What The New “Low-Carb” Study REALLY Says
By Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
www.BurnTheFat.com
A news media feeding frenzy erupted recently when a new diet study broke in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Almost all the reporters got it wrong, wrong WRONG! So did most of the gloating low carb forumites and bloggers. Come to think of it, almost everyone interpreted this study wrong. Some valuable insights came out of this study, but almost everyone missed them because they were too busy believing what the news said or defending their own cherished belief systems …
The new study, titled, “Weight Loss With a Low-Carbohydrate, Mediterranean, or Low-Fat Diet” was published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in issue 359, number 3.
I quickly read the full text of the research paper the day it was published. Then, I shook my head in dismay as I scanned the news headlines. I found it amusing that the media turned this into a three ring circus, putting a misleading “low carb versus high carb,” “Atkins vindicated” or “Diet wars” spin on the story. But that’s mainstream journalism for you, right? Gotta sell those papers!
Just look at some of these headlines:
“Study Tips Scales in Atkins Diets Favor: Low Carb Regimen Better Than Low Fat Diet For Weight And Cholesterol, Major Study Shows. “
“Low-Carb and Low-Fat Diets Face Off “ “The Never-Ending Diet Wars” “Low Carb Beats Low Fat in Diet Duel.” “Atkins Diet is Safe and Far More Effective Than a Low-Fat One, Study Says” “Unrestricted Low-Carb Diet Wins Hands Down” Some of these headlines are hilarious! I wonder if any of these reporters actually read the whole study. Geez. Is it too much trouble to read 13 pages before you write a story that will be read by millions of already confused people suffering the pain and frustration of obesity?
Here’s a quick look at the study design.
The low fat restricted calorie diet was based on American Heart Association guidelines. Calorie intake was set at 1500 for women, 1800 a day for men with 30% of calories from fat, and only 10% from saturated fat. Participants were instructed to eat low fat grains, vegetables, fruits and legumes and to limit their consumption of additional fats, sweets and high fat snacks.
The Mediterranean diet group was placed on a moderate fat, restricted calorie program rich in vegetables and low in red meat, with poultry and fish replacing beef and lamb. Energy intake was restricted to 1500 calories per day for women and 1800 calories per day for men with a goal of no more than 35% of calorie from fat. Added fat came mostly from nuts and olive oil.
The low carb diet was a non-restricted calorie plan aimed at providing 20 grams of carbs per day for the 2 month induction phase with a gradual increase to 120 grams per day to maintain the weight loss. Intakes of total calories, protein and fat were not limited. However, the participants were counseled to choose vegetarian sources of protein (more on that bizarre-twist shortly).
The study subjects were mostly male (86%), overweight (BMI 31) and middle age (mean age 52)
Here were the study results:
There were some health improvements in cholesterol, blood pressure and other parameters in the Mediterranean and low carb group that bested the high carb group. That was the focus of many articles and discussions that appeared on the net this week. However, I’d like to focus on the weight loss aspect as I’m not a medical doctor and fat loss is the primary subject matter of this website. All three groups lost weight. The low carb group lost 5.5 kilos, the Mediterranean group lost 4.6 kilos and the low fat group lost 3.3 kilograms…. IN TWO YEARS! Whoopee!
My conclusion would be that the results were similar and that none of the diets worked very well over the long term!
Amanda Gardner of the US News and World Report Health Day was one of the few reporters who got it right:
“Diet plans produce similar results: Study finds Mediterranean and low-carb diets work just as well as low fat ones.”
Tara Parker-Pope of the New York Times also came close with her headline:
“Long term diet study suggests success is hard to come by: In a tightly controlled experiment, obese people lost an average of just 6 to 10 pounds over two years.”
Even this headline wasn’t 100% accurate. The study was HARDLY tightly controlled. Tightly controlled means metabolic ward studies where the researchers actually count and control the calorie intake.
The problem is, you can’t lock people in a hospital or research center ward for two years. So in this study, they used a food frequency questionnaire. Sure, like we believe what people report about their eating habits at restaurants and at home behind closed doors! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
“No! I swear Dr. Schwarzfuchs! I swear I didn’t eat those donuts over the weekend! I stayed on my Mediterranean diet. Honest!”
One of the most firmly established facts in dietetics research is that almost everyone underreports their food intake BADLY, sometimes by as much as 50%. I’m not saying everyone “lies,” they just forget or don’t know. In fact, this underreporting of calorie intake is such a huge problem that it makes obesity research very difficult to do and conclusions difficult to draw from free-living studies. Another blunder in the news reports is that this study didn’t really follow Atkins diet parameters OR even the traditional low fat diet for that matter, so it’s not an “Atkin’s versus Ornish” showdown at all. If you actually take the time to read the full text of the research paper it doesn’t say ANYTHING like, “Atkins is the best after all.” That’s the spin that some of the news media cooked up (and what the Atkins foundation was hoping for). It says, “The diet was based on the Atkins diet.” However, the sentence right before that says, “The participants were counseled to choose vegetarian sources of fat and protein.” Vegetarian Atkins? The chart on page 236 says the low carb diet provided 40% of calories from carbs at 6, 12 and 24 months. If I’m reading that data properly, then the only low carb period was a brief induction phase in the very beginning. Does that sound like Atkins? 40% carb sounds more like the Zone diet or my own Burn The Fat program to me.
