So today marks the first week of my experiment! Now I feel a little bit more confident to talk about it. For the last seven days I have been eating a low carb diet. Most of you are probably familiar with the name Atkins. It's not Atkins though, but it's the same idea. This is called LCHF - Low carbs High Fat. Basically it means that I do not eat bread, pasta, rice, potatoes and other things that have a lot of carbohydrates. This first week I lost almost 3kgs (just over 6lbs).
I got a book from my father for my birthday which I have been reading. It's called 'The food rEvolution' (Matrevolutionen) by Doctor Eenfeldt, I don't know if it's been translated to English though. In it he explains how carbs work in the body and what we have been eating during the course of evolution.
What happens is (simplified, as I'm not a doctor :P), when you eat carbs they are broken down into sugar by your body: i.e. dextrose, fructose, lactose and so on. When this sugar is absorbed by the body it leaks into the blood stream giving us a rise in bloodsugar. To cope with this increase in bloodsugar the body then produces insulin. Insulin helps lower the bloodsugar again. But. Insulin also regulates the body's fat cells, telling them to grow. It is well known that sugar makes you fat and that is how. What people do not realise is that all carbs are basically a form of sugar. That's why we tend to think that potatoes and bread and food like that is healthy. I admit I didn't realise this before. We have always been taught that fat is what makes you fat and is unhealthy for us.
If we look at what humans have been eating for the first thousands of years of our evolution it doesn't make sense that (natural, animalistic) fat would be dangerous for us. Our ancestors were hunter/gatherers, so their staple diet would have consisted largely of meat and fat. Of course there were veggies, berries and fruit as well - but only in season. Meat and fat can be stored pretty well for long periods of time (through curing, drying a.s.o.) and would be available pretty much all year round. The real increase in our carb intake did not occur until after agriculture started spreading and after the industrial revolution which made sugar cheap and widely available. In the short time since that shift in diet our bodies have not evolved to properly handle the sheer amount of sugar we eat.
In the 80's governments took bad advice from scientists. People were gaining more and more weight and something needed doing to try and dodge an epidemic. Many scientists were certain that fatty food was to blame. They did not however have conclusive proof for this. They did not need it though. Politicians hooked on to the theory and an almost world wide campaign of fear of fat was launched. From the mid80's the weight epidemic got out of hand.
Anyway, I'm rambling!! xD This is just my first week and I can't say anything conclusively yet. But I know that I have lost weight this week by cutting out potatoes and stuff like that, having a bit extra meat, eggs and cooking with double cream (48%). I don't feel stuffed after a meal but I still stay full for longer periods of time. A breakfast of scrambled eggs, a few strips of bacon and some cheese can keep me going till dinner.
I'm definitelly keeping this up :)
Huggles!
Saga xx
No comments:
Post a Comment