Carbnivore - Carbohydrate

Avoid The Carbohydrate, Folks

A Low Carbohydrate Diet is Risky Business

Not the kind of risky business Tom Cruise was in though. When you go on a very restrictive carbohydrate plan like Atkins, Neanderthin or even South Beach, your carb intake is so restricted that it's not healthy. You always need balance in your life.

Does that mean you should forego counting all these items and eat all the sweets, white bread and pasta you want? Absolutely not! What it means is that you should limit your intake of carbohydrates to 130 grams a day, which is what your body needs, and make smarter carbohydrate choices like fruits, vegetables and whole grains instead.

When you're on a low carbohydrate diet, your body no longer has carbs to burn for fuel. So instead, it burns fat and protein. That's why you see such dramatic results from people on low carbohydrate diets. However, when your body is burning fat at that rate, ketones are released into the bloodstream and excreted through urine. This is known as ketosis, and it causes unpleasant side effects, such as:

Headaches
Nausea
Bad breath

When your body is burning protein, uric acid is released into the bloodstream. Long term, this can cause kidney damage.

More carbohydrate information

There are lots of other reasons not to cut your carbohydrate intake down to what the restrictive low carb diets call for. First of all, you don't get fruits and not many vegetables, so you aren't getting enough fiber to keep your body "regulated" so to speak. In addition, you don't get all the vitamins and minerals that fruits and vegetables provide. Many low carbers take a multi-vitamin and fiber pills to counteract this, but nothing is better than getting these nutrients straight from the source.

Also, carbs cause your brain to produce the feel-good chemical serotonin. In the absence of carbs, you're likely to feel depressed or experience mood swings. And speaking of your brain, carbs are one of the few nutrients that make it to your brain, so if you stop eating carbs, or the carbs you do eat are being used by other areas of your body, you aren't feeding your brain, so you aren't as bright and alert.

Low carb diets also make you tired, which means you might not have enough energy to exercise. But to really see results quickly on a low carb diet, exercise is key. Normally, your body burns carbs during the first 20 minutes of any exercise, then it burns fat. But on a low carb diet, there are very few carbs left (if any) to burn. Therefore, your body moves into fat burning mode faster. But what good is that if your low carb diet leaves you too tired to work out? It's a Catch-22!

With your carbohydrate counter, your low carbohydrate diet will be a lot more successful.

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