Do Low Carb Diets Lead to Weight Gain?
Trumpeted as the answer to all our prayers for losing weight, can low carb foods actually lead to gaining more weight rather than losing it?

How many of us hailed low carb diets like the Atkins Diet as the answer to our prayers for making weight loss easy? All over the world people, including Hollywood movie stars, embraced these types of diets but, significantly, no government, reputable medical or nutritional organisation has ever recommended a low carb diet as a good way to lose weight, nor is there any legal definition of the term 'low carb'.

In fact, there is a body of opinion that low carb foods are making losing weight more difficult and sometimes even leading to weight gain. Promotion of low carb diets comes from companies with a financial interest in selling books and low carb food products. Just because a food is low in carbohydrates does not mean that you can eat large quantities of it. For example, some of these products use sugar alcohols like sorbitol, mannitol and xylitol in place of sugar. Although they take longer to digest than sugar, they still contain calories that contribute to your overall calorie intake for the day. Sugar alcohols can have other bad effects apart from adding to your calorie total. Some people find they cause flatulence and diarrhoea.

As I've said elsewhere, this isn't rocket science, it is simple arithmetic. Eat fewer calories than you need and you will lose weight. Eat more than you need and your body will store them as fat.

Additionally, a diet high in saturated fats, and low in fruit and vegetables, often the type eaten by followers of low carb diets, can lead to heart disease, an increased incidence of strokes and some types of cancer.

The major problems with carbohydrates are not that there is intrinsically something bad about them. It is the way we use them. We have become used to big portions of carbs. Large amounts of bread, bagels, rice, potatoes, etc, often smothered in butter, sauces, cream and other foods high in calories and saturated fats, mean that some people are eating more calories in a single meal than they need for the whole day. Is it any wonder that there is an epidemic of obesity?

If we are hungry between meals, it makes better sense to eat some raw carrots or an apple than a high protein snack. Carrots have about 30 calories per 100 grams while an apple has about 45 per 100g. Contrast this to meat. A fried rasher (slice) of bacon has a whopping 300 calories per 100g. Even roast chicken breast, without the skin, has 153 calories per 100g. If you look at the calories in fast food, the situation is even worse. A Big Mac has more than 490 calories per 100g. Remember, this is per 100 grams, approx 3.5 ozs, so you have to weigh the whole product to work out the total calories.

If you want further proof eating carbohydrates isn't a recipe for weight gain, just look at the diet of the Japanese and Chinese, based around rice or noodles with protein and sauces added in small amounts. Generally speaking, they do not have an obesity problem as we have here in Europe and North America.

Many people who want to lose weight say that low calorie diets don't work for them. If you have this problem, I would recommend you try again for a couple of weeks. This time, though, use smaller plates for meals, weigh food before eating it instead of trying to guess weights (most people guess wrong and underestimate the weight) and also keep a food diary. If the diary is kept accurately with absolutely everything entered that is eaten no matter how small, if you haven't lost weight, you will probably find that you have eaten more calories than you thought. If you want to try a low calorie diet, take a look at The Ten Golden Rules of Dieting for more tips.