The Low Carbohydrate Diet

I have never been a fan of faddy diets to control weight. Not least because it is only by changing the food habits that is causing the consumption of greater calories than the body needs and changing this permanently can anyone really lose weight and keep it off. Therefore I was rather concerned when my better half said that she was planing to go on a low carb diet.

Having lived on a vegetarian diet for many many years, I understand the need for a good balanced diet. However having expressed my concerns, I am fully supporting her wish to follow this diet. As I am the cook, to her own regret she never learnt to cook, something I am trying to help change, my greatest problem was trying to understand how to cook and prepare interesting meals that we can both eat. As I just do not have the time to make separate meals and dishes.

As folks will probably know, the low carb (Carbohydrate) diet is a development of the Atkins Diet. When the Atkins diet was the vogue, I was really intrigued as it seemed to go against intuition and by eating many of the foods that a dieter was normally expected to cut out or severally reduce, yet people were loosing weight. As I was not overweight, my interest was more academic, but even though I had a very open mind, having a better than the average persons understanding regarding nutrition, I had worries about the long term effects of this diet. There was so much interest in this diet as it did work for so many people, that science actually caught up with this and it was simply that eating protein satisfies the hunger craving better than carbohydrates. But as with all diets that restrict any food group, the science also showed that the Atkins diet was dangerous. Quite simply following the Atkins diet people were not getting the full range of nutrition that the body needs.

Thus as the high protein diet was actually working for many people, a less severe alternative to the Atkins diet the Low Carbohydrate Diet emerged as safer alternative. Therefore while I have concerns about anyone I care about going on a diet that stops the intake of any food group, I am less worried about this diet. Also, as I can keep an eye on what she is doing nutritionally, I can make sure that this diet does not make her ill.

So I have been learning to cook meals that are low carbohydrate. Using grated Cauliflower as a rice substitute, or green beans as an alternative to pasta. It is my experience with adapting recipes to be vegetarian that has really helped though. Fortunately she got a book of Low Carb Recipes to help me too. But this book has not been written by a cook as in one recipe for example, while the time for cooking was given the oven temperature was not. Using experience I was still able to make the recipe and it did turn out quite well.

One other aspect to this low carb diet is just how expensive it is. It really has got me thinking that I can design a weight loss diet that does work and is not expensive.