Low Carb in the UK

Why low carb should be high fat...

There is a Short section on this in the FAQ, but the subject really does merit a larger article. NOT written by me, and if anyone knows the credit please forward so that I can add it.

"Trying to keep both your fat and carb intakes low in the hope of losing weight more quickly? It's probably not a good idea, and you do it only at your own risk.

Your body needs energy to perform all the little daily tasks it's called upon to do. It takes energy to walk, to digest food, to sit in an erect position, to move, to breathe -- even to think. It even requires energy to sleep, and for your body to repair itself of all the little damages it incurs during daily life.

Fortunately, your body is a very efficient power plant. It can use any of three fuels to generate the energy it needs. Only if it runs out of those fuels will it be totally unable to produce energy and cease to operate. But before it reaches that state it goes into a stage comparable to rolling blackouts -- a condition in which it warns you through various symptoms including, but not limited to, hunger, aches and pains, extreme fatigue, bowel irregularities, and even problems with the texture of your skin and hair, that it needs more fuel. However, you should never let your body get to the point of warning you that it's out of fuel. Here's why:

The three types of fuel the body can use are carbohydrates, fats, and protein. Carbohydrates are the body's "preferred" fuel -- the one it will use first, if available. If there are no carbs (sugars and starches) available, then it will use fats. And only as very last resort -- after having warned you via the "rolling blackout" method that it's in real trouble -- will the body use protein as a fuel.

That's because the protein you eat is needed by the body's organs and muscles, and is constantly used by those organs and muscles to keep in good repair. So if you require protein to produce the energy for your daily activities, you divert it from its prime -- and very important -- purpose. You could even end up cannibalizing your body, causing a breakdown of first its muscles and then the major organs you need to simply sustain life. (This, by the way, is why some doctors and nutritionists are so convinced that low-carbing will shrivel your muscles, eat your liver and do unspeakable things to your kidneys. They don't consider the fact that the body will use fat for energy before it'll use protein if it's supplied with enough fat for its needs. And because they're so conditioned to the low-fat way of eating they can't even imagine anyone eating enough fat to supply their body with energy, for heaven's sake!)

Now back to the body's preferred fuels. We are mostly conditioned from birth to use carbohydrates for fuel, so the body will use them automatically. (There's a good reason why human breast milk -- nature's intended food for infants -- contains more than 1.5 times the carbohydrates that cows' milk does.)

Most people get more than enough carbohydrates to fuel their bodies' daily activites. The body, being a well-run power plant, puts the leftovers in storage to use in the future if it's needed. But it can't store carbohydrates, so it turns them into fat and keeps them on deposit in the body's cells. And we see it walking around the streets wherever we go, hanging off bodies in a most unattractive way. Some of us see it every time we look in the mirror, as well, and don't like the way it looks on us.

An excess of fat storage is usually the reason we choose a low-carb way of life. We want our bodies to use the stored fat for energy and leave our bodies lean and sleek looking. And, as we all know, it works. But we can make it work far more efficiently by understanding the way the body uses fat.

The switchover from using carbs for energy to using fats for energy is only semi-automatic. In the absence of carbs the body will use fat, but only sparingly. Remember, the body is conditioned to store that fat against the time when it runs out of fuel. It considers fat an "emergency ration" and it goes into conservation mode, producing only the amount of energy that's necessary to sustain life, and you go into those "rolling blackouts." You may feel hunger, fatigue, muscle aches, joint pain, etc. You may become extremely constipated. Or you may just feel a general malaise. This happens to many people when they begin a low-carb diet, and often keeps them from following through. "Oh, I tried that," they'll say, "And it didn't work for me."

There is a way, though, to train the body to use fat automatically as its preferred fuel, and one that it can safely use to produce unlimited amounts of energy. You do that by depriving it of carbohydrates, while at the same time providing it a good supply of dietary fat. After a while -- usually only a few days -- this convinces your body that it can always expect to have a bountiful supply of fat to use as fuel for its energy generator and takes it out of conservation mode. Because it has both dietary fat and stored fat to draw upon, and has no reason to stay in conservation mode, the body will produce lots and lots of energy. You'll avoid the "rolling blackout" warnings and feel far better, with plenty of energy. And this will continue for as long as you eat enough fat to keep your body out of conservation mode.

This is one of the reasons that doctors who support the low-carb way of eating tell you that you shouldn't eat fat-free mayonnaise, salad dressings, cheeses, etc. (The other reason, of course is that most of them contain added carbohydrates just to make them barely edible.) It's also the basis for the widely touted and very effective "Fat Fast" method of jolting your body into weight loss if you find yourself in a persistent plateau.

But what the doctors often forget to mention is that these days even eating full-fat condiments and foods may not provide you with as many fats as you should have to encourage your body to freely burn fats. This is because so many of today's foods are routinely stripped of the good, healthy fats they used to contain.

For example, food animals are bred to be as close to fat-free as possible. Beef and pork is touted as being "lean," and it is -- almost to the point of being tasteless. It's nearly impossible to get chicken with the fat and skin still attached -- I have to order it specially from my supermarket. Recipes routinely call for pans to be sprayed with fat-free sprays rather than using fats to keep the food from sticking, and even those of us who follow a low-carb way of life often use them, thinking we're doing the right thing.

So to avoid depriving our bodies of both fats and carbohydrates at the same time, we often have to consciously add fats to our diet. Trying to eat a low-fat or reduced-fat diet along with a low-carb diet is almost a sure recipe for failure. It may appear to be effective, at least for a while. You may lose some weight, but despite cutting your carbohydrates down to almost zero you probably won't lose as much as you would if you were eating more fat. You surely won't feel nearly as good as you would if you ate more fat. And you may even end up falling by the wayside along with those people who say "Oh, I tried that, and it didn't work for me.""