The Atkins Foundation, which partially supported this study, told reporters, “We feel vindicated.” HA! They should have paid the reporters and told the researchers they felt ripped off and they wanted a refund for misuse of their research grant!
After carefully reading the full text of this study, there are many interesting findings we could talk about, from the differences in results between men and women to the improvements in health markers. Here’s what the study really says that stood out to me. It’s what I would have talked about if the newspapers or TV stations had called me:
1. “Mediterranean and low carb diets may be effective alternatives to low-fat diets.”
I can agree completely with that statement. All three diets created a calorie deficit. All three groups lost weight. Low carb lost a little more, which is the usual finding because low carb diets often control appetite and calorie intake automatically (you eat less even if you don’t count calories). Also, if body composition is not indicated, there’s an initial water weight loss that makes low carb diets look more effective in the very early stages.
2. “Personal preferences and metabolic considerations might inform individualized tailoring of dietary interventions.”
Absolutely! Nutrition should be individualized based on goals, health status, body type, activity level and numerous other factors. Different people have different phenotypes. Some people are more predisposed to thrive on a low carb approach. Others feel like crap on low carbs and do better with more carbs or a middle of the road approach. Those who dogmatically follow and defend one type of diet or the other are only handcuffing themselves by limiting their options. Iris Shai, a researcher in the study said, “We can’t rely on one diet fits all.” Hmm, far cry from “Atkins wins hands down,” wouldn’t you say?
3. “The rate of adherence to a study diet was 95.4% at 1 year and 84.6% at 2 years.”
THIS was the part of most interest to me. When I read this, immediately I could have cared less about the silly low carb versus high carb wars that the news reporters were jumping on. I wanted to know WHY the subjects were able to stick with it so well. Of course, that’s boring stuff to journalists… adherence? What does that word mean anyway? Yawn - not interesting enough for prime time, I guess. But it was interesting to me, and I hope YOU pay attention to what I found. The authors of the study wrote:
“This trial suggests a model that might be applied more broadly in the workplace. Using the employer as a health coach could be an effective way to improve health. The model of group intervention with the use of dietary group sessions, spousal support, food labels, and monthly weighing in the workplace within the framework of a health promotion campaign might yield weight reduction and long term health benefits.”
Hmmmmm, lets see: * Dietician coaching
* Group meetings
* Motivational phone calls
* Spousal support
* Workplace monitoring (corporate health program)
* Food labels - calorie monitoring
* Weigh-ins (required and monitored)
Wow, everything helpful to long term fat loss that sticks. Can you say, ACCOUNTABILITY? These factors help explain the better adherence.
By the way, the adherence rate for the low carb group was the lowest.
90.4% in low fat group
85.3% in the Mediterranean group
78% in the low carb group
Here’s the bottom line, the way I see it:
First, please, please, please learn how to find and read primary research and take the news media stories with a grain of salt. If you want to know who died, what burned down or what hurricane is coming, tune in to the news – they do a GREAT job at that. If you want to know how to lose weight or improve your health, look up the original research papers instead of taking second hand information at face value.
Second, those who prefer a low carb approach; more power to them. Most studies, this one included, show at the very least that low carb is an option and it’s not necessarily an unhealthy one if done intelligently. I also have no qualms with someone claiming that low carb diets are slightly more effective for weight loss, especially in the short term, free living situations. Is low carb superior for fat loss in the long haul? That’s STILL highly debatable. It’s probably superior for some people, but not for others.
Third, low carb people, listen up! Even if low carb is superior, that doesn’t mean calories don’t count. Deny this at your own peril. In fact, this study shows the reverse. The low carb group was in a larger negative energy balance than the high carb and Mediterranean group (according to the data published in this paper), which easily explains the greater weight loss. Posting the calories contained in foods in the cafeteria may have improved the results and helped with compliance in all groups.
When energy intake is matched calorie for calorie, the advantage of a low carb diet shrinks or disappears. For most people, low carb is a hunger management or calorie control weight loss advantage, not metabolic magic (sorry, no magic folks!)
Fourth, choose the nutrition program that’s most appropriate for your personal preferences, your current health condition, your genetics (or phenotype) and most important of all… the one you can stick with. Then tend your own garden instead of wasting time criticizing how the other guy is eating. Your results will speak for themselves in the end. Take your shirt off and show us.
If I were forced to choose only one approach (and thank god I’m not), I would recommend avoiding the extremes of very low carb or very low fat or very high fat or very high carbs. Balance makes the most sense to me, and the research suggests that this helps produce the highest compliance rate. That’s not rocket science either, it’s common sense. If you have a serious fat loss goal, as when I compete in bodybuilding, then a further reduction in carbs and increase in protein makes perfect sense to me as a peaking diet. If an extremely low or extremely high carb diet worked for you, great. But generalizing your experience to the entire rest of the world makes no sense. Arguing from extremes is the weakest form of argument. The reason I have THREE nutrition plans (three phases) in my own fat loss program is because programs with flexibility and room for individualization beat the others hands down in the long term. In fact, I wrote an entire chapter in my e-book about unique body types, how to determine yours and how to individualize your nutrition – it’s THAT important. If you have more choices, you have more power. The people who are shackled by dogma and narrow thinking are stuck. They also risk missing what’s really important. Things like: Personalization
Adherence
Long-term Maintenance
Accountability
Social Support
and…
CALORIES!
