Is a low-carb diet good for weight loss?
There are many different diets online which purport to be amazing for weight loss. Among them is the low-carb diet. The question is, is this good for dropping pounds fast? Let’s discuss this.
Low-carb diets are any dietary restriction where the individual eats no more than 100g of carbs per day. How low is this? Dietary Guidelines recommend that the average adult needs 2,000 kcal per day, of which 45-65% should come from carbs. That equates to roughly 900-1,300kcal or 225-325g of carbs. So what’s going on here?
THE ISSUE WITH CARBS
Remember first and foremost that carbs are your body's fuel. Your body needs fuel like a car needs petrol to grow, heal, repair, move, think, everything. Even fat oxidation (burning fat) requires energy to happen. Your body doesn't do this magically for free. The energy stored in the fat is exactly that - stored and locked away. Your body needs carbs for this chemical reaction to take place.
So why do low-carb diets have you avoid carbs? The main issue with carbs is they aren’t filling. Since our body needs them for everything we do, our brains are hardwired to seek them out at every opportunity. And for most of human history, highly calorie-dense foods haven’t been in abundance like they are today. The goal of the low-carb diet is to add a clear restriction to something which can, for most, be easily over-consumed. Overconsumption directly leads to weight gain, and underconsumption directly contributes to weight loss. Why? Because weight loss is governed primarily by whether you’re in a calorie surplus or deficit.
THE ISSUE WITH LOW-CARB DIETS
The issue with low-carb diets is simple. Since your body needs fuel for everything that it does, if it can’t find it from the carbs you consume, it must find it elsewhere. Luckily, your body can subsidise proteins for carbs by breaking them down and repurposing them. But this is an inefficient method and will leave you feeling more fatigued during exercise since your 'easy-to-access' energy sources in your muscles will be too easily depleted. That's why often people on a super-carb diet report feeling tired and sluggish until they return to eating more carbs. Not only that, but protein’s main job isn’t to provide us with energy. Protein is essential for healing, our immune system, brain function and more. A low carb reduces the amount of protein your body can utilise for these essential tasks, which is effectively swapping one problem for another.
But does it work? Good question. On the surface, it appears to, which is why so many people believe in its efficacy as a weight loss method. People on low-carb diets very often lose a lot of weight fast, but not for the reason they think. Since the carbs stored in your muscles require water, consuming little to no carbs means a lot less water is stored locally in your muscle and so a lot of the perceived rapid weight loss is just water weight. Unfortunately, as soon you start eating normal amounts of carbs again, that water weight comes right back.
THE SOLUTION?
The main goal of any dietary restriction is to enable the individual to achieve a calorific deficit for a sustained period to facilitate fat loss. The convoluted restrictions of any particular ‘fad’ diet aren’t magical, they create the same effect for the very same end goal. So what’s the best diet? Any diet which enables you to achieve a calorific deficit for a sustained period which - most importantly - you can stick to. A diet is not a program to complete, it’s a lifestyle. If it’s not sustainable, it’ll never prevail.