While you may lose weight initially when restrict calories, it is very hard to keep calories away forever because you can’t restrict your calories for the rest of your life. Instead you need to learn how to balance your daily diet and physical activity routine which can be as simple as house work and yard work.
In fact weight loss has very little to do with will power and is really more about food knowledge. If you know what to eat, and what you are eating, then you won’t be so worried about how much you are allowed to eat.
A low carbohydrate diet has been highly recommended for anyone trying to lose weight in an easy healthy way. Many assume carbohydrates are pastas and bread but would think you are joking when you tell them that vegetables and fruits are considered carbohydrates as well. Carbohydrates are like different forms of simple sugars linked together in polymers.
You shouldn’t restrict carbohydrates completely because we all need a certain amount in our diet to supply energy to perform essential body functions. These carbohydrates are food to your brain which uses glucose as its main source of energy. The brain uses more than 2/3 of the carbohydrates in your body while you are sleeping.
Your body stores any carbohydrates that aren’t used immediately in the form of glycogen in areas of your body such as the liver and muscles. The glycogen that is stored in the muscles is basically inaccessible to the brain but the glycogen stored in the liver can be broken down and sent into the bloodstream to maintain healthy blood sugar levels.
You liver can only store carbohydrates in the form of glycogen in small amounts and therefore can be depleted within a short amount of time, maybe twelve hours or so. This means that the liver’s glycogen must be maintained constantly. When your glycogen levels are full in the liver and muscles then the excess carbohydrates are turned into fat and stored on your body for future use. Don’t think for a second that carbohydrate free food won’t be stored as fat, any excess calories are stored as fat.
Foods high in carbohydrates will cause an increase in blood glucose which causes the pancreas to secrete the hormone insulin back into the bloodstream. Insulin lowers your blood glucose levels.
The issue here is that insulin is a storage hormone which can put aside excess carbohydrate calories in the form of fatty tissue for future use. Increased insulin levels not only tell your body to store fat but also tell you to not release it. This makes it virtually impossible to lose weight, and very easy to keep gaining.