Train hard and expect success,
Tom Venuto CSCS, NSCA-CPT
Fat Loss Coach
www.BurnTheFat.com
PS. If you want to learn more about a balanced, flexible and proven approach, which teaches nutritional individuality and which can produce similar weight loss in one month, month after month, that the subjects of this study produced in TWO YEARS, (if you ADHERE to it!), then visit my fat loss website.
How I Got “Ripped” Abs For The Very First Time
www.BurnTheFat.com
I’ll never forget the very first time I got ripped, how I did it and how it felt. I’ve never told this entire story before or widely published my early photos either. Winning first place and seeing my abs the first time was sweet redemption. But before that, it was a story of desperation…
I started lifting weights for bodybuilding when I was 14 years old, but I never had ripped abs until I was 20. I endured six years of frustration and embarrassment. Being a teenager is hard enough, but imagine how I felt being a self-proclaimed bodybuilder, with no abs or muscle definition to show for it. Imagine what it was like in swimming class or when we played basketball in gym class and I prayed to be called out for “shirts” and not ‘”skins” because I didn’t want any one seeing my “man-boobs” and ab flab jiggling all over the court.
Oh, I had muscle. I started gaining muscle from the moment I picked up a barbell. I got strong too. I was benching 315 at age 18. But even after four years of successful strength training, I still hadn’t figured out this getting ripped thing. Muscle isn’t very attractive if it’s covered up with a layer of fat. That’s where the phrase “bulky” really comes from – fat on top of muscle. It can look worse than just fat.
I read every book. I read every magazine. I tried every exercise. I took every supplement in vogue back in the 80’s (remember bee pollen, octacosanol, lipotropics and dessicated liver?) I tried not eating for entire days at a time. I went on a rope skipping kick. I did hundreds of crunches and ab exercises. I rode the Lifecycle. I wore rubber waist belts.
The results were mediocre at best. When I made progress, I couldn’t maintain it. One step forward, one step back. Even when I got a little leaner, it wasn’t all the way. Still no ripped abs. When I played football and they beat the crap out of us at training camp, I lost weight, but STILL didn’t get all the way down to those elusive six pack abs. In fact, it was almost like I got “skinny fat.” My arms and legs lost some muscle but the small roll of ab fat was still there.
Why was it so hard? What was I doing wrong? It was driving me crazy!
My condition got worse in college because I mixed with a party crowd. With boozing came eating, and the “bulk” accumulated even more. At that point, the partying and social life were more important to me than my body. I was still lifting weights, but wasn’t living a fitness lifestyle.
Mid way through college I changed my major from business management to exercise science, having made up my mind to pursue a career in fitness. That’s when I started to feel something wasn’t right. The best word for it is “incongruence.” That’s when what you say you want to be and what you really are don’t match. Being a fitness professional means you have to walk the talk and be a role model to others. Anything else is hypocrisy. I knew I had to shape up or forget fitness as a career.
But after four years, I STILL didn’t know how to get ripped! Nothing I learned in exercise physiology class helped. All the theory was interesting, but when theory hit the real world, things didn’t always work out like they did on paper. My professors didn’t know either. Heck, most of them weren’t even in shape! Two of them were overweight, including my nutrition professor.
However, out of my college experience did come the seeds of the solution and my first breakthrough.
In one of my physical education classes, we were required to do some running and we were instructed to keep track of our performance and resting heart rates. Somehow, even though I was a strength athlete, I got hooked on running. After the initial discomfort of hauling around a not so cardio-fit 205 pound body, I started to get a lot of satisfaction out of watching my resting heart rate drop from the 70’s into the 50’s and seeing my running times get better and better. And then it happened: I started getting leaner than I ever had before.
The results motivated me to no end, and I kept after it even more. My runs would be 5 or 6 days a week and I’d go for between 30 minutes to an hour. Sometimes I had a circular route of about 6 miles and I would run it for time, almost always pushing for a personal record. When I finished, I was spent, drenched in sweat and sometimes just crashing when I got home. And I kept getting even leaner.
That’s when I started to figure it out. If you’re expecting me to say that running is the secret, no, that’s NOT it per se. I was thinking bigger picture. In fact, I noticed that my legs had lost some muscle size, so I knew that over-doing the runs would be counter productive, ultimately, and I don’t run that much anymore these days. But that’s how I did it the first time and I had never experienced fat loss like that before. The fat was falling off and I had barely changed my diet.
My “aha moment” was when I realized the pivotal piece in the puzzle was calories. It wasn’t the type of exercise, it wasn’t the specific foods and it wasn’t supplements. Today I realize that it’s the calorie deficit that matters the most, not whether you eat less or burn more per se, but in my case creating a large deficit by burning the calories was the absolute key for me.
These runs were burning an enormous number of calories. Everything I had done before wasn’t burning enough to make a noticeable difference in a short period of time. 10-15 minutes of rope skipping wasn’t enough. 45 minutes of slow-go bike riding wasn’t burning enough. Hundreds of crunches weren’t enough. I put 1+1+1 together and realized it was intensity X duration X frequency = highest the total calorie burn for the week. How much simpler could it be? It wasn’t magic. It was MATH!
It was consistency too. This was the first time in SIX YEARS I stuck with it. Body fat comes off by the grams every day – literally. Kilos and pounds of body weight may come off quickly, but they come back just as fast. Body fat comes off slowly and if you have no patience or you jump to one program to the next without following through with the one you started, you’re doomed. In six years, I had “tried everything”… except consistency and patience.
