Why your low-carb approach won’t work

On paper, going low carb for weight loss and lowering glucose levels makes complete and utter sense.

You’ll likely drop a couple kilos in a matter of days, which can absolutely help with motivation.

Losing the initial water weight usually also means saying hello to feeling a bit lighter on your feet, seeing a little bit of muscle definition and perhaps feeling a little less sluggish too.

Furthermore, it’s an incredibly easy approach to implement and think about it, if you haven’t got carbs in your system, it’s likely that your glucose levels will start dropping too. 

However, my assumption is that you’re not in this for the short-haul.

You’re after something that will actually make a difference in the long run.

So to understand why the low carb approach might not be best for the long-term, you must understand something called glucose tolerance (don’t worry, I’ll try to simplify this as much as possible).

Healthy muscles are responsible for bringing in about 80% of the glucose from the carbs that you eat that initially end up in the blood, and as a result, are responsible for lowering your blood glucose levels.

If this transportation mechanism is faulty, glucose can’t reach the muscles and end up building up in the blood. Which is dangerous.

This is called insulin resistance or poor glucose tolerance.

So, if you are already at the stage where your glucose levels are high, logic tells us that one way to go about fixing this is to restrict carbohydrates. 

The less carbs there are in your diet, the less there will be in your blood. 

Only this isn’t exactly getting to the root of this underlying insulin resistance and faulty transportation mechanism.

It’s merely a short term solution for a longer term issue.

At the heart of insulin resistance and having poor glucose tolerance is a build up of fatty deposits (visceral fat) inside muscle cells. 

This happens when we are chronically in an energy excess (calorie surplus) and we gain weight (primarily fat).

So going low carb doesn’t really address the root cause - it doesn’t make you any more insulin sensitive.

In addition, there are 3 key problems with this approach that isn’t exactly beneficial to you or your metabolic health.

1. If you take away carbs from your diet, it’s likely that you’ll end up replacing it with fats. 

Fats (specifically saturated fats), are known to directly worsen insulin resistance. You’re robbing Peter to pay Paul here.

2. If you remove carbs from the diet, you’ll likely end up with a low fibre diet.

Fibre is a key nutrient when it comes to supporting metabolic health and successful weight management.

3. Above all, a low carb diet is not one that is even remotely sustainable.

Sure it might be easy to implement, but it’s unbelievably awful to execute on a daily basis. I struggle to remember one person I’ve ever met who has excelled on a low carb diet for weight management.

Nothing worth having ever comes easy and this truth applies here too.

The quick wins from the low carb approach is simply not going to uphold forever and in fact, will probably leave you more frustrated than anything else.

If you’re looking for a better way to sustainably lower your glucose levels then reach out and we can set up a chat.