We can be sure that low-carb diets are useful for people with diabetes. They maintain the levels of glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) at lower values, compared with conventional low-calorie diets. In addition, a low-carb diet effectively contributes to weight loss.
A low-carb diet is very useful for diabetics for the following reasons:
- Prevents too high blood glucose levels.
- Reduces hunger between meals.
- Causes ketosis.
- Reduces the body’s need for insulin, thereby reducing insulin resistance.
- Promotes weight loss.
A low – carb diet is just a diet for one or two months, it is a way of life. And although it has certain restrictions on products (for example, it is necessary to exclude soda, sugar, bakery products), it is not much stricter than the usual, but such a vague understanding of proper nutrition.
The essence of a low-carb diet
Numerous new studies confirm that the real enemies for losing weight, purposefully going, step by step, to the cherished figure on the scales, are fast carbohydrates. These simple sugars are included in the digestive process already in the oral cavity. In response to their intake, the pancreas intensively forms and secretes insulin – a hormone of a protein nature, whose task, by contributing to the transport of glucose from the blood to the cells, is to return the body to its original equilibrium values – that is, to homeostasis. That’s just the process of releasing this hormone itself is also important. Imagine a steep hill with an almost vertical ascent and the same sharp descent-this is about what the graph of insulin secretion will look like.
In other words, in our body, after the next candy eaten, there is an instant increase in sugar levels and an equally rapid drop in it – a state of hypoglycemia develops after this. Trace your subjective feelings after, say, toffee, helpfully offered by a colleague at work: first there is a rise in strength and energy – and it seems to you that you are ready not only to get rid of the weekly report in a moment, but also to climb Mount Everest. Ten, twenty minutes pass – and the efficiency decreases sharply. There is fatigue, there is a headache
A low-carb diet for weight loss is very easily tolerated by many women, since it is not accompanied by hunger attacks. Adherents of this style of nutrition note that they do not feel a craving for the use of products containing a large amount of sugar and starch. In this regard, there is no need to clearly normalize the amount of allowed carbohydrates, but nutritionists still give certain recommendations – from 20 to 100 g of carbohydrates per day. Naturally, the source of their receipt should be cereals, vegetables and fruits, but not refined sugar and flour of the highest grade (and even more refined).
The principles underlying the high-fat low-carb diet (LCHF – low carb, high fat) are simple and clear:
- It is necessary to eat only when there is a feeling of hunger: for example, constant food consumption affects the sensitivity of the saturation centers located in one of the key structures of the brain – in the hypothalamus, to leptin. This hormone, formed by adipose tissue, is the main piece on the chessboard of satiety.
- Don’t get hung up on counting calories. Of course, we all remember the main rule: to spend more than to receive – and although it is quite controversial in other areas of human life, it still plays a significant role in nutrition.
- Use only natural fats, resolutely rejecting synthetic ones.
- Reduce the culinary processing of products to a minimum.
- Eat with pleasure, getting physical and aesthetic pleasure. Stay alone with your plate – don’t let phones, newspapers and televisions distract you from eating: do not forget that the digestive juices are released even before the food touches the taste buds of the oral cavity – this is the so-called brain or complex reflex phase of secretion.