Then the stakes went up. I had finally gotten lean, but there was another level beyond lean… RIPPED! My buddies at the gym noticed me getting leaner and then they popped the question: Why don’t you compete? My training partner Steve had already competed 3 years earlier and won the Teenage Mr. America competition. Since then, I had been all talk and no walk. “Yeah, I’m going to compete one of these days too… I’m going to be the next Mr. America.” Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years. The only title I had won was “Mr. Procastinator.” Then finally, Steve and my other friends challenged me almost in an ultimatum type of way. Well, the truth is, I set myself up for it with my big mouth and they called me out, so I would have been the laughing stock of our gym if I didn’t follow through.
The first time you do a real cut - all the way down to contest-ready - is the hardest. Not as much physically as psychologically, simply because you’ve never done it before. Doing something you’ve done before is no big deal. Doing something you’ve never done before causes uncertainty and fear, sometimes even terror! I was plagued with self-doubt the entire time, never sure if I was ever going to get there. It seemed like it was taking forever. But failure was not an option. Not only did I have an entire gym full of friends rooting me on, I had great training partner who was natural Mr. Teenage America! The pressure was on. I had to do it. There was no way out. No excuses.
Some other day, I’ll tell you all the details of the emotional roller coaster ride that was my first contest diet, but let it suffice to say, at that point, I still didn’t know what I was doing. It was only later that I went into “human guinea pig” mode with nutritional experiments and finally pinned down the eating side of the equation to a science (and gained 20 lbs of stage-weight muscle as a result).
In the late 1980’s, the standard bodybuilding diet was high carb, low fat. For that first competition, I was on 60% carbs – including pancakes, boxed cereal, whole grain bread, and pasta - so I guess you can toss out the idea that it’s impossible to get ripped on high carbs – although high carb is NOT the contest diet I use today. But it didn’t matter, because I had already learned the critical piece in the fat loss puzzle – the calorie balance equation. Understanding that one aspect of physiology was enough to get me ripped. It only got better later.
In the end, I took 2nd place at my very first competition, the Natural Lehigh Valley, and one month later, I won first place at the Natural New Jersey. Seven months later, the overall Natural Pennsylvania.
Looking back, was all the effort worth it? Well, my good friend Adam Waters, who is an accountability coach, teaches his students about using “redemption” as a motivator. Remember the Charles Atlas ad where the skinny kid got sand kicked in his face and then came back big and buffed and beat up the bully? That’s redemption. Or the dateless high school nerd who comes back to the 10 year class reunion driving a Mercedes with the prom queen on his arm? That’s redemption.
After all the doubt, heartache and frustration I went through for six years, I not only had my trophies, my abs were on the front page of the sports section in our small Pennsylvania town newspaper. The following year, I was on the poster for a bodybuilding competition… as the previous year’s champion. THAT’S REDEMPTION. You tell me if it was worth it.
There are 7 lessons from my story that I want to share with you because even if you have a different personal history than I do, these 7 lessons are the keys to achieving any previously elusive fitness goal for the first time and I think they apply to everyone.
1. Set the big goal and go for it. If your goal doesn’t excite you and scare you at the same time, your goal is too small. If you don’t feel fear or uncertainty, you’re inside your comfort zone. Puny goals aren’t motivating. Sometimes it takes a competition or a big challenge of some kind to get your blood boiling.
2. Align your values with your goals. I understood my values and made a decision to be congruent with who I really was and who I wanted to be. When you know your values, get your priorities straight and align your goals with your values, then doing what it takes is easy.
3. Do the math. Stop looking for magic. A lean body does not come from any particular type of exercise or foods per se, it’s the calories burned vs calories consumed that determines fat loss or fat gain. You might do better by decreasing the calories consumed, whereas I depended more on increasing the calories burned, but either way, it’s still a math equation. Deny it at your own risk.
4. Get social support. Support and encouragement from your friends can help get you through anything. Real time accountability to a training partner or trainer can make all the difference.
5. Be consistent. Nothing will ever work if you don’t work at it every day. Sporadic efforts don’t just produce sporadic results, sometimes they produce zero results.
6. Persist through difficulty and self doubt. If you think it’s going to be smooth sailing all the way with no ups and downs, you’re fooling yourself.. For every sunny day, there’s going to be a storm. If you can’t weather the storms, you’ll never reach new shores.
7. Redeem yourself. Non-achievers sit on the couch and wallow in past failures. Winners use past failures as motivational rocket fuel. It always feels good to achieve a goal, but nothing feels as good as achieving a goal with redemption.
Postscript: My journey continued. Since that initial first place trophy, I have competed as a natural for life bodybuilder 26 more times, including 7 first place awards and 7 runner up awards. And yes, I finally nailed down the nutrition side of things too. You can read more about that and the fat loss program that developed as a result at www.burnthefat.com
Train hard and expect success always,
Tom Venuto, NSCA-CPT, CSCS
Fat Loss Coach
www.BurnTheFat.com
About the Author:
Finding Good Vegetarian Low Carb Recipes
There are many vegetarian low carb recipes out there but selecting a good one for you and your family can be difficult. The thing I have found that works best when on a low carb diet for vegetarians is to have a collection of your favorite foods at home and work out your vegetarian low carb recipes around them.
Basic Ingredients For Vegetarian Low Carb Recipes
The first ingredient that I use in the majority of my vegetarian low carb recipes is tofu. Tofu is literally the wonder food of the vegetarian world. If you have been a meat eater before and are looking for something that is nutritious and can emulate the flavor and texture of meat, tofu is your friend.
