faq >> the low carb myth


Clients often say they have heard that to lose more weight you should reduce your carbohydrate intake, and not to consume any carbohydrates after 8pm especially.

This has been something that has been around for a while now. Many people have made a lot of money out of advertising this common diet of low carbohydrates. The only way anyone can lose weight is to burn (exercise) more calories than what they are consuming (diet). If you do this, your body needs to find the additional energy from somewhere and will find it through stored fat.

By reducing your carbohydrate intake you are reducing your calorific intake and this will bring weight loss results but not because carbohydrates are fattening. You can get as much energy from carbohydrates as you can from protein. They both excrete 4kcal per gram. Carbohydrates are broken down into glucose in the body, and are then stored as glycogen. A gram of glycogen stored in muscle tissue holds 2.4grams of water. So reduce your carbohydrate intake and you will reduce the amount of glycogen stored in the body. This then is reducing the amount of water your body can hold making you lighter on the scales - but it's only water!

There are many problems with reducing your carbohydrate intake; one of which is that because of such a chemical build up in the blood the liver is called into play to filter this. This will then lead to a build up of uric acid levels causing the formation of kidney stones. Then your body starts to synthesis protein for energy. This is then preventing the proteins from doing their main job of cell repair and muscle growth. This is then making you more likely to store body fat as you have less muscle on your body and muscle burns up fat.

As I said before, weight loss is about total calorific intake and your body doesn't have a clock inside saying, "8pm, time to store food as fat!" Your body takes into account the total amount of calories consumed in a day and total exercise done in a day. You could eat at 10pm if you wanted. The only problem is that you are giving yourself all of your energy at nighttime and you need that sort of energy in the morning when you are active. So it's best not to eat late, not because you will be storing fat, but because you won't have much energy throughout the day.