Being "on a diet" implies a beginning and an end - even if you lose weight, once you "go off" the diet, the weight returns.  The diet is over, it is the end.  Stop this thinking and you are halfway to permanently changing your weight, hopefully downwards! You do not have to diet.  You only need to change your eating habits. 

 

An eating style that is low in carbohydrates

A "low carb diet" does not automatically mean the Atkins low carb diet, or South Beach, or the Zone.  Anybody can cut down their carb consumption if they are willing to gather information and apply it.  Of course it's not easy - almost every convenience food, every deli dish, every fast-food menu, is stuffed with carbohydrates.  So easy, so instantly satisfying, so ubiquitous.  However, you can beat the system, while living with it!

 

Criteria

There is no legal definition of a low carb diet, so don't take "low carb", "reduced carb" or "net carb" food labels face value.  Read the nutrition label and work it out yourself.  And remember: LOW CARB DOES NOT EQUAL LOW CALORIES!!  The main point is, if you are overweight and want to lose it and keep it off by going low carb, then whatever your general carb consumption is, cut it down!  If you hardly ever eat any carbohydrates, going on a low carb diet is not going to do anything for you.

 

Drawbacks

You can easily eat too much fat on a low carb diet.  You don't want all that cholesterol, heart disease, high blood pressure.  Unfortunately most of the ready-to-eat foods labelled "low carb" are ridiculously high in saturated fats (the bad kind).  Even if you just want to eat healthier without weight loss, acquire this one habit: read and understand the nutrition labels.  Of course, you already cut off the visible fat from your meat and poultry, right?

 

Low carb diets translate into high protein diets.  It may slow down your weight loss but you  must drink water to protect you kidneys.  Juice, diet soda, beer, wine, etc. don't count. 

 

The one drawback of low carb diets is…..bad breath.  There, I've said it.  There's a lot of misinformation about ketosis, but one thing is sure - it makes your breath smell like…..well, like rotting meat.  Be aware of it, and treat it.

 

Benefits

You will only benefit if you cut down on simple carbs.  You must still eat complex carbs - your body is designed to use carbs for fuel, and what good is it to be thin but tired?  Accept that humans are omnivorous and that you have a choice what you eat.  If you cut down on refined, manufactured starches and sugars, you can expect to feel less hungry and more energetic.  Your skin tone and hair should improve.  Your weight should come down, and stabilise.  Why?  Because you will be substituting just energy ("empty calories") with energy that comes with vitamins, minerals, amino acids and fibre.

 

Low carb diet plan

There isn't one.  You have to make it up yourself, by considering what you are currently consuming.  Don’t make a list, unless you want to.  Incorporate the pointers below into your eating habits one by one.  However, do measure your success in some way.  Keep a till slip and compare it to a till slip three months later.  Are you still buying a dozen doughnuts, plus a loaf of white bread, plus six litres of diet coke?  You haven't progressed.  Do you now buy three bran cookies, half-a-dozen high fibre brown bread rolls and a box of green tea?  You have progressed!!

 

Low carb diet pills

So you are not really serious about losing weight and keeping it off, are you.

 

Foods you can eat on a low carb diet

Anything.  Diets are where you can only eat lettuce leaves and tuna for three months and then you lose weight, big surprise.  Even bigger surprise that you gain the weight back in three weeks when you're "off" the diet and go back to eating "forbidden" foods.  The key is to eat less of the bad stuff and substitute with the good stuff.  And the low carb way is to cut the simple carbs and substitute with complex carbs.

 

Pointers

OK, try these one by one and see if it works for you, but be honest and don’t give up until you have tried all.

 

Limit your baked/cereal foods to one meal, preferably breakfast.  This means you eat bread, porridge, cereal, cereal bars, cakes, etc only at breakfast.  Or lunch.  Or dinner.  If you take a sandwich to work, you don't have any bread or cereal for breakfast, nor rice or pasta for dinner.  It takes practice.  Do this consistently for only a week, and you should already see a result on the scale.  But not if you ate two more tubs of ice-cream.  Be honest.

 

Snack on cheese (use your head, buy low fat cheese and don't pig out), boiled eggs (or poached), lean sliced ham (preferably not smoked), cold silverside, tuna, NO CRACKERS.

 

Let fresh fruit become your dessert.  Throw away the pineapple cheesecake, eat the raw pineapple.  Fresh, eat-it-at-the-washbasin mango beats mango sherbet any day.  Bananas - hey they're stuffed with potassium and other nice things and they come in their own wrapper.  Just don't eat too many of them.  Eat a fresh fruit after every meal and you will soon look forward to it as much as you did to carrot cake (really).

 

Now substitute.  The internet has lists of simple and complex carbohydrates. 

You already know it - brown or multigrain bread instead of white, brown pasta instead of white, brown rice instead of white, oatmeal instead of strawberry pops, bran biscuits instead of chocolate cake (but have a piece at your best friend's birthday party, and then notice how it makes you want more, while eating fruit does not). 

Put beans in your soup instead of macaroni.  The possibilities are endless. 

Write your own cookbook - this is the rest of your life.


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