You are going to want to start simple with this ingredient and work you way up to proficiency with it. This ingredient is incredibly versatile and can be used in just about any vegetarian low carb recipes that you find. Whether it is Asian or Italian you can work tofu in if you use it right.
The next ingredient I find to be very flexible and usable in lot of vegetarian low carb recipes is egg. Eggs are wonderfully flexible and capable of providing needed protein. It is especially important to make sure that you have the right amount of protein when on a vegetarian diet, as it is very easy to not have enough. Protein is often overlooked in recipes, so it may be up to you to make sure that you and your family are getting the amount that you need.
Another good staple ingredient in vegetarian cooking is nut. Coconuts, peanuts and cashews all have their own unique flavor and add taste and texture to any vegetarian meal. Coconut milk is very healthy and can be a lower fat alternative to cow’s milk. Peanuts can make wonderful sauces and cashews can spruce up even the blandest of meals.
Another useful food for vegetarian low carb recipes is peppers. These can provide a shot of flavor with very few calories. There are also many valuable nutrients and vitamins in peppers, so do not be afraid to try them in just about anything.
Well there you have some basic ideas to get your vegetarian low carb recipes off the ground. The key is being willing to experiment and try new things so don’t be afraid to give new things a shot.
If you want to know more about Low Carb Diet and you dont have to starve at all learn more here :
Low carb cheesecake recipe, Low carb chicken recipe
Following a low carb diet can definitely be difficult, especially at the very beginning when you are trying to cut out a significant amount of calories from your diet. With ideas like the low carb cheesecake recipe and low carb chicken recipe however, you will still get delicious food without the carbohydrates, making it much easier to stick to your low carb diet.
Pleasure Without The Guilt
There are quite a few different low carb cheesecake recipe ideas to choose from, but if you are looking for a really delicious, low carb cheesecake recipe, this is one that you are going to want to try out.
If you want the definitive cheesecake, one that is smooth and rich and oh so tasty, here is a great option. The New York style cheesecake with Brazil nut crust is a tasty treat that is very low in carbohydrates.
For this recipe you will need 2 cups raw Brazil nuts, 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, 2 teaspoon brown Sugar Twin, a pinch of cinnamon and a pinch of salt to make the crust. For the filling you will need 2 1/2 lbs. cream cheese at room temperature, a pinch of salt, 5 tablespoons granular Splenda, 5 tablespoons granular Sugar Twin, 1/2 cup sour cream, 2 teaspoon fresh lemon juice, 2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract, 2 large egg yolks and 6 large whole eggs.
Preheat the oven to 350ºF for this low carb cheesecake recipe, and line the bottom of a 9-inch spring form pan with parchment paper. The parchment paper is very important and you should not skip this step because if you do the cheesecake will end up sticking and you will not be able to get it out of the pan.
You want to roast the raw nuts for about fifteen minutes, and while they are toasting melt the butter. Then you want to transfer the nuts to a food processor, pulsing them until they are finely chopped because you do not want any large sized nuts in the recipe. Add the remaining crust ingredients and pulse to combine them all together until they are well mixed, and then pat evenly into the bottom of the spring form pan and place in the fridge.
Next you want to increase the oven temperature to 400ºF, beat the cream cheese until smooth in a separate bowl, add the sweeteners, sour cream, lemon juice and vanilla and beat until combined, then add the egg yolks and then the eggs two at a time, beating until incorporated. Carefully pour this filling over the crust and put on the pan, bake for ten minutes, reduce temperature back to 350ºF and bake for nearly two hours or until set.
This low carb cheesecake recipe will make you think you are cheating because it is so good!
If you want to know more about Low Carb Diet and you dont have to starve at all learn more here :
Easy low carb recipe, low carb bread recipe
Although typically bread is kept out of a low carb diet, if you are interested in adding a low carb bread recipe to your easy low carb recipe book, there are some terrific options. From muffins and bagels to sticky buns and pancakes, there are some great bread recipes that you can include in your low carb diet, as long as you choose the right ones.
Bread Recipes For Low Carb Diets
An applesauce muffins easy low carb recipe is definitely one of the favorites for bread lovers who have had to cut most of the bread products out of their life. This recipe does require quite a few ingredients but is still simple and quick to make.
All you need for the dry ingredients portion of this easy low carb recipe is 3/4 cup soy protein isolate, 1/4 cup oat flour, 1/4 cup wheat gluten flour, 1/4 cup ground golden flax seed, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 2 teaspoons cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon cloves, 1/4 teaspoons nutmeg, 1/8 teaspoon mace or ginger, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1 cup Splenda, and 1/4 cup brown Sugar Twin.
The wet ingredients for this easy low carb recipe are 4 beaten eggs, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 3/4 cup light olive oil, 1 cup unsweetened apple sauce, and 2-3 drops apple oil. The topping is optional but if you would like to make it you will need 1 tablespoon rolled oats, 1 tablespoon oat flour, 1 teaspoon brown Sugar Twin, and a couple shakes of cinnamon.
To prepare this easy low carb recipe all you do is mix the dry ingredients together and the wet ingredients together in separate bowls. Then you want to mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until blended (do not over mix), pour into sprayed muffin tins, sprinkle with the topping if you did decide to make it and bake.
You should bake the muffins at 350ºF for about half an hour, longer if you desire. If you want to change the recipe to pumpkin spice muffins all you do is add 15 oz. canned pumpkin instead of the applesauce and apple oil.
