You could have knocked me down with a celery stick when I heard that the low-carbohydrate diet was back. Been there, done that, and while most of you were still being spoon-fed strained carrots.
Way back in the fifties and sixties, in the UK at least, it was just about the only known way to diet. You cut out your carbs, those 'naughty foods' like potatoes, bread, porridge, rice, pasta and breakfast cereals as well as puds, pastry and chocolates. So, naturally, when I became Beauty Editor of Britain's biggest selling women's magazine, that was the route I took. I saw people losing weight at least for a while on my low-carb diets and there was simply no magic or mystery about why they did so.
In those days there was no pseudo-scientific spin about 'achieving metabolic advantage' by converting fat rather than carbohydrate into energy. In fact the great weight of scientific evidence suggests quite the reverse. Excess dietary fat is stored as body fat with such efficiency that fewer calories are used in the conversion process. The jury is still out on whether this metabolic factor is significant in weight gain, but very, very few reputable scientists would support the idea that cutting carbs could achieve metabolic advantage in weight loss.
In those pre-myth days it was perfectly obvious to me why low-carb diets could help shift surplus weight. They ban alcohol and sugary drinks. That, in itself, will substantially reduce calorie intake for most people. And out go all those foods like cake, biscuits, pastry, pies, puds, chips, crisps, chocolate, dairy icecreams, pizzas, in which carbohydrates hang out with a fat friend, as they so often do a highly undesirable companion called FAT. When you cut carbs you also cut out calories in the fats normally eaten with them.
'But you can eat as much fat as you like in other ways on a low-carb diet; unreformed Atkins anoraks will, I fear, insist. True, but what are you going to eat it with? No toast means bye-bye to the butter on it. A ban on that carb-rich pizza base wipes out your chance to eat its far more fattening fatty-cheesy topping. Sugar restrictions stop you eating all that fat in cakes, biscuits, and so on.
But there arc ways in which you can and do eat more fat than is good for you on a low-carb diet and here's what particularly worries the experts this is largely health-threatening, cholesterol raising, saturated fat. The dangerous fat. You get a particularly large quantity of this in dairy products such as cheese, butter and cream and a good deal from meat dishes. But on the whole, or for a time, carb-cutting will sufficiently limit calories to achieve weight loss. At first you will even believe you have shed more fat than you really have. Starved of carbohydrate, internal organs temporarily expel some of their normal fluid, making weight loss seem twice as good as it really is.
More than twice as high in calories as any other food, fat is the real demon king of the dieting firmament. Always has been, still is. The quantity of fat you eat is the major dietary determinant of whether you are fat or slim. This isn't a matter of theories or debate – it is simply and irrefutably a matter of math's:
One gram carbohydrate or protein = 4 calories
One gram fat = 9 calories you couldn't argue with that!
Of course you can also eat as much animal protein as you like on such diets. But most people are unlikely to go berserk. These foods tend to be quite filling and satisfying and habit plays a large part in how much we eat. Most of us are simply not in the habit of eating four pork chops at a sitting. Some people, particularly in the USA, do, indeed, eat coffee-table-sized steaks, but such people are usually hugely fat, and hugely fat people can shed weight on the quantity of food on which the rest of us would gain weight. The heavier you are, the more calories you can consume while still losing weight. Note how many of those much-promoted personal success stories on low-carb diets are told by those who were grossly obese and now, though less obese, are still a long way from being slim.
Another reason why people can shed weight on such diets again, I have to emphasize, at least for a while is that if we significantly restrict variety of food we automatically reduce calorie intake. So do other animals. One scientific study has shown that even hens eat more calories when given a varied diet rather than a monotonous one.
We can see how this factor impacts on our own appetites at celebration meals when we have been known to partake without restraint of first and main course. Even (heaven forbid!) to overindulge. Seconds…? Yuki Honestly, we couldn't manage a single mouthful. Until, that is, the pud menu appears. Then, when offered the prospect of a totally different flavor and texture of food: 'Well, maybe one pud to share, and two spoons please… '
Unfortunately for their diet resolve, but fortunately for their health, the factors that help people shed weight on a low-carb diet are those which also lead so many to shed the diet itself, sooner or later. Monotony sets in. It's all very well being told that you can eat meat and cheese, hut what if you are yearning for something starchy or deliciously sweet? Reader, I have comfort for you. Such natural yearnings do not make you a bad or abnormal person.
'A significant proportion of the population consumes less that the recommended amount the fruit and vegetables and fibre but more than the recommended amount of fat, saturated fat Sault and sugar. Such for nutrition is a major cause of ill health and premature death.'
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