Jennifer Aniston has helped to popularize Dr. Atkins’ low-carb diet among the weight conscious. Medical professionals have also started to take notice of this diet, but based on its health benefits for diabetics.
The so-called Atkins’ diet is gaining in medical favor over the more traditional low-calorie low-fat diet that used to be the standard for diabetics. This diet, formerly the most commonly used, is now known to be detrimental to diabetic patients’ health.
For diabetics, both sugar and starch are problematic. These cannot be properly absorbed and processed by the body, and the blood sugar can rise to dangerous levels. As a result, too many carbohydrates — which break down into sugars during digestion – are really dangerous.
Anyone on a low-carb diet will generally keep their carbohydrates to 5 to 10% of the total caloric intake per day. The energy and full feeling normally provided via carbs is provided instead via protein and fats.
When someone feels that they are super hungry, and the body gives off desperate hunger signals, they are more likely to binge on sugary food. If you feel full, as can be achieved via fiber or protein, you generally don’t binge.
What is unique about low carb diets is that you can eat anything you want if it doesn’t have many carbs in it. You still don’t want to stuff yourself but it is a very open diet that surprises many people.
There are foods that are allowed and others that aren’t. Allowed foods include: meat, fish, poultry, cheese, eggs. Many vegetables, though not all, are also permitted. You can eat beans, carrots, avocados. You need to take it a fair amount of fat, and to eat a good deal of protein. Anyone who is obese and wants to follow a low carb diet needs to talk with their doctor first.
For diabetics, a low carb diet can be just the thing to make it easier to stay healthy. And for everyone else, low carb diets will likely continue to be a popular method for weight control.
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