Another easy low carb recipe that you may want to try is cheddar cheese bread. You need 1/3 cup soy flour, 1/3 cup soy protein, 2 large eggs, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, 2 tablespoons sour cream, 2 tablespoons olive oil, 1/2 cup cheddar cheese grated, and 2 teaspoons oregano.
Have the oven preheated to 375ºF, combine the soy flour, soy protein, eggs, baking powder, sour cream, and oil in a bowl and mix well. Fold in half of the cheddar, pour the batter into the pan and sprinkle the remaining cheese on top and then bake for about half an hour.
If you want to know more about Low Carb Diet and you dont have to starve at all learn more here :
Sticking To High Protein, Low Fat, Low Carb Foods
If you want to begin a diet and you want to be able to stick to it, you will have to find a diet that doesn’t feel like a diet. If you are the type of person who has failed on diets before, you will know that starting a new one is frustrating. Attitude is a good part of diet success. But getting a diet that uses high protein, low fat, low carb foods and that tastes good will also help you to succeed.
Eat Right All The Time
If you want to start a diet, you will want to stick to a diet that uses high protein, low fat, low carb foods. This way, you will still be able to eat tasty meals and also become healthier at the same time. A low carb diet meal can be easily prepared so that you can get healthy and still get the good taste that you want. For dinner, you will want to have a main course of meat, whole grain rice and vegetables. Add a salad as an appetizer if you want to. Salads are important to any kind of diet, but it is a great addition to keep you eating only high protein, low fat, low carb foods.
If you want to stick to this type of a diet, you will want to do some research so you can learn what high protein, low fat, low carb foods are. You would be surprised at some of the things that are still tasty yet fall into this category of foods. Fruit and vegetables are a big part of this kind of a diet. And with fruit, you can easily make some great snacks and desserts that will satisfy your sweet tooth and still keep you on track.
The best way to stick to a diet that uses only high protein, low fat, low carb foods is planning ahead for meals. With everyone’s busy schedules, sometimes it is difficult to find the time to even cook a meal, let alone plan one ahead of time. But if you have any spare time on the weekends, you can plan ahead for the week in order to stick to your diet. You can also prepare some meals ahead of time, or portions of the meals in order to save time. Salads can easily be prepared the night before, as well as desserts that use fruit. Have fun with your food all while still being healthy.
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Questions about fat burning and spot toning/reducing are our most popular question. The short answer is that you cannot spot reduce, and the way to burn fat is through aerobic exercise, which burnsburns lots of calories; resistance exercise, which builds muscle (muscle is the engine that burns calories and maintains your metabolic rate); and then watch your caloric intake.
1. There is a genetic factor that determines where people accumulate fat. Women tend to accumulate it in their hips, buttocks, and thighs, and men tend to accumulate it in their abdomen. The reasons for the differences between sexes have not been identified. Some people accumulate more fat than others, and the reasons for that have not been fully identified either, although there are theories.
2. The fat that accumulates on the hips, thighs, and buttocks, although perhaps not cosmetically appealing, is not dangerous for your health. In fact, there is some evidence that it is actually good for your health. The opposite is true for abdominal fat. That fat has been implicated in heart diseaseheart disease, diabetesdiabetes, and other health problems. Men with a large pot belly are therefore at increased health risk, whereas women with large hips or thighs are not necessarily at risk, at least not from the fat on their lower extremities.
3. Fat, no matter where it is on the body, belongs to the entire body, so you can’t spot reduce, i.e., you can’t do sit-ups and lose abdominal fat, and you can’t do leg raises and lose thigh fat.
4. Fat is stored in special fat cells called adipocytes located all over the body. You have anywhere from 25 billion to 275 billion adipocytes. The average individual has around 30-35 billion. These adipocytes store fat and they release fat. When they release fat, the adipocyte gets smaller, and when they store fat, the adipocyte gets larger, just like a balloon that you fill with air or release air from. Contrary to popular belief, adipocytes do not divide when they get too big. Instead, what happens is that as an adipocyte absorbs excess fat and increases in size to approximately 15-20 microns (the diameter of a human hair is 100 microns), it sends a biochemical signal to adjacent adipocyte precursor cells called preadipocytes to absorb fat and grow larger. These preadipocytes then become fully mature adipocytes, and as a result, the individual gets fatter. During childhood and into puberty, both the number of mature adipocytes (hyperplasia) and the size of the adipocyte increases. It is believed by many scientists that the number of adipocytes stays fairy stable after adolescence and instead of an increase in the number of adipocytes during adulthood, the mature adipocytes enlarge to increase body fat. However, there is some recent evidence to suggest that the number of mature adipocytes can also increase during adulthood. In any case, what is certain is that excess caloric intake leads to increases in body fat, either through hyperplasia or through enlargement of the adipocyte.
It should be noted that preadipocytes develop from special cells in the body, and although genes control proteins that control preadipocyte function and development, the process is extremely complex and not well understood, but scientists are busy studying it.
One other point on this subject. Adipocytes do not disappear when they get smaller. They shrink only to a certain size, and then they just hang around as very tiny adipocytes, and they can always get large again. The only way to get rid of them totally is through liposuction.
5. Adipocytes get large by feeding them. If you eat more calories than you burn, some of the excess carbohydrate will be stored as sugar, or glucose, in the muscles (called glycogen), and the rest of the excess will be stored as fat in the fat cells. If you continue to eat more than you burn, you continue to feed the adipocytes with fat and you get fatter.
