When you are trying to lose weight main thing the majority of people are careful about is macronutrients. Those are proteins, carbs, and fats but carbs and fats, unfortunately, have a bad reputation. The first thing on anyone’s mind when trying to lose weight is to cut down on carbs or fat or even both.
These are the most important parts of the equation to control weight but they are also very important nutritional substances, so it wouldn’t be a good idea to cut them completely from your diet. Low-carb and low-fat diets are the ones that offer the best results and people most often follow those two. Low carb vs low fat is a dilemma in this case.
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Low-Carb Benefits
- reduced appetite – hunger and cravings are the biggest issues on any diet, people feel miserable because of that and often lose interest in dieting, low carb diets reduce appetite and cravings so you end up eating fewer calories
- faster results – low carb diets eliminate excess water from your body, lower insulin levels and work faster for the first two weeks leading to the greater fat loss
- the drop of triglycerides – triglycerides are fat molecules in our blood and they are a high-risk factor for heart diseases, it is known that carb consumption elevates triglycerides
- HDL Cholesterol – high-density lipoprotein (HDL) is known as good cholesterol, it gets to be higher on low carb diets because of higher fat consummation thus protecting your heart
- the drop of blood sugar and insulin levels – low carb or keto diets are beneficial to people with diabetes because of the drop of those two
- lowers blood pressure – elevated blood pressure, also known as hypertension is the cause of many heart diseases, strokes, and kidney health-related problems. A low carb diet is beneficial in this area as well.
There are a few other benefits, like dealing with epilepsy, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease as well as multiple sclerosis, sleep disorders, autism, and even brain cancer. But the most important one in relation to today’s modern health problems is type 2 diabetes.
Low carb diet has variations and one of them is carb-cycling, it is easier to stick with it because after three days of low carb you have one high carb day and then repeat. This way you can keep your metabolism from slowing down and thus stopping the weight loss process.
Low Carb products
In essence, natural, non-starchy products are low carb products. You can have all meat products and vegetables, with some exceptions like some fruit because of fructose (all berries are allowed) and beans, rice, potatoes, and other starchy vegetables. A little hint, use stevia instead of sugar.
Low – Fat Benefits
- A 15-35% reduced deaths from causes following breast cancer
- A 13-25% reduction in insulin dependency
- A 15-30% reduction in heart disease among 23,000 women without hypertension or prior cardiovascular disease
- lower cravings – since you are eating carbs cravings are not so bad
- lowers blood fat levels
- prevents high blood pressure
- prevents heart attack and stroke
As you can see this approach to dieting has related benefits, they are very similar to low carb diet, never the less it is slow and difficult to consistently implement in the long run.
Low Fat Products
There are some other issues with it, the biggest problem with a low fat diet is low fat products in the stores, people just love to buy them in the misconception that they are safe to eat while trying to lose fat.
Advertisers are also not helping in this case because the majority of adverts are presenting them as good weight loss products. Unfortunately, that is far from the truth since manufacturers take the fat out of the food to make it low-fat, which makes food taste awful, so in order to retain the good taste of the products they have to add something in it, and usually, that is either sugar, corn syrup, or both.
In the process of digestion, those get turned into fat stored in our body, so instead of losing weight and fat, it can happen that you’ll even gain some. You are on a diet to lose weight, not to gain it, right? The answer is to use food that is naturally low in fat, not the one that has fat removed artificial way. O, and folks, stay away from diet drinks, those are the worst.
Low Carb vs Low Fat – which one is better?
The bottom line is there are a lot of diets today but these two are the most viable ones, they really work. They both have their benefits but in my humble opinion, a low carb diet is slightly on the winning side here. It gives faster results, and has more other benefits besides fat loss, especially for type 2 diabetes which has become a real global pandemic.
