So why do low carb diets work? The way I often hear it explained is basically,
if you cut the carbs out of your diet then your body has to go looking elsewhere
for its energy source and it goes to look for your stored body fat... and that
means that you lose weight. But actually, I think it goes a little bit more
in-depth than that and that's what I'm gonna cover in this video. So let's get started!
Hey Carb Dodgers, my name is Dr. Dan Maggs. I make videos all about how to
sustainably lose weight for the longer term and that's all about low carb diets,
ketogenic diets, intermittent fasting, exercise stuff like that. I make new
videos every Tuesday so if that kind of stuff is of interest to you then why not
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So this week, we're talking about why do low carb diets work and they do work I think
we've got an overwhelming body of evidence to suggest that they do now.
Currently, compared to low-fat diets low carb diets are winning 33 to nil in
terms of statistically significant weight loss in randomized controlled
trial studies. Those are the gold standard of studies. So why is that?
Well, first of all, it's because the conventional approach is simply flawed.
The conventional approach that you'll no doubt be familiar with is the calories
in calories out approach. Basically, you're consuming too many calories and
not burning enough calories. So, you gain weight and of course the solution to
that is to simply eat less, move more, create a calorie deficit and in the
longer term you're going to find that your problems are solved. Except it
doesn't really work, does it? Because most people have real trouble sticking to a
weight loss program. Most people who do stick to a weight loss program lose
minimal weight even if they do start to lose some weight then they're probably
going to put it back on within a year or two years. And the reasons are because
our body fights back when were calorie-restricted. Our bodies aren't
stupid. We get more hungry and we reduce our metabolic rate So, you start to
actually feel tired and you start to feel really really hungry. It's no wonder
that people fall off their diets really quite quickly, but I believe these issues
are properly addressed by the low-carb approach because the low-carb approach
deals with things on a hormonal level rather than just basically thinking with
just large energy stores... and I always encourage people to go back to basic
biology and really think about what the human body is and really what the human
body is is it a series of tissues and organs and the way those tissues and
organs communicate with each other is either via the nervous system or via
hormones. And it's hormones that we're going to focus on in this video because
that's what is really really important in terms of why low-carb diets work so
#1 Low carb diets reduce insulin levels. Now it has an impact on a number
of different hormones but insulin is really really important because it is
our body's fat storage hormone and what I mean by that is it actually is the
signal to take glucose from our bloodstream put it into our cells into
our fat cells where it is turned into our stored body fat and insulin is
produced by the pancreas in response to elevated blood glucose levels which
shuttle that glucose from the bloodstream into the fat cells where it
is stored. So elevated insulin levels equal fat storage and low carb diets
address this because low carb diets reduce insulin production.
It's the carbohydrates particularly the glucose that signals to the pancreas to
produce more insulin if you take away the carbs the insulin production is
lower and those lower levels of insulin allow our bodies to access that stored
fat rather than just storing more of it and this results in
weight loss in two phases in the first few days you're gonna lose mainly just
water weight and I'll explain why there isn't a second but after a few days
you're gonna start to be able to access those fat stores and actually use up
that body fat for energy to supply your body and you will lose body fat so very
quickly the reason we lose water weight in the first few days is because insulin
also has an effect on the kidneys causing them to retain fluid lower
levels of insulin mean that the kidneys can lose fluid that's one of the reasons
why our blood pressure can go a bit lower when we're on a low-carb diet,
which is generally thought of as a good thing.
The second reason is because our
bodies store carbohydrate for the short term in the form of glycogen.
Now glycogen is stored in the liver and in the muscles and along with glycogen is
stored water so you start to burn through those glycogen stores and after
a few days you will have burn through them but you'll also have lost the water
that was stored along with them and the low-carb diet is particularly important
for people who are suffering with something called insulin resistance.
