Diet And Shedding Fat is All About Quality of Carbs

Millions of people struggle living up to the diet charts in order to shed extra fat. This calls for consuming the right combination of food. After all a Calorie is a Calorie. The golden rule that most of the fitness freaks follow "Burn more calories than you eat". But a new study suggests that, "Diets that limit processed carbohydrates may enable longer-lasting weight loss compared with other diets with the same number of calories."

The study published on 27 June in the Journal of American Medical Association, relevant data for the scientists who argue that what people eat may be just as important as how much they eat.

In order to conduct the study, the researchers considered 21 overweight adults as their subjects and they were given three meals a day for seven months. Initially the subjects at the same diet and lost on average 14 percent of their body weight. Then in order to keep this weight stable, the researchers came up with three different diets. One diet consisted of low-fat foods, another was based on the Atkins approach of cutting out carbs, and the third diet focused on foods that rated low on the glycemic index (for example, complex- carbohydrate foods such as brown bread and oatmeal, instead of white bread or white rice). The kind of diet consumed changed more than the numbers on the scale.

Next the researchers conducted a test for heart disease and diabetes risk considering the subjects metabolic rate.

People burned most of the calories with a low carb diet but simultaneously experienced increased stress hormones and inflammation. Researchers point these two as the key factor to heart related diseases.

On the other hand, subjects on low fat diet faced severe consequences on issues like insulin resistance, lipid level and HDL cholesterol.

Dr. David Ludwig, director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center at Boston Children's Hospital said, "It says that from a metabolic perspective all calories are not alike. The quality of the calories going in affects the number of calories going out. We know that many people can lose weight for a few weeks or months, but most people have difficulty maintaining that for a long time. The low glycemic index diet gives you the same calorie burning advantages of the low-carb diet without any of the extremes.

Ludwig concludes saying that the new findings provide clues that can inform consumers' choices about their diets. People don't have to go to the extreme of eliminating all carbohydrates instead focus on quality of carbohydrates.  You can get similar advantages to low-carbohydrate diets but without the potential downsides.