6. When you exercise, the adipocytes release fat into the blood stream, where it circulates around to the muscles that need it for fuel (a car burns gasoline, our bodies burn fat and glucose). The more you exercise, the more calories you burn. But when you exercise, you cannot choose which adipocytes release fat. It would be nice to say, “release fat from my hips,” but that’s not how it works. What does happen is that when you exercise, adipocytes get a signal from hormones circulating in the blood stream to release fat (sort of like putting your foot on the gas pedal in your car to get the gasoline flowing to the carburetor), and adipocytes from all over the body get released. During exercise, your muscles may be burning fat released from fat cells in your face, shoulders, arms, abdomen, and other locations. You don’t have control over that, and some adipocytes are more sensitive to those hormones and release more fat than other adipocytes. They also tend to release in a consistent pattern that is probably determined by genes. Everyone who has ever lost and regained weight more than once can tell you that the pattern of their weight lossweight loss is almost always the same. Many people lose from their face first, but it varies. In most cases, it is the hips, thighs, and buttocks for women that goes last, if it goes at all.
7. Aerobic exercise stimulates the adipocytes to release lots of fat. That fat will be burned by the muscles during exercise, and if not, it returns to the adipocytes for storage.
8. Weightlifting also stimulates the adipocytes to release fat. Another advantage to weightlifting is that it builds muscle. Muscle is the engine that burns calories and sets your metabolic rate. It’s a good thing to have lots of muscle, so any weightlifting is beneficial. Not only that, but when you lose weight, you lose some muscle too, which makes it harder to lose more weight (remember that muscle burns the calories), so weightlifting during weight loss helps preserve the muscle, and also enhances your ability to lose and maintain weight.
9. Weightlifting will tone muscles, too. If you do leg exercises like lunges, it will tone the muscle under the fat, and that will improve the contour of the leg, but it will not remove fat. Likewise, abdominal exercises will tone and tighten the abdominal muscles, and your pants may even fit looser even though you don’t lose weight.
10. There is evidence that adipocytes in the hips, thighs, and buttocks tend to resist releasing fat into the blood stream. It seems these adipocytes are stubborn, and they don’t like to give up fat. This is not good news for people, women especially, who want to lose fat in their thighs, hips, and buttocks, but it does provide some explanation as to why it is difficult for women to lose the fat in their lower extremities. On the other hand, there is evidence that adipocytes in the abdomen do release fat into the blood stream easier than lower extremity fat. That’s probably one of the reasons why men can lose their gut faster than women can lose their hips. The adipocytes in the abdomen seem to cooperate more.
11. For women, pregnancypregnancy, childbirth, and menopausemenopause are also factors in how much weight and body fat you accumulate and lose. Of course, age is a factor, too.
12. Cellulite is caused by irregular patterns of connective tissue beneath the skin, and as the adipose (fatty) tissue, which forms in compartments of little honeycombs, pushes into the skin, it causes the dimpling of cellulite. It has been shown that people who have cellulite have different patterns of connective tissue than people who don’t, and men tend to have this pattern much less than women. Cellulite is not directly a function of excess weight, but a genetic difference in the way adipose tissue and connective tissue form. In fact, cellulite affects people whether they are overweight or not. Skin creams sold to reduce cellulite make the skin swell so that the appearance of the cellulite changes, but the effects are transient, don’t look that good, and do nothing to change the structure of the connective tissue. Biochemically, cellulite does not behave any differently than other fat and there is no health risk to cellulite. Weight loss and exercise can have some effect on cellulite, but in many of the cases it does not significantly change the appearance.
13. Diet is important. No matter how much exercise you do, if the calories consumed exceed the calories burned, you will not lose weight or fat.
14. People frequently report that they recently started exercising and dieting. Recently could mean a few days to several months. Patience and realistic expectations are important when it comes to weight loss and fitness. You can expect significant improvements in strength in 8-12 weeks, weight loss of 1-2 pounds per week (but often less for many people), some muscle tone in 8-12 weeks, and improvements in mass in 3-12 months. All of these time frames are estimates, and the results depend on how much body fat and muscle you have to start, your fitness level when you start, age, gender, length of time you have been sedentary and overweight, how often and how hard you workout, diet, and perhaps most important, genetics.
15. The bottom line to losing fat in the hips, thighs, buttocks, love handles, or anywhere else is to stimulate the adipocytes through exercise to release fat into the blood stream. You can’t spot reduce for the reasons I’ve mentioned. Fat you burn will come from all over the body. Lunges will not stimulate the leg muscles to lose more fat first, and abdominal exercises will not stimulate fat loss in the abdomen.
16. Finally, there are things we have control over, and things we don’t. As much as we exercise, as much as we diet, we may never have the “perfect” body that we desire, and it’s not our fault.
Richard Weil, MEd, CDE, is an exercise physiologist and certified diabetes educator. He has published dozens of articles on exercise and health and has appeared on many television programs. He also speaks about health at many national conferences.
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Low Carb Diet Meals Are All The Rage
Nearly everyone is looking to lose weight nowadays. And it’s no surprise since our serving sizes are getting bigger and bigger, our food is getting more fattening and sodium and sugar laden, and we are just becoming a society of gluttonous, unhealthy eaters. We love our food and our food loves us; it loves to make us fat. Some of us have tried to lose weight by eating low carb diet meals. In fact, low carb diet meals are becoming so popular that nearly every restaurant has low carb diet menus, you’ll see foods marketed as low carb in the grocery store and there countless books, magazines and internet pages devoted to this low carb fad. Does it work? Yes and no.
