Defining low carb and tolerance for diet diversity

January 9, 9:37 AMNutrition ExaminerCarol Bardelli

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Most Americans struggle with obesity and proper diet.

“Studies show that by 2015, the majority of Americans will be overweight. According to an analysis of 20 different research studies and national surveys, scientists from Johns Hopkins University reported that 41 percent of American adults will be obese and an additional 34 percent will be significantly overweight. While this information by itself is startling, the most frightening problem is that current evidence indicates that programs attempting to reverse this problem fail.” – Quote From Health Newsletter

I would reframe the above statement and say “programs attempting to reverse this problem only work if people following them can make them a permanent lifestyle.”

Most all diets work and will take weight off, but most are also almost impossible to stick to permanently – to adopt as a lifestyle. Once someone returns to their previous lifestyle of poor eating and exercise habits the weight comes back. The diet did not fail. The dieter couldn’t make it a permanent lifestyle.

This brings up the subject that some people seem to have an easier time sticking to a low carbohydrate program as opposed to a low fat one. This could be due to the satiety of a high protein diet, or ketosis, or the ease of finding low carb options in restaurants, making a social life easier.
(Although I’ve heard a few people complain they can’t get low carb foods when they eat out. Any steak house, grill, or neighborhood chain restaurant like Appleby’s or Chili’s has many low carb options and allow you to substitute items like rice or potatoes for grilled vegetables.)

If you ask ten people how they define a low carbohydrate diet you’ll likely get ten different versions. This is partly because
most people have their diet darlings and tend to believe their choice is superior, right, or “the one” for reasons as diverse as their experience with the diet, their ego, esteem issues, inflexibility, lack of overall nutrition knowledge, or a tendency to dislike change and be set in their ways.

There’s the Atkins diet circa 1970’s, Atkins For Life, South Beach, Protein Power, the Schwarzbein Principle, the Eskimo-style Meat Only Diet, Life Without Bread, Eat Fat Get Thin, Neanderthin, The Stone Age Diet, The Carbohydrate Addicts Diet, The Zone, and many more. If you’re interested in a detailed review of most low carb diets go here.

And there’s a lot of disagreement between the various low carb factions. If you want a few examples check out a few extremes like the meat and eggs only Zero Carb Daily who criticizes Jimmy Moore’s more balanced approach at Livin La Vida Low Carb. Then there’s the Kimkins controversy, Kimkins being a very low calorie diet masquerading as only a tweaked version of Atkins, versus most the rest of the low carb world which advocates losing body fat in a healthy manner and not by starvation.

Why did I decide to even touch on this topic? I had a commenter at my blog Kudos For Balanced Fitness & Lifestyle get me to thinking. Although rather rude and uninformed, this person basically said I wasn’t really a low carbohydrate dieter but in reality a member of the low fat camp. Probably because I wasn’t gobbling a pound of bacon slathered in butter while pronouncing produce as the Devil’s food – a pretty typical misconception held by many about low carb eating, including some misinformed “low carbers” who’ve never bothered to crack open a copy of Atkins, South Beach, The Zone, or any other low carbohydrate book.

It wasn’t this person’s view that I was a low fat advocate in low carb clothing that bothered me. I don’t practice a very high fat diet (some low carb diets recommend ratios as high as 70 percent fat) though I view a high fat diet as a dietary approach that has its place, particularly for certain medical conditions and for some obese people needing to lose weight. It was the intolerance for diversity in dieting styles that bothered me. I had to question, "why do some people turn the act of dieting and their choice of diet into a fanatical cause?"

High-fat, Low-carbohydrate Diet Significantly Slows Tumor Growth And Enhances Health In Mice

High fat ketogenic diet effective in treating intractable seizures in children

Diabetics Improve Health With Very High-Fat, Low Carb Diet

Healthy hyperlipidemic persons who followed a low-carbohydrate diet lost more body weight and body fat than those who followed a low-fat diet

I personally eat a diet that’s adequate in healthy fats including omegas, flax, olive oil, and saturated fats from meat and
cheese. I also personally don’t like chicken skin, it grosses me out, and I buy skinless. I rarely eat bacon or most other very high fat meats and limit my high fat cheeses to a few ounces a day because the protein to fat ratios in these foods aren’t a good bet for bodybuilding, although they’re fine for low carb dieters who exercise more moderately or forego resistance training. But these are personal choices. I don’t try to foist my lifestyle on anyone although I freely share it here and at my blog.

So why do some dieters turn their newly adopted lifestyle into an intolerance for other people's chosen lifestyle?

Part two coming soon.