Low-Carb Diet For Dummies. Katherine B. Chauncey

Chapter 1

      Mapping Out a Low-Carb Diet

      IN THIS CHAPTER

      Although eating in the United States has been changing since the beginning of the 20th century, it has dramatically changed in the last 50 years. Americans eat out more frequently, eat larger portions of food, and eat more foods with little resemblance to their form in nature. Everywhere Americans turn, they’re inundated with refined and processed foods such as snack foods, chips, candies, cereals, cookies, and all other sorts of junk food. In addition, Americans are bombarded with best-selling diet books that just repackage fad diets to make them seem new and exciting. So, the old adage, “Eat less and exercise more” just seems dull and boring. As a result, more Americans than ever are overweight or obese and struggling to find a plan that helps them lose the extra pounds.

      Americans unfortunately are exporting this dilemma around the world. Kuwait has more fast-food restaurants per capita than any other country in the world. And, yes, the incidence of diabetes, heart disease, and obesity are on the rise in Kuwait. So, does this mean fast foods are the culprit? Not exactly. Most people are overwhelmed with the availability of cheap, tasty foods and junk foods whose advertising barrages them in every media at every twist and turn.

My goal is to help you discover a better way of eating that is easy, healthy, and reasonable. In this chapter, I map out a low-carb eating plan that is healthy and satisfying. I show you how to remove refined carbohydrates (carbohydrates with lots of sugar and very little fiber) from your diet, to make your diet healthier. By improving the quality of the carbohydrates you eat, and by controlling your daily intake of starchy carbs (like breads, pasta, and starchy vegetables), you’ll lose weight and experience many other healthy benefits including increased energy, improved mood, and better sleeping.

How Low Is Low Carb? That’s the Question

      If you’ve looked into low-carb diets, you’ve probably found more than a few that require you to banish carbs from your diet entirely. And if you like carbs the way most people do, you’ve probably thrown down those books with a mixture of fear and frustration. Low-carb diets include a variety of carbohydrate levels, and not one specific level is accepted by all. The end result is confusion and a barrier in communicating the real risks and benefits of low-carb eating.

      Americans are eating more food than ever, and carbs have replaced much of the fat. That increased food intake means an increased carbohydrate intake, which is largely sugars, sweeteners, and processed flour. That increase has had a direct impact on the health (and waistlines) of Americans. In working with patients at Texas Tech Medical Center, I found the low-carb eating plan approach referred to as the Whole Foods Weight Loss Eating Plan as more effective than a low-fat diet approach. Patients watching their fat intake were eating a lot of fat-free food products that weren’t any healthier than the fat they had been eating.

      This Whole Foods Weight Loss Eating Plan doesn’t reduce carbohydrate so much that it induces ketosis (a process that happens when you don’t have enough carbs to burn for energy so you burn fat, which makes ketones to use for fuel). The Whole Foods Weight Loss Eating Plan not only reduces your intake of processed carbs, but it also shows you how to control your intake of those foods for a more permanent weight loss.

      The following sections delve deeper into the world of low-carb diets and explain what a low-carb diet is and isn’t.

      Defining a low-carb diet: Not as easy as you’d think

      Although the term “low carb” is bandied around freely in general conversation and most everyone using the term assumes that they’re using the term in the same way, unfortunately no clear definition of the term exists.