Low Calorie and Low Carb Diets

In the United States we tend to normalize eating habits that may not be in our best interest in the long term. Every get together, celebration, and holiday many of us tend to drastically overdo it. It’s part of our culture and the unfortunate truth is that it is killing us. Not all of us obviously, but the number one killer in the United States is heart disease (FastStats - Deaths and Mortality (cdc.gov)) and not too far behind is diabetes and Roughly 33% of the people in this country are classified as obese. (US obesity rate (usafacts.org)) The reason I bring this up is not to come down on people. As a matter of fact, its’ not like the American people are not already aware of this problem. As a country We spend approximately $33 billion per year on weight loss products and despite all that money, time, and effort a huge percentage of people fail at losing weight and maintaining it. There are hundreds of diets out there and some are more successful than others. In this essay I’m going to compare and contrast two methods that, combined make up a large percentage of the diet plans out there. The two I’m talking about are calorie deficient and carb deficient diets.

A calorie deficient diet is a way that many people have turned to in order to lose weight. The average full grown adult male requires between 2000-3000 calories and the average adult female requires 1600-2500 calories in order to operate their body on a daily basis (How Many Calories Should You Eat? Weight Loss Calculator (healthline.com)). If you don’t give your body the calories it requires it will have to find a different place to get fuel from. Your body will always choose the easiest source of calories first. If you are not supplying them dietarily, then your body will begin to access your fat it stored up, for just this occasion as a result of excess caloric intake of the past. Many successful diet plans such as Weight Watchers, Slim Fast, and Nutrisystem sell preprepared meals and supplements for success in the low-calorie diet and If you stick to any of these diet plans the way that they are constructed they will almost always work over time. I personally know several people who have lost between 30-50lbs over the course of a year or two doing diets like this.

One of the most caloric rich and easiest accessed nutrients a person consumes is a carbohydrate which contains 4 calories per gram. Although the carbohydrate is easiest to access it is by no means the only calorie fuel source your body can use and just because it’s the easiest for your body to use it doesn’t mean it’s the preferred one for our body to use. As a matter of fact, when dieting the goal is to get the body accustomed to trying to use the most difficult fuel source which is your own stored fat. As we’ve previously discussed, one very effective way to lose weight is to cut out your calorie intake to less than what your body uses in a day, but another method is to cut the easiest fuel source, the carbohydrates mostly out of the equation all together. Because your body now must work harder for its necessary calories, it burns more calories in the process of break down and digestion. Once your body gets accustomed to using other fuel sources it actually gets very efficient at it. It generally takes 2-3 weeks for your body to learn how to do it well, but if you carefully regulate your carb intake to less than 75 carbs (35 carbs if you’re shooting for keto) in a day you can effectively lose weight generally at a much faster pace. It is far more difficult to balance and maintain because if you consume too much fat your body will rely less on your own fuel stores and more on the fuel you consume. Also, another pesky detail that tends to cause a stall on the low carb diet weight loss is the fact that protein is extraordinarily difficult for your body to break down as a fuel source but is generally abundant in lower carb foods. If you are not careful to stay under the amount that your body can effectively break down over the course of a day, you run the risk of your body storing the excess as fat and causing a stall in your weight loss as well. With a low carb diet, it becomes particularly important to keep a balance of all of those numbers simultaneously In order to keep your body burning stored fat as efficiently as possible. Those numbers are generally called macros and for standard low carb you want to keep those numbers somewhere in the vicinity of 50% fat, 30%protien and 20% carbs for the makeup of your daily diet. There is also another variation of the low carb diet that kicks another variable into the equation called ketones that don’t generally come into play unless you do an extreme version of a low carb diet. Keeping your macros closer to 75% fat, 20% protein and 5% carbs. Ketones are a biproduct of predominantly using fat as an energy source but is also converted to an alternative energy source of its own causing bursts of more energy and mental clarity as a result. Just like with low calorie diets I know many people who have lost a great deal of weight on the low carb and keto diet. I personally lost 90lbs over a 10-month period. It comes off easily under those dietary restrictions but is also particularly difficult to maintain.

As I mentioned earlier there are many diets that utilize a form of calorie or carb deficit in their weight loss plans. Some are more effective than others in the short term but can also be more difficult to maintain. In reality any diet plan that becomes a lifestyle change from the traditional American diet will most likely be the most effective for you over time.