With the low carb diet craze all the rage these days, one important question to ask is: “Is a low carb diet sustainable?” Can you lose weight and keep it off once you go off a low carb diet?
The quick answer to this question is no. However, don’t stop reading now. As with any successful diet out there, the idea is to turn the diet into a lifestyle of healthy eating. So, as with low calorie or low fat diets, in order to sustain the amazing weight loss achieved on a low carb diet, the dieter must turn the diet into a lifestyle once the excess weight is gone. So, the long answer is yes, a relatively low carb diet is sustainable – and desirable, for long term leanness.
Let’s explore this thought further by examining what happens to the body on a very low carb diet. When you stop ingesting carbs your body enters what is called ketosis. Ketosis is when your body is actually using fat for fuel instead of sugar. This state is the very reason why you have rapid weight loss on a very low carb diet. It’s also the reason why your brain gets fuzzy – glucose (what carbs are broken down to in the blood stream) is the preferred fuel source for your brain!
The other benefit to a low carb diet is the fact that the body isn’t losing muscle providing you are getting enough protein and overall calories - and that you are lifting weights/doing some form of challenging resistance training. Protein is essential for building and maintaining muscle tone and so is exercise, which is why a low carb diet is great for burning fat and keeping muscle. If you do reduce your carbs you may need to increase your good fats (omega 3, 6, 9) intake to boost your overall calories.
As with any diet, it’s very important to not deprive yourself of essential nutrients like calcium, fibre and protein. Calcium is pretty easy to get on a low carb diet through cheese, cottage cheese and canned sardines or salmon. Protein is also very easy to get from lean meats, eggs, cottage cheese and whey protein. Fibre is probably the most difficult nutrient to obtain from a low carb diet, but you can incorporate some carbs such as brown rice, oatmeal, berries and legumes.
If your diet is low in carbs and calories it is really important you do include a carbohydrate ‘refeed’ as such, so your body does not adapt to the very low carb regime, and, so that the carbs you do ingest are used to refill muscle glycogen stores, meaning faster muscle recovery and growth and more energy. Besides, a very low carb diet can get mighty boring in a hurry and a refeed is something to really look forward to!
Once you reach your desired leanness and you’re ready to begin increasing your carb intake, it’s important to do so slowly. The day you hit your goal, you don’t want to run out for a big bowl of pasta and a tub of ice cream. However, you can allow yourself some treats once in a while, but as with any diet, if you want to maintain your new weight, you must continue to eat healthily and exercise regularly.
Body Blitz Blueprint for Fat Loss is a nutrition plan that is low enough in carbs to achieve fat loss, but contains some carbs to facilitate brain energy, faster muscle recovery and growth, and very importantly, to make your diet interesting! The timing of your carbohydrates is equally as important as is how much and what type you eat too. And, remember how I wrote about the importance of refeeding – Body Blitz Blueprint for Fat Loss also teaches you why it’s important to your fat loss results that you do have treats occasionally!
If you haven’t seen it yet, you can have a look here:
Body Blitz Blueprint for Fat Loss <— Transform Your Body in 12 Weeks!