The Word Diet
When you use the word diet, you really set yourself up for failure. Sure, eating low carb diet meals will help you lose weight. Your body uses carbohydrates for energy but if you don’t exercise or you eat too many carbs and they’re not burned off, all those extra carbs are going to be transported into your fat stores. Is this your body’s way of getting back at you? No, it’s actually a very efficient way for your body to work. Your body stores that fat so that, in case you happen to starve later, it will use that fat as energy. So, eating a low carb diet meal will cause your body to burn fat for energy instead of carbohydrates. However, when you use the low carb diet meal as a diet, or a temporary situation, you will only find temporary results.
You’re Goal
For example, let’s say you’ve been eating low carb diet meals, you’ve been using the low carb diet menus in restaurants, you’ve been buying all the foods marketed as low carb and you’ve seen results. You can finally fit into that pair of jeans you used to wear in high school, or you can finally fit back into your wedding dress, or tux; or whatever other goal you’ve set for yourself. Then, you go back to your old eating habits and you gain the weight right back. Some people even gain more weight than they had to begin with. Why did this happen? Because you used your low carb diet meals as a temporary fix and you didn’t make it a lifestyle change, which is how permanent weight loss is achieved.
Lifestyle Change
That’s not to say that you have to eat low carb for the rest of your life, for every meal. You just need to make good food choices, you need to burn more calories than you take in and you should use your low carb diet meals as a way to achieve permanent results by making it a lifestyle change. Losing weight can be done; you just have to make a conscious effort to change what and how you eat.
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Low Carb High Fiber Foods Are Not As Disgusting As They Sound
When you hear the term low carb high fiber foods, you probably picture carrot sticks, rice cakes and anything else that doesn’t sound the least bit appetizing. That’s just not true, however, as you can find many good, and delicious, food choices when it comes to eating low carb high fiber foods. Think of it more in terms of a high protein low carb diet, with more vegetables, meat, and good carbs, which you’ll eat in lower quantities. There are many places to get menu options when it comes to eating low carb high fiber foods, you just have to know where to look.
Online
You can find many menus to help you know what to eat when you want to follow a diet with low carb high fiber foods. One of the best website that i recommend is Fatloss4idiots Online resources like diet and fitness pages, forums, and more can give you high protein low carb diets that are delicious, filling and which will help you lose weight fast. Just make sure you follow the diet ninety percent of the time or more if you want to see results.
Eating Out
You can even find low carb high fiber foods on many menus nowadays when you’re eating out. That’s because restaurants know that their customers are looking to reduce their waist lines so they are trying to help out by providing food that will fit within high protein low carb diets. If the menus don’t have low carb high fiber foods, they will usually let you tailor menu items to fit within that category so that you don’t have to cheat on your diet while eating out.
Get Exercise
To see faster and better results, make sure you get plenty of exercise while you remain on your diet of low carb high fiber foods. Walking for thirty to forty five minutes is a great way to lose weight. It’s low impact, it’s easy and fun, and the time will pass nicely if you bring an Ipod or some other MP3 device with you. It’s a great way to get exercise, it lets you enjoy the outdoors, get some fresh air and you’ll feel better. Of course, there are many other exercise options that you can partake in while remaining on your high protein low carb diet but walking is a great choice that you can do anywhere, anytime and you’re more likely to stick with it if it’s low impact and fun.
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Learn How To Create A Low Carb Diet
If you are interested in losing weight, the best idea is going to be for you to create a nutritious, low carb diet that you can follow. By cutting back on the carbohydrates in your diet, you will be doing your body a great benefit, and combined with proper and regular exercise will be able to lose a great deal of weight.
The First Step
The first step to creating a low carb diet involves you coming up with low carb recipe ideas that you can include in the diet. It is important that you include enough variety that you will not get bored. Because this is one of the most common reasons that dieters stray from their diet, is because they simply do not have enough recipe ideas and then grow bored of eating the same thing time and time again.
Fortunately, if you want to live by a low carb diet, there are some fantastic recipes that you can include. Although there are discrepancies in regards to which foods have carbohydrates that matter and which have carbohydrates that you can cut out, most sources do agree on which foods are lowest in carbohydrates.
Meats, poultry, eggs, fish and shellfish all contain practically no carbohydrates, as do salad vegetables such as lettuce and arugula, cucumber, celery, alfalfa sprouts, bok choy, radishes, mushrooms, cucumber, and peppers which all have minimal to no carbohydrates. Then you get into your breads and cheese, which have rather high contents of carbohydrates and which you will therefore want to avoid if you are on a low carb diet.
Many Benefits
There are many benefits of a low carb diet, namely that fast weight loss is expected due to a chemical reaction in the body when an inadequate level of carbohydrates are available. You will also feel less fatigued, as people who consume a lot of carbohydrates often feel very tired, even when they have just woken up and are well rested.
It is important that you stick to your low carb diet for at least six weeks before you can expect to notice any significant results, so just because you may not lose any weight within the first few days, you should not get frustrated and should keep working and you will notice differences soon to come.
If you need help with creating your diet, you can always speak to a nutritionist who has expertise specifically in this area and can help you come up with a dynamite low carb diet.
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