Low carbs maybe but I don't feel a person should do no carbs, Oh sure you lose weight and that alone is a good thing for your health, but our bodies are designed to live with certain things to fight off deceases, cancer etc. And a lot of the nutrition’s we get to do that is from healthy carbs.. Not junk carbs. You can lose weight eating carbs it just takes studying what you can have and how much. Fruits veggies, grains. The good stuff

Actually, how would you cut out the carbs - that is the real question. If you go by a clean eating diet where nothing is processed and you really watch your sugar intake, you can lose a lot of weight while maintaining good health. Weight isn't lost quickly, it is a process. Any weight you lose by doing no carbs will immediately come back as soon as carbs pass your lips.

No carbs is CRAP! I'm a diabetic, and I feel like any diet that would kill me is no good. And I agree with Ingi...how would you go about getting away with no carbs?

You need a healthy mix of carbs, along with other things (proteins, for example).

Good replies

Low carb can be beneficial, especially if your carb consumption is currently greater than the recommended 285g (roughly). By low carb I don't mean Atkins 20g, I mean a more healthy 150g. Let's take the average regular "healthy" diet with a little treat:

Breakfast - bowl of cereal with a banana and glass of juice
Morning snack - a piece of fruit
Lunch - pasta salad
Afternoon snack - donuts that the boss brought in (it would be impolite to say no after all!)
Dinner - mashed potato, veggies and meat, with nice uncut bread on the side
After dinner snack - fruits

A healthy diet with a little cheat. The total carbs in that, depending on portion size, can and often is far greater than the recommended 285g. My house mate lives on breads and pastas, his carb consumption is often quite high, luckily for him he's not over weight at all and is perfectly healthy!

Now imagine how much carbohydrate is in the average junk food diet, pizza, chips, lots of bread products, take aways, not to mention pretty hefty portion sizes. A person eating like this is consuming their body weight in carbs every day! (slight exaggeration, but you get me ). And so they start to suffer the negative effects of too much carbohydrate, and too large portion sizes - including stubborn weight gain, fatigue, brain fog, aches and pains, headaches, emotional imbalances and so on.

If everyone was to cut down to even the recommended carb intake instead of crashing on extreme low carb diets, they'd see a big difference in their health and weight loss, especially in the long run.


Now for zero carbs. I actually don't believe this is possible. People who claim to be on a zero carb diet are actually on around 20g a day. It's not possible to survive on a zero carb diet. No fruit, no veggies, no flour or bread products, no rice, no dairy products, just meat!

EDIT I do actually know someone who is eating just meat and so zero carbs. But this is a body builder on an experiment for specific results, it's not meant aa long term healthy at all (just like the 20g on Atkins isn't meant to be permanent).

This is something for low carbers to bare in mind too. Extreme low carb diets are not recommended for more than two weeks due to long term effects. When you go back to your old eating habits (or are out of ketosis at least), you'll gain all the weight back and now your body is even more efficient at metabolising glucose just incase you pull that stunt again!

I think so long as you're maintaining a healthy intake on the low end its fine, but to starve your body of carbs is definitely not healthy at all

I don't like to eat much carbs unless they are kamut, rice, or spelt flour products.

Actually they had a diet called the jack rabbit diet lol.

Anywho...

A bunch of males, were living somewhere where only jack rabbits were available and had not consumed protein over a few months, these men died.

Protein diets are only good for a few weeks and you have to introduce carbs, your brain requires carbs just to function.

Indeed. It's becoming a common misconception that your body can function using fat for fuel, which isn't the case. Your brain cells, nerve cells, and developing red blood cells can only use glucose for fuel. It's an essential part of your diet. Your organs also need glucose to function properly as they can't function on fat and synethesised glucose alone.

An all-protein diet would also be quite rough on the digestive system, I imagine. Think of being constipated with tons of meat in your colon! Stinky and heavy!

Yes you need fiber too, which comes from carbs such as broccoli, wholegrain foods and grains and so on...

I'm pretty sure you need carbs to actually live, so cutting them out entirely and doing it long-term could mean you are that much closer to taking the dirt nap than someone who is actually eating carbs.

I try a lot of diets and I found the no-carb diet to be very very unrealistic, and it would drive me nuts. I love bran cereal, vegetables, wheat bread, potatoes and a bunch of other foods that are loaded with carbs.