I recently read an article on Today.com entitled, “Can’t lose weight by eating less? Why low-carb diets may be the solution.”  In this article several doctors were interviewed and compared low calorie diets to low carbohydrate diets like keto.  They were all in agreement that low carbohydrate diets were superior to their low-calorie counterparts.  They listed a few different reasons for this.

First, the doctors stated that dieting by restricting calories was harder to maintain.  Dr. David Ludwig was quoted as saying, “While people can lose weight over the short term, very few people can manage to ignore their hunger and fight through those metabolic problems to maintain their weight loss.”  If you are not satisfied with what you are eating while trying to lose weight, then you are bound to fail.  In our practice we are huge believers in this principal.  The client must enjoy the process of losing weight.  This is the reason we have created hundreds of compliant and delicious recipes, dining out guides, tasty pre-approved products, etc.

The second reason they stated low-carb is superior to low-cal is that low-carb diets better control insulin.  Dr. Ludwig was again quoted as stating; “Insulin — you can think of (it) as the ultimate fat cell fertilizer. Too much insulin, fat cells get programmed to hoard calories. So there aren’t too many calories in the blood stream. And that’s why we get hungry.”  In our weight loss offices we focus on insulin control.  As Dr. Ludwig states, “Insulin elevation programs your body to prefer carbohydrate metabolism instead of fat metabolism.”  Low carbohydrate diet, like the ones we use with our clients, keep insulin levels low, allowing more fat to be metabolized that with simply cutting calories.

As a final thought, I am a big fan of the low carb/low-cal model, which combines the effectiveness of both.  I have found it to be more effective than either individual strategy and also maintainable for life.