverage and everybody jumps on the bandwagon which is what happened in this case for low carb diets.
What you need to ask yourself if you’re thinking of trying one of these low carb diets is if the Atkins diet is so popular now, and really works to help you in reducing your weight, why didn’t it gain in popularity long before this? After all if it has been around for as long as 30 years, where were the original success stories? 30 years is a long time for a diet to be around when it's only been popular for the past few of those.
Another serious consideration here is, if these low carb diets are as good for you as all the books and practitioners of the diets will tell you, then why is there so much opposition to these diets from nutritional and medical sources? These are questions that many people choose to ignore becuase if all you want to do is lose some weight in the short term, then these low carb diets may seem to be ideal for you. Without doing some research and answering these questions for yourself, the only thing you won’t truly know for certain is what kind of long term effects these low carb diets will have on your system.
Sure you’ll reduce the weight and lose the fat off your frame in the short term, but at what cost? The Atkins diet isn’t the only low carb diet that you will find advertised out there these days. There’s the ever popular Zone diet, the South Beach Diet, the Hollywood diet, the Stillman diet, and a whole host of other low carb diets. They are all pretty similar diets in that they promote a high fat, high protein, and low carb intake in order to reduce weight fast. Each of the diets has its slight differences and quirks though so which one you choose depends entirely on what you’ve heard, or read, about these low carb diets.
For the constant yo-yo dieter these low carb diets may seem to be just what they need, because despite any drawbacks that they may have, they do work for enough people in the short term, and they do help you to lose weight initially. If you’re going to diet, and it doesn’t matter overly much to you which diet you choose as long as it helps you to lose weight and keep that weight off, you should always choose to eat and diet sensibly. Remember that losing a few pounds quickly won’t help you in the long term because keeping weight down means changing your eating patterns for life rather than for the course of the diet until you reach your goal.
The major trend can be accounted for by media hype plus the fact that there appear to have been a number of genuine success stories. Then if you throw in a celebrity or two to the mix, you can see why this trend has grown so much in recent years. Provide enough positive coverage and everybody jumps on the bandwagon which is what happened in this case for low carb diets.
What you need to ask yourself if you’re thinking of trying one of these low carb diets is if the Atkins diet is so popular now, and really works to help you in reducing your weight, why didn’t it gain in popularity long before this? After all if it has been around for as long as 30 years, where were the original success stories? 30 years is a long time for a diet to be around when it's only been popular for the past few of those.
Another serious consideration here is, if these low carb diets are as good for you as all the books and practitioners of the diets will tell you, then why is there so much opposition to these diets from nutritional and medical sources? These are questions that many people choose to ignore becuase if all you want to do is lose some weight in the short term, then these low carb diets may seem to be ideal for you. Without doing some research and answering these questions for yourself, the only thing you won’t truly know for certain is what kind of long term effects these low carb diets will have on your system.
Sure you’ll reduce the weight and lose the fat off your frame in the short term, but at what cost? The Atkins diet isn’t the only low carb diet that you will find advertised out there these days. There’s the ever popular Zone diet, the South Beach Diet, the Hollywood diet, the Stillman diet, and a whole host of other low carb diets. They are all pretty similar diets in that they promote a high fat, high protein, and low carb intake in order to reduce weight fast. Each of the diets has its slight differences and quirks though so which one you choose depends entirely on what you’ve heard, or read, about these low carb diets.
For the constant yo-yo dieter these low carb diets may seem to be just what they need, because despite any drawbacks that they may have, they do work for enough people in the short term, and they do help you to lose weight initially. If you’re going to diet, and it doesn’t matter overly much to you which diet you choose as long as it helps you to lose weight and keep that weight off, you should always choose to eat and diet sensibly. Remember that losing a few pounds quickly won’t help you in the long term because keeping weight down means changing your eating patterns for life rather than for the course of the diet until you reach your goal.
