Eating a sugar-free, starch-free diet may help you lose weight and control Type 2 diabetes. Sugar and starch are both forms of simple carbohydrates that cause significant blood sugar spikes, according to "Good Calories, Bad Calories" author Gary Taubes. When glucose levels rise, your body releases insulin to help stabilize blood sugar. Insulin is a hormone that not only stores the energy from the foods you eat as fat, but it also blocks the body's capacity to access stored fat as a source of fuel. By limiting your dietary sugars and starches, you are freeing your body to use stored fat as a source of fuel. Sugars and starches can be found in grains, fruits, legumes and starchy vegetables.
The Atkins Diet
The Atkins Diet recommends that you avoid sugars and starches altogether. Atkins is a low-carbohydrate diet that enables the body to reach a state of ketosis through blood sugar control. Ketosis is defined as a chemical state in which your body uses stored fat as its primary source of fuel. To accomplish this, Dr. Atkins recommends limiting carbohydrates to those found in leafy green vegetable and full-fat dairy sources, and eating fewer than 20 grams of carbohydrates per day in the initial stage of the diet. As the diet progresses and your body achieves ketosis, you are allowed to gradually increase your carbohydrate levels and expand your food choices to include more vegetables, berries and nuts. Throughout its duration and into maintenance, the diet remains mostly sugar and starch-free.
The Paleolithic Diet
Paleolithic diets recommend avoiding foods with added sugar and all grain-based starches. There are various forms of the Paleolithic diet; however, they are all based on the science of evolutionary biology. All of the different Paleolithic diets recommend eating as early humans did. According to the Kurt Harris, creator of the PaNu Paleolithic Nutrition diet, the human body has not evolved to eat modern, sugary, grain-laden foods. Many of the diseases of civilization like Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and obesity are modern constructs that came about with the onset of the cultivation of grains. By eliminating sugar, dairy, starches and grains from your diet and relying on plant foods and animal fats and proteins, you can mimic the diet of our hunter-gatherer ancestors to achieve better health.
Protein Power
Protein Power is another diet that is based on evolutionary biology. Drs. Michael and Mary Dan Eades developed the diet. They explain that eating an ancestral diet and trying to incorporate habits that mimic the natural conditions under which hunter-gatherer societies lived can vastly improve your health. To that end, the diet recommends eating mostly vegetables, occasional fruits, and animal fats and proteins for optimal health. As part of the plan for overall health, the diet's authors also recommend maximizing sun exposure for vitamin D absorption and exercising in ways that mimic the movements and work of hunter-gatherer societies.
References
- "Good Calories, Bad Calories;" Gary Taubes; 2007
- "Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution;" Robert C. Atkins, M.D.; 2002
- PaNu: Paleolithic Nutrition -- Duplicating the Evolutionary Metabolic Milieu; Kurt G. Harris, M.D.
- "Protein Power Lifeplan;" Michael R. Eades, M.D. and Mary Dan Eades, M.D.; 2000
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