So insulin resistance is where the body is actually resisting the effects of
insulin so it takes more insulin to have the same effect on the cell which is to
move blood glucose from outside in the blood into the cell itself and many of
us who struggle with obesity have also got insulin resistance. The two really go
hand-in-hand and that means we've got a lot higher insulin levels a lot of the
time and therefore are turning off our ability to break down fat.
The second reason that low carb diets are so effective is because of reduced appetite
Now, appetite again is under hormonal control. There's lots of hormones that
are involved in appetite but hormones like leptin and ghrelin. Now I don't want
to go too much into those hormones here but the sense of fullness that you get
on a low carb diet is very very different
from the sense of fullness you get on a high carb diet the high carb diet is
very much about the bulk of food that you eat so you're full because you
really can't eat anymore and the stretch receptors in your stomach that are
telling you that you're full whereas on a low carbohydrate diet you feel a lot
more full because you are nutritionally satisfied particularly proteins and fats
are very filling on their own whereas carbohydrates like I say are
really due to the bulk of the size of the food and it's very common for people
who are suffering with obesity to tell me that they are hungry all the time I
remember back when I was struggling with my weight that I couldn't fill myself up
at breakfast not for very long anyway but no matter what size a bowl of cereal
I'd have in the morning I had some pretty big balls of cereal I couldn't
really fill myself up until gone 11 o'clock in the morning when I'd have a
dip a dip in energy and I just need to eat something in order to keep me going
until lunch and it would be the same thing in the afternoon as well
despite however big a lunch I'd had I'd have a dip in the afternoon that I'd
need to go and grab something usually a sweet treat so I could function until
the evening when I would have my evening meal so this is very very common people
tell me that whatever I eat I seem to be hungry fairly soon afterwards and guys
if that's something that resonates with you then please let me know in the
comments down below this video I'd love to hear from you on that and the reduced
hunger that many people feel on a low-carb diet is a gateway into
intermittent fasting which as you may be aware is an excellent way to lose weight
many people simply don't feel hungry in the mornings when they've been on a
low-carb diet for a few days or a few weeks and and if you start tuning in to
your hunger then you don't really want to eat until around about lunch time
which means you naturally fall into a pattern of what we call 16/8 intermittent
fasting which is when you really only eat within an eight-hour window you may
eat a larger lunch and a larger dinner maybe 7 o'clock in the
evening and that means you are actually fasting for a total of 16 hours
overnight. An intermittent fasting is great because throughout a fasting
period your insulin levels are gonna be low and you're gonna be releasing your
bodies to stored fat for energy and
The third reason that low carb diets are so
effective is because they appear to give us a metabolic advantage there was a
fantastic study done in 2018 that I will again I'll link that down below this
video and what they did was they put several groups of people on two
different diets in terms of carbohydrate content and looked at the metabolic
advantage of each of the diets and what I said what metabolic advantage is that
the low-carb diet group actually burned 200 calories a day more than a high carb
group so yeah a pretty significant metabolic advantage simply by being on a
low-carb diet it'll be burning about 200 calories a
day more than somebody who's on a high carb diet and the final reason low carb
diets are so effective and we're starting to see more and more evidence
that points towards this is that low carbohydrate diets help with food
addiction now I don't want to go into why sugar and carbohydrates are
obviously so addictive at this point in this video but I've often hear people
saying I can never go without pasta I can never go i that bread I could never
go without rice or I could never go without cake and on a certain level
that's addiction compare that to I could never go without alcohol or I could
never go without cigarettes well you'd easily say that that was addiction
wouldn't you and it seems that less food addiction equals less consumption of
these bad foods which are obviously high in energy therefore improve weight loss
so that's it really I think it all comes back to hormones at the end of the day
and I think understanding that our bodies are not just an energy store
which needs be calorie restricted but a series of
interconnected tissues which communicate via hormones and if we actually work
with our body's hormones then we're going to be on to a winner and that's
really the basis of why low carbohydrate diets work
Ok, that's it for today's video. Thank you for watching if you've enjoyed this video please let me
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