Low Carb Crib - Low Carb Diets

Low Carb Diets

Katie's Take on Low Carb Diets

Sarah hadn't seen her friend Katie for about six months. The last time they saw each other, Katie had a weight problem. In fact, she was about 75 pounds overweight. So when Sarah moved back to her hometown, you can imagine her surprise when she saw Katie. Katie had lost 50 pounds and looked great! Of course, Sarah wanted to know how Katie did it, and Katie said she had lost the weight on one of those popular low carb diets, but she didn't go into great detail because she didn't know that Sarah wanted to lose aboout 20 pounds herself.

A week or so later, Sarah decided to give a low carb diet the old college try. She got advice from a trainer at her gym who told her to focus mainly on protein (preferably through lean meats instead of fatty ones, but the occassional steak was okay) and stay far away from anything even slightly resembling a carb. Sarah wasn't sure what carbs were, exactly, so the trainer explained that carbs were anything made from white flour or refined sugar. He told her to avoid bread and bread products, all things dessert except sugar free jello, all pasta, all rice, all tortillas, all crackers, cookies, cakes, pies, most dairy (except cheese) and most vegetables (except lettuce) for two weeks. Then he told her to report back to him and see how she was doing. At that time she could reintroduce some carbs back into her diet.

So that's exactly what Sarah did. Or rather, what intended to do. She had eggs shakes for low carb diets for breakfast, protein bars as snacks for low carb diets and for something sweet, sugar free Jello or Crystal Light. And of course, she ate lots and lots of meat. This is what she thought was the only food for low carb diets. Soon she noticed that she felt obsessed, and she missed her carbs more than ever. She was snapping at people right and left, too. One day when she was desperate for something different to eat, she called Katie and asked what kinds of foods she was eating on her low carb diet and if she had any recipes for low carb diets. Katie asked why, and when she found out Sarah was on a low carb diet, she quickly told her to stop.

"Sarah, don't you know how bad low carb diets can be for you when you take it to the extreme that you are? Your body needs more carbs than you're giving it. Besides, you don't need to lose weight! You're fine! Stop doing this to yourself!"

"But it's worked so well for you, I just thought I could take off 20 pounds quickly this way."

"But when you go back to eating carbs again, you'll probably gain all the weight back and then some. If you go on one, you have to get the book and follow it that way. Don't follow the advice of some trainer. It doesn't sound like he knows what the heck he's talking about! My diet lets me have more carbs at the beginning than what you're doing. And when carbs were reintroduced into my diet, they were the healthy ones, not the bad ones. If you really want to do this, promise me you'll get the Atkins book or better yet, the South Beach Diet book or The Zone book. And go eat a bagel. Right now. Go. (Just make sure it's whole wheat.)"

After talking to Katie, Sarah ate a bagel, then she got online and researched low carb diets and chose the one she thought was best for her.