LOW FAT DIETS..............

LOW-FAT DIETS ARE BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH

Not to put too fine a point on it, but extreme low-fat dieting can increase your risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Heart disease is the second leading cause of death among women, and an ultra-low-fat diet can make your risk factors worse. For instance, when you follow a low-fat diet, you naturally increase your carbohydrate consumption, which in turn increases your levels of blood triglycerides – unhealthy fats that raise your risk for heart disease. It’s true that reducing your fat intake may result in less LDL cholesterol – the so-called bad kind – but here’s the kicker: Going too low on your fat intake can actually increase your number of “small” LDL cholesterol molecules, the ones that actually create plague in your arteries.

Low-fat diets are high in carbs also create swings in blood glucose and insulin that no woman really wants to deal with. We will explain exactly how insulin and glucose prompt a hunger response. Low-fat diets are responsible for creating these swings because when you cut down fat and increase carbs, you increase the amount of glucose that enters your bloodstream, as well as the amount of insulin that your pancreas delivers to control glucose and bring it back into the normal range. If this glucose/insulin tug-of-war becomes a constant battle, your body can end up in a hypoglycemic (low blood glucose) state, and you’ll find yourself on the road to constant hunger and, potentially, type 2 diabetes.

LOW-FAT DIETS CAN MESS WITH YOUR MOOD

In your body, insulin efficiently sweeps away excess glucose that is released into your bloodstream after you eat. When glucose is swept away too quickly, as happens when insulin has to work overtime in response to a low-fat, carbohydrate-rich meal, your blood sugar levels plummet and you become hungry and irritable.

UK researchers have shown that a low-fat diet (containing less than 55 grams of fat per day) increase feelings of anger, hostility, tension, and anxiety in normal, healthy young men and women, whereas a diet higher in fat (about 90 grams of fat) reduces these feelings.

LOW-FAT DIETS CAN ACTUALLY MAKE YOU FATTER

Another low-fat strike against your body composition is that high insulin levels often make people eat more than they should. Studies of people with diabetes have shown that decreasing insulin secretion with drugs tends to spontaneously lower food intake. So, both the rise in insulin after a low-fat, high-carb meal followed by the drop in blood glucose will work together to foil your weight-loss plans because you’ll want to eat more whether you really need to or not.

There’s also this problem: when you eat large quantities of carbohydrates, your liver and muscles don’t have the space to store the excess. This means the carbs are almost automatically converted to fat. As a result, low-fat, high-carb diets will just increase your body fat level unless you’re using these carbs effectively throughout the day, as endurance athletes do.

Okay, so that’s one diet fad down. What about the other, more recent diet phenomenon, low-carb eating plans? A typical very low-carbohydrate diet contains less than about 50 grams of carbohydrate per day, or about 10 percent of total calorie intake. It also contains a high amount of dietary fat, at about 140 grams of fat per day, and about 100 grams of protein per day. Such plans were originally designed to help people who were very overweight, had problems with blood glucose control, and had difficulties controlling hunger cravings (especially their carbohydrate joneses). And in fact, for the past several years, study after study has demonstrated that these characteristics are effectively managed with such plans, and the risk of disease is reduced.

However (and this is very important “however”), when the media and food manufacturers glommed onto this diet, they touted it as one that every person could follow, no matter what his or her blood glucose control or body fat percentage. Many women who weren’t obese were following this diet because they wanted to lose a couple of pounds fast. And it worked for some of them – but not for those who found the high percentage of fat and protein to be unpalatable (not eggs again!) or who found it difficult to severely limit their intake of healthy carbs such as fruit (an apple has 22 grams of carbs – nearly half your daily allowance on a very low-carb diet), low-fat yogurt (23 grams), and whole wheat bread (30 grams in the two slices you need for your sandwich).

Thankfully, those of us who are not extremely overweight or who don’t have problems controlling carbohydrate cravings do not really need to restrict our carbs to very low levels. We can lose weight as long as our diets are lower in carbs than 60 to 65 percent of total calories (270 to 300 grams of carbohydrate daily) recommended by the government.

The takeaway here is simple: Diets like the body perfect eat clean plan that contain a balanced ratio of calories from carbohydrates, protein, and in fat help you retain more muscle mass and leave you less hungry. Donald Layman, PhD, and colleagues at the University of Illinois have published most of the convincing evidence. In several well-conducted studies, they clearly show that diets with carbohydrates intake under 150 grams per day and protein intake greater than 1.4 grams per kilogram of body weight result in increased weight loss, increased loss of body fat, less loss of lean muscles mass, improved blood glucose control, improved blood cholesterol profiles, and enhanced fullness.

Another recent study, published in 2007 by researchers at Purdue University in Indiana, compared weight loss, fat loss, muscles retention, mood, and hunger ratings among overweight and obese women on diets that were either 25 percent fat, 45 percent carbs, and 30 percent protein or 25 percent fat, 57 percent carbs, and 18 percent protein. After 12 weeks, the women in both groups lost about 18 pounds of body weight each, including 14.5 pounds of fat. However, the women in the first group, whose diet was more evenly balanced among the three macronutrients, loss less muscle – only 3 pounds, compared with 6 pounds in the other group. This shows that when calories are reduced, a more balanced intake of nutrients helps to preserve lean body mass, which is important for health and longevity. Lean mass (that is, muscle) is related to strength, and increased strength will protect you from injury. What’s more, the women in the more balanced group felt fuller after eating than did the other women. Feelings of pleasure and satisfaction throughout the day were also higher for the more balanced group, and these same good feelings were decreased in the other group.

That’s why the body perfect eat clean diet includes balanced amounts of both carbohydrates and healthy fats in its diet prescription. The plan provides less than 50 percent of daily calories from carbohydrates (fewer than 200 grams of carbs per day), so you get the benefits of carbohydrate restriction without feeling deprived of healthy carbohydrate foods. Likewise, your intake of healthy fat will fall between 25 and 40 percent of calories (55 to 70 grams daily), as opposed to the 10 to 15 percent common in low-fat diets.