When you eat less than you burn, you lose weight. This means that you can cut calories in any way and still lose weight. However cutting calories from carbs can help you reach your advanced fat-loss goals for several reasons. You’re more likely to become afraid of carbs and avoid foods that aren’t necessary if you start a low-carb diet without knowing why you’re doing it or how it works. Bodybuilders are different because they don’t fear carbs; they learn how to control them by eating more or less of them at different times.
In these three cases, a low-carb diet is the best choice:
- Making fat loss happen faster. It’s too slow for you to make progress. Your goal might have been to lose two pounds of fat each week, but you’re only pulling off one.
- Getting off a plateau. Even if you lose fat in a healthy way, your fat loss will slow down as you get thinner.
- Getting ready for events in bodybuilding, fitness, figure, or transformation. Although low-carb diets are controversial in some parts of the exercise world, most physique athletes follow them.
How does low-carb intake accelerate fat loss?
Here are four reasons why reducing your carbohydrate intake can help speed up your weight loss progress:
- Low-carb, high-protein meals make you heat up a lot. Up to 30 percent more heat is released when you eat protein than any other food. If you eat 100 calories of chicken breast, your body will burn 30 calories just to break it down and use the energy. It has only 70 calories in total. In a strange twist, it’s high protein, not low carbs, that speeds up your metabolism. Because of this, it might be more true to say that high-protein, low-carb diets help you lose fat faster than to just credit low carbs. Protein has a high thermogenic effect. This means it is less likely to be turned into fat than any other food.
- Low-carb diets help you keep track of calories, feel fuller, and eat less. Protein is the macronutrient that makes you feel the fullest. Dietary fat makes food taste better, which makes you feel full, but it doesn’t physically make you feel less hungry like protein does. Your hormones make you feel better and less hungry when you eat protein. Glucagon-like peptide (GLP-1) ancd PYY hormones are both raised by high-protein meals. GLP-1 makes you feel fuller, and PYY lowers your hunger.
- Low-carb meals help keep insulin levels in check. When you cut back on carbs, your body makes less insulin. Because high insulin levels stop the release of stored fat, lowering insulin levels by cutting back on carbs may help you lose fat, especially the last few pounds of stubborn fat. Some types of stubborn fat are very sensitive to insulin and are less likely to let go of stored fatty acids. When insulin levels are low, it is easier for stubborn fat to be released into the bloodstream and burned for energy.
- Diets low in carbs and high in protein can help you lose weight. A meal high in protein and low in carbs can help you lose weight. This makes your muscles look more developed. Having bloating and puffiness from holding on to water is only temporary and is not the same as real changes in body makeup. Bodybuilders, on the other hand, say they like this type of food for their final peaking phase because it helps them define their muscles better.
For the most part, people can get benefits without cutting back on carbs a lot.
But there is always a group of people who have more trouble than others and are angry that their honest efforts aren’t working. We call them endomorphs in a broad sense. Some of these people eat fewer carbs to begin with and then cut them even more to lose even more fat. Others see steady progress for weeks or even months while eating a lot of carbs, but then they reach a plateau or get behind schedule in meeting an important goal.
Part of the answer could be a diet low in carbs and high in healthy fats and proteins. Very low-carb eating isn’t something most people can do all the time. The best way to live is to get a balanced macronutrient split that doesn’t seriously limit food groups and do a lot of exercise.
