Low Carb Diet
Description
● For people who want to lose weight, improve health and lower the risk of diseases
● Do not eat a lot of carbohydrates. Examples of these carbohydrates needed to limit grains high in carbs and starchy fruits vegetables
● This diet focuses on consuming foods high in protein and fat.
● Requires real food, diet involves eating natural, unprocessed foods with a low carbohydrate content.
● foods to eat depends on a few things, including how healthy you are, how much you exercise and how much weight you have to lose.
Foods on and off limits
● Eat: Meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, high-fat dairy, fats, healthy oils and non-gluten grains.
● Drinks like Water, tea, coffee, and soda that don't have artificial sweeteners
● Don’t Eat: Sugar, wheat, seed oils, trans fats, artificial sweeteners, “diet” and low-fat products and highly processed foods.
● Avoid:
○ Sugar: Soft drinks, fruit juices, agave, candy, ice cream and many others.
○ Gluten Grains: Wheat, spelt, barley and rye. Includes breads and pastas.
○ Trans Fats: “Hydrogenated” or “partially hydrogenated” oils.
○ High Omega-6 Seed- and Vegetable Oils: Cottonseed, soybean, sunflower, grape seed, corn, safflower and canola oils.
○ Artificial Sweeteners: Aspartame, Saccharin, Sucralose, etc. Use Stevia instead. ○ “Diet” and “Low-Fat” Products: Many dairy products, cereals, crackers, etc.
○ Highly Processed Foods: If it looks like it was made in a factory
Meal Planning
Meal Planning should include less than 50 grams of total carbs per day. However, if you are active you can go beyond that.
Hiba Siddiqui, Marjan Azadah
Menu:
Breakfast: Omelet with various vegetables, fried in butter or coconut oil.
Lunch: Chicken salad with some olive oil.
Dinner: Grilled chicken wings with some raw spinach on the side.
Include a variety of vegetables in your diet. If you remain under 50 grams of carbs per day, then there is a lot of room for fruits and vegetables per day
Why do people choose this diet?
● People choose this diet because it is proven that it has been an effective way of helping people who have type 2 diabetes, obesity, and or have metabolic syndrome. ● Leads to effortless calorie restriction
● More weight loss
● Lowers triglycerides which help prevent heart disease
● Increases HDL Cholesterol
● Improves Glycemic controls
● Its easier
Pros and cons of the diet
Cons
●
●
●
●
●
You need to make some adjustments to your lifestyle to help fit it in.
You’ll need to shop differently focus on foods preparing more than before
Relearn to cook with making modifications to it to suite your low carb diet
You’ll need to struggle finding different varieties of foods to avoid nutrient deficiency because of the restrictions the low carb diet entails
Pros
By including a variety of different foods to your diet, you are getting minerals and other vitamins as well as antioxidants. This helps your GI to work efficiently and help you keep free radicals away
The main goal of this diet is to lose weight and it does promote that.
An advantage of this diet is that once you did lose weight, it is easy to maintain your weight because once you do see results, it our body is used to this diet and will not crave for foods high in carbs.
Hiba Siddiqui, Marjan Azadah
Health Effects
Positive:
● low-carbohydrate diets that were high in vegetable sources of fat or protein had a
30 percent lower risk of heart disease
● 20 percent lower risk of type 2 diabetes,
● lowering blood pressure and “bad” LDL cholesterol than a healthy
● improvements in blood lipids and blood pressure
● delivered the biggest boost in protective HDL