Low Carb Diet Side Effects

As human body is a very adaptable machinery, any perceptible low carb diet side effects should disappear in most cases in a matter of days or weeks.

However, the lack of immediate low carb diet side effects doesn't necessarily mean that eliminating or restricting a whole macronutrient cannot backfire after a few months or years.

Therefore, before throwing all pasta and grain supplies at the garbage, you may want to know what kind of drawbacks can be expected, or how can be avoided. 

And, of course, make sure that you don't just blindly adhere to a food faddism because, in most cases, limiting carbohydrates should be only a part of a well thought long term program.

Otherwise you will just diligently endure unavoidable cravings, and pretend that it's all good when it actually sucks, for no reason.

So let's review all the low carb diet side effects or potential problems associated with carbohydrate restriction that you may encounter.

Make no mistake, I'm not trying to shit all over this dietary stance or tell you how dangerous can be.

On the contrary, lowering carbs may be the only way to get over some plateaus just as increasing carbs/calories is the only way to boost leptin and metabolic rate. 

1. There are very few chances that you will stick with such a program for a long time.

We are not necessarily designed to function on low carbohydrates for extended periods, and restricting them on a continuous basis doesn't make any sense.

It has been argued that our prehistoric ancestors were consuming a diet based on meat (which obviously was not the case for all ethnic groups), but in reality this way of eating was adopted more by necessity than as a dietary whim.

However, although modern marketing and social psychology transformed most of us in some sort of grok-consumers, you are not living in paleolithic.

And whether you like it or not, you are surrounded by all kinds of carefully engineered foods which are impossible to ignore all the time.

Therefore, the psychological low carb diet side effects are probably the most noticeable. The longer you are trying to go without carbohydrates, the more your body will crave them, and you will eventually give up.

2. When you will inevitably break your spartan diet, weight will be regained very fast.

Long periods of time without carbs causes a down regulation of the liver enzyme responsible for carbohydrate burning.

In other words, your body will use mostly fat as fuel, and when you switch to carbs, it needs approximately 5 hours to readjust.

On the other hand, every diet plan that is unnaturally based on deprivation will most likely cause episodes of binge eating.

This can be problematic when the aforementioned enzyme doesn't respond properly because most of the incoming carbohydrates will be stored as fat.

3. It is never healthy to restrict a whole food group.

To quote our friend, Alan Aragon, “food avoidance in any way, shape, or form excludes any potential health benefits belonging to any given food specie's unique chemistry”.

Fruits, vegetables and even grains are packed with nutrients, and restricting them may create an imbalance that cannot be avoided by simply taking supplements.

These potential low carb diet side effects are not visible right away, but you have to be aware of them. 

Furthermore, an increased consumption of animal protein may cause an excessive intake of saturated fat, which may become be a problem, especially if heart disease is prevalent in your family tree.

Also, contrary to popular belief, replacing dietary carbohydrate with saturated fat may even worsen an existent insulin resistance.

4. Your workout performance will be compromised.

As exercise intensity increases, more and more fast twitch fibers are called into play, and their ability to derive energy from fat is rather limited.

Carbohydrates are the best fuel for intense muscular contractions, so when you restrict them, workout intensity (along with your results) suffers.

Therefore, when muscle glycogen is below a certain level, anaerobic exercise performance is negatively affected, and consequently your body doesn't receive a potent stimulus for an adaptation.

The solution lies, of course, in a cyclical form of diet with an increased carbohydrate consumption around workouts.

5. Restricting carbohydrates for prolonged periods will lower metabolic rate.

Metabolic rate is greatly determined by leptin variance, which in turn is related to body fat stores, and also how much you eat. (In other words, this hormone keeps your hypothalamus informed about the available energy.)

It's important to mention that leptin levels increase whenever glucose is supplied to the fat cells, so increasing only calories while keeping carbohydrate intake to a minimum doesn't help that much.

Therefore, especially when you get to lower body fat percentages, the low carb diet side effects become obvious. So if you want continuous progress, you need a few days of moderate decadence with pasta and chocolate cake.

Or you may want to continue playing around, pretending that you are a paleolithic hunter, and you just found a bush full of tasty blackberries (as Mark Sisson likes to say).

However, bear in mind that eating fructose doesn't do the trick, so without realizing you are just making fool of yourself. Did I tell you already that the vast majority of these fitness gurus are full of shit? 

6. A lot of the initial weight loss comes actually from water loss.

When you increase carbohydrate intake, your body starts retaining more water – each gram of glycogen holds about three grams of water.

However, unless you are a competitive athlete, you shouldn't give a shit about how much you weight, anyway. What you should care about is the quality of this weight, which is your body composition. Duh!

7. Very low carbohydrate levels may affect your mental state.

While is true that the brain can get indirectly its energy from fat (which is first converted into ketones in the liver), little is known about the long term low carb eating side effects. 

Also, it should be mentioned that some people can never adapt to ketosis, and feel terrible - lack of concentration, moodiness, etc. 

As you can see, following dogmatically a rigid diet is always a mistake, and no macronutrient should be excluded or drastically limited on a continuous basis.

As the old adage goes, there are no bad or good foods, only bad or good circumstances.

And any low carb diet side effects can be avoided if you have a solid nutrition plan based on proven facts, and not on some fictional science.

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