INTRODUCTION – In Part I of this two-part series, I explained how the current dietary recommendations and popular beliefs about weight gain have inadvertently contributed to many of the health problems we now face. If you haven’t yet read the first part, you can read it here and then follow the link back to continue reading this article.
In this post, I point to some previously written articles posted on this site to explain what a Low Carb High Fat style of eating is and how it serves as a solution to the problems outlined in the previous article.
Part II – Understanding Low Carb High Fat – the solution
What exactly is a Low Carb High Fat Diet? This article explains the fundamental information people want to know about which food categories they can eat, such as non-starchy vegetables, plant fat, low sugar fruit, meat fish poultry and seafood, animal fat and unsweetened beverages).
There is also a simple illustration of the food categories in a low carb lifestyle, indicating the types of food in each category. This dispels the myth that eating LCHF is in anyway a ‘restricted diet’.
This post also explains what macronutrients are and what the ratios of protein, fat and carbohydrate are on a LCHF diet. It is a basic primer about the Low Carb High Fat lifestyle.
People sometimes refer to a “low carb diet” as if it were a single entity, but there are many types of low carb diets ranging from moderate low carb (130 g carbs) to ketogenic diets (5-10% net carbs). Even amongst low carb or ketogenic diets, there are low carb high fat diets, low carb high protein diets as well as Low Carb High Protein in weight loss and High Carb High fat in maintenance.
This article titled American Diabetes Association Approves Low Carb Diets for Weight Loss explains the basics of a moderate low carb diets (130 g carbs) which is approved by the American Diabetic Association as a weight-loss option for Diabetics.
Many people believe that saturated fat is ”bad” for them but few realize that our bodies actually manufacture it. This article titled The ”Skinny” on Fats explains the principles of fats while explaining the chemistry in simple terms that those with a non-science background can understand. These ‘basics’ enable people to understand the controversy around saturated fat and to be able to talk about them with family members, friends, and their healthcare professionals.
People are used to thinking about food in terms of its ability to provide energy for their body but many don’t realize that their bodies can be fuelled by either carbohydrates or fat. This article titled Humans — the perfect hybrid machine explains how in times past it was perfectly normal for us to experience a cycle of “feasting” and “fasting” – running on our own fat stores during the times between eating and how currently, we rarely are able to access our own fat stores, because of the constant supply of carbohydrate-rich food.
This article, titled Evidence for Remission of Type 2 Diabetes Symptoms using LCHF begins with a brief history of the Low Carb Diet and its role the primary approach to managing Diabetes prior to the discovery of insulin. It also talks about its role in managing seizure disorder and outlines how a Low Carb approach was central to the very first weight loss diet book written ~150 years ago. It mentions the “Atkins Diet” which first came on the scene in the early 1970s and then introduces the research of Stephen Phinney (a medical doctor and PhD research scientist) and Jeff Volek, a Registered Dietitian with PhD whose work centers on using a low carb diet as a therapeutic tool for managing insulin resistance. It presents the findings of Phinney and Volek’s most recent study which demonstrates that after 6 months following a low carb diet >75% of people in this study had HbA1c that was no longer in the Diabetic range (6.5%). It provides some evidence that yes, the symptoms of Type 2 Diabetes can to go into remission by following a Low Carb lifestyle.
Finally, the last article titled Are Low Carbohydrate Diets Safe and Effective provides compelling evidence from a two-year study which found that compared to a Mediterranean Diet and Low Fat diet, weight loss was greatest in those that followed a Low Carb diet. Of significance, subjects in in the LCHF group in this study also had lower fasting plasma glucose, lower HbA1C, significantly lower triglycerides, significantly higher HDL and lower C-reactive protein .
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Want to know how I can help you adopt a low carb lifestyle?
I provide LCHF in-person services to those in the Greater Vancouver BC area and LCHF Distance Consultation services to those living elsewhere in the province, or from other provinces and territories in Canada. Please have a look at the “My Services” tab above for a list of the LCHF services that I provide.
Have questions? Please send me a note using the “Contact Me” form located on the tab above.
To our good health!
Joy
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