If you have eyeballs and a social media account, you’ve probably at one point or another developed a completely irrational and flawed fear of carbohydrates. And if you’re one of my active nutrition clients, your eyes probably bulged out of your head when you saw the carb target I assigned.
Listen…it’s human nature to identify a scapegoat, but for fuck’s sake…enough is enough. Accepting that carbs are NOT the enemy continues to be difficult for those who have been seduced by trends such as keto, carnivore, paleo, gluten-free, etc., but here’s the cold, hard, scientific truth:
Carbs don’t lead to weight gain, bitch. Eating in a caloric surplus does.
“But my friend Patricia lost 15 pounds in a month after she went keto!”
It’s ALWAYS stories just like this that that serve as the catalyst for you to try it too. But before you do…give me a few minutes to convince you otherwise.
First off, the likelihood of Patricia gaining those 15lbs and then some is unfortunately high. Low carb/high fat diets may play a positive role in treating medical/neurological conditions (such as epilepsy), but rarely are they appropriate or sustainable for the everyday individual looking to lose weight, KEEP IT OFF, and improve health.
Remember…fat loss comes down to the fixed science of thermodynamics (calories in/calories out). Full stop. It’s not that keto itself caused good ol’ Patty’s weight loss…it’s that she cut out an entire food group and created a calorie deficit by doing so.
Second of all, Patricia did NOT lose 15 lbs. of fat in a month. For one, carboHYDRATES are a hydrophilic macronutrient (they love water). Meaning they bind to water upon consumption, which leads to cellular water retention. By removing carbs from her diet, Miss Patty more than likely just lost a fuck ton of water weight. So when low carb dieters boast about how much weight they lost by day 5, don’t be so quick to jump on the bandwagon, as a substantial amount of that weight loss was water.
Next, a diet comprised of mostly fat and little to no carbs stands a strong chance of contributing to muscle loss. So…odds are, Patricia’s 15 lb. loss wraps up some muscle mass. No bueno.
Muscle mass directly impacts our metabolism and burns significantly more energy than fat. The more muscle you carry, the higher your basal metabolic rate (the largest independent contributor to total daily calorie expenditure), and thus the more calories you burn by literally just existing. So…now that Patricia has less muscle mass to work with, she’s also inadvertently lowered her basal metabolic rate in the process, meaning she burns LESS calories than she did before. It’s now increasingly easy for her to eat past her metabolic baseline in a caloric surplus, making rapid weight regain frustratingly effortless.
Low carb dieting as THE weight loss strategy is flimsy as fuck. They’re generally employed as a quick fix and rarely create sustainable habits. Can it create a deficit that causes weight loss? YES. Is gassing carbs from your diet a permanent solution? Do you plan to adhere to that for the rest of your life? If the answer to that is no, then what in the fuck is the point? What do you even learn from that? Why not identify an approach that you can implement for a lifetime so you can finally free yourself from extremes, food guilt, and gaining and losing the same 15 lbs?
Not to mention, living life in fear of a fucking sandwich is no way to live.
