Carbohydrates Overview: People seem to blame everything that doesn’t work in their favour. As a result, they often misunderstand countless things and name such things as good or bad for their own sake. But in reality, there’s nothing good or bad but convenience matters most in the modern lifestyle. Carbohydrates are such food sources which are largely branded as an enemy of the healthy lifestyle. However, carbohydrates play a crucial role in our diet as they share approximately 45-60% of our diet. People don’t usually agree with other perspectives on the same things leaving them doubtful. In reality, complex carbs are a great source of macronutrients and add nutritional value to your food.
Restricting carbs would help in weight loss
Weight loss is the ultimate goal of living a healthy lifestyle. As being overweight started becoming a point of concern then people started looking for different reasons to lose weight and opt for a healthy lifestyle. However, we hardly know the best way to restrict our carbs intake but still, we try extreme dietary methods to look for. As per many dieticians, low carbs can be a great way to limit your appetite for weight loss. There are only a few methods which are as effective as dieting itself due to its limited range. In other words, following a low carbohydrate diet is difficult no doubt but it is mandatory to stay in the calorie deficit state for weight loss.
What is a low-carbohydrate diet?
A low carbohydrate diet may be unconventional in many senses but it surely promotes weight loss in the body. Every day you need to consume a minimum of 20-30g of carbs in the least quantity depending upon your daily calorie intake. Following this, you need to adjust your complex carbs as per your fitness goals. It can be only done by a dietician who can maintain a minimum carbs value without risking your health. Listed below are some of the best-known low-carbohydrate dietary regimes that you can follow for weight loss:-
- The ketogenic diet is a low carbohydrate diet where your body utilizes fat for energy.
- Atkins diet is a low carbohydrate fad diet developed by Robert Atkins in 1970.
- The paleo diet is a pathological diet where you start consuming a caveman diet with minimum carbs.
- Zone diet is a low-calorie diet where emphasis is given on taking the minimum amount of carbs possible.
- The South Beach diet consists of complex carbs, lean meat and dietary fat which are presented in the balanced diet.
The dietary state of the diet can make significant improvements depending on your dietary choices. However, determining how much carbs you should take is based upon a variety of factors of age, gender and dietary intake. So, it would be perfect to start small and move forward with your dietary goals.
How do you restrict carbs for weight loss?
As you start following the correct steps to limit your carbohydrate consumption you start discovering some of the most prominent benefits of a low carbohydrate diet. Listed below are some of the best methods that you can use to start restricting carbohydrate intake in your daily diet:-
- Low-sugar sweetening: Low-sugar-sweetened drinks can be easily described as glucose, fructose, lactose, maltose and sucrose. So, when we are trying to limit the carbs intake you should avoid taking any sugar-sweetening drinks which consist of high carbs. However, simple carbs can promote instant energy production with a rise in blood sugar levels and insulin secretion from the pancreas. Most importantly, you have to regulate your sugar drinks like cola, soda and iced tea which leads to Type 2 Diabetes sooner or later.
- Refined grain bread: When you start making small changes in your dietary intake like exchanging refined bread with whole grain bread, you start noticing some changes in your appetite. However, there are many types of breads available like refined grain bread, whole grain bread etc. These distinctive breads will provide essential nutrition but highly processed food items can be really bad for your stomach. Therefore, you need to make a switch from refined-grain white bread to whole-grain bread which takes more time to digest.
- Fruit juices- Everyone thinks drinking fruit juices would be healthy but I disagree because, unlike whole fruits, drinking fruit juices won’t do any good for your health except raise your blood sugar levels. However, it doesn’t contain any fibre or essential nutrients which makes it a simple fructose drink consisting only of sugar. This is a form of simple carb which is usually high in sugar. Dieticians call fruit juices a sweet soda which doesn’t contain enough vitamins for the body. As a result, you should always eat fruits as a whole rather than drinking fruit juices to stay healthy.
- Choose low-carbohydrate snacks- Having a low-carbohydrate snacking option would definitely help you reach your fitness goals. As you start making dietary changes to take care of your dietary needs then your body starts adjusting to the new dietary changes resulting in weight loss. Most importantly, you really need to continue with your dietary habits to reach your optimal weight goals. A low carbohydrate diet is a great medium through which you can make some radical changes despite losing your taste or flavours.
- Start taking enough protein. This is really important because protein is as important for your body as any other nutrients. Therefore, you need to start taking enough protein, depending on your diet. To calculate how much protein should you take must follow a simple calculation where you need to multiply the body weight by 0.2 to get the sufficient amount of protein needed on a daily basis. Try to take the recommended protein intake within your calories. You can simply start with eggs and butter in the breakfast.
Bottom line
Carbohydrates are a great source of energy for our body. But weight loss requires appetite management and keeping it with restrictive methods could truly unlock your true potential in weight loss. This is something that you need to work on yourself. So, try to follow a low-carbohydrate diet for weight loss.
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