Why Can't I Lose Weight With My Low-Carb Diet?
Wondering “why can't I lose weight?” it's a sign of frustration, especially if you followed religiously all the recommendations given by some low-carb dieting mentor who you really trust.
Ironically, most folks don't even question such an authority, and prefer instead to blame themselves for being a hapless exception. After all, obesity became a real issue only when carbohydrate consumption increased dramatically, so who are you to challenge this truism?
As most people don't have any interest in studying nutrition, this paternalistic model can be beneficial, but up to a point. If you lack proper critical thinking skills, it may screw you up in the long term.
Probably, that's why you are wondering right now "why can't I lose weight?", so open your eyes!
The problem is that most diet plans don't provide the necessary factual information for making rational decisions under specific circumstances.
Take, for instance, the low-carb drama (you need to control insulin, lower inflammation, eat like in paleolithic, etc.), which might be partially true in some cases, but also diverts most folks from the essential part of their program: calorie intake.
As a result, the usual one-size-fits-all plan only creates an unjustified carbophobia that, sooner rather than later, backfires on the naive dieter.
Truth be told, low-carb is no different from the typical deprivation diet:
1) You are supposed to eat a limited variety of foods by drastically reducing carbohydrate intake – which happens to be the most consumed macronutrient;
2) You can eat an unlimited amount of them, and it's not uncommon to see paleo aficionados joking around about how they enjoy eating ad nauseam fatty ribs. (But hey, they just found a dead mammoth, so somebody has to eat it, right?)
The immediate consequence of this dietary paternalism is that you'll entrust your decision making process to a self proclaimed authority (who's usually full of shit), and your reflective system will be shut down.
Hence, you'll use entirely the emotional brain, which is fast but instinctive, and this can be very tricky when is comes to food.
Initially, you'll lose weight, no question about that. But this outcome is caused only by the reduced variety (no bread, rice, pasta, potatoes or sugar) and not by some other miraculous factor.
However, besides that this is pathetic, soon enough you'll discover new ways to cook delicious dishes and snacks even without starches/sugar. When this happens, and it will, calories will go up.
I don't know about you, but I would love to eat all day long steaks with lots of mayonnaise, cheesy broccoli and almond butter.
As a related note, Atkins's magic faded (and became a curse afterward) when our inventive capitalism started to produce a large variety of low-carb foods: low-carb cookies, beer, cereals, etc.
And now, with the paleolithic diet, we see the same old wine in new bottles, so the net result will be exactly the same.
As you'll be gorging guilt free on paleo-goodies, the scale/mirror will soon reveal the unexpected. More than likely, eating more will also make you to consistently underestimate your portion size. (Studies show that obese folks tend to underestimate their calorie intake by up to 50%!)
And to make things worst, dietary fat doesn't have much of an effect on satiety because short-term appetite is greatly influenced by insulin secretion. This means that although you'll feel less hunger during the day, you'll eat more at any given meal.
Another problem is that weight gain is always accompanied by a preference for dietary fat. In other words, the fatter you get, the more you'll crave greasy ribs and sausages, which may lead eventually to a vicious circle.
Most paleo-dieters think of themselves as some kind of nonconformists. In fact, they are the ones who follow the crowd, and believe in a food faddism without questioning its validity.
So stop following to the letter some guru's instructions, and use your brain. Otherwise, you'll keep asking on forums “why can't I lose weight?”, and somebody else will trap you with another amazing solution.
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