QuestionI've lost 80 pounds this year on a "very low calorie diet" - eating mostly tiny portions of mostly fruit, salad, and pasta. But this is a diet with a very high carb-to-protein ratio.
I've found my high-carb diet to be very easy and effective (no cravings, no large scale loss of muscle).What is the benefit of the Atkins/low-carb diet supposed to be?
AnswerHi Chris,
Good question! The simplest answer is, you are lucky. For most people, high-fat diets, with high ratios of fats to carb + proteins (combined) are much easier to start because of the appetite-suppressing effects of ketones. In our Banta diet plans, we start with higher ratios and gradually, as cravings and hunger decrease, introduce more carbohydrates AND protein. Tell me if you want to learn more about it.
The problem with very low calorie diets is, they are very hard to start without hunger and the sense of hunger is the first enemy of weight loss because it triggers all kind of adaptations to move the body into energy-conserving mode.
It's you choice of foods that must've helped you because fruits and especially salads are low in energy density while being high in nutrient-density. The matter is, our bodies were designed to live in the wild world where there was no such thing as energy-dense foods so Mother Nature inbuilt in us the simplest way to judge the energy we consume: by volume. Same volume of food results in approximately same sense of fullness but high energy density foods brings in more calories.
Fruits (except bananas) have rather high satiety index. White wheat bread is assigned 100. Grapes have satiety index 162, Apples 197, Oranges 202.
What surprises me is pasta in your diet (see the satiety indexes below) In one very successful very low calorie diet system, potatoes are allowed but pasta is not. Here's possibly why:
White pasta 119
Brown Rice 132
White rice 138
Whole Grain bread 157
Brown pasta 154
Potatoes 323 - it's the absolute champion.
If you are interested, please fell free to download my eBook about this system using this UR:
bestofweightloss.com/order/VLCD.pdf
Tanya Zilberter
Contact me at dietandbody.com/mfeedback.html
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