Low-carb plans have become commercial successes because of their ability to deliver quick weight-loss results. Shaving carbs from your diet can indeed help you lose weight quickly, and following a healthy diet plan can help you to keep off the pounds. Low-carb diets help with weight loss because your body converts carbohydrates into sugar, which it uses as energy and which ends up stored in your liver and muscles as glycogen. When your consume more sugar than your body can burn and store, the glucose eventually gets converted into fat. Cutting carbohydrates and simple sugars from your diet will force your body to burn its current supply.
Atkins Diet
The Atkins Diet, introduced in 1972 by cardiologist Robert Atkins, is widely credited as being the first legitimate low-carb diet and with launching the low-carb trend. The Atkins Diet is a low-carbohydrate, high-protein plan that limits you to between 20 and 100 grams of carbs per day and focuses on weight loss during the initial two weeks of the diet's first phase. The diet plan requires you to trim your carbohydrate intake to 20 grams per day during the introduction phase, focusing on lean protein and essential fatty acids. The four-phase diet eventually allows you to consume between 45 and 100 grams of carbohydrates per day, during the final phase. The Atkins Diet offers its own line of foods, but you're not limited to them or required to include them in your diet.
South Beach Diet
Although the South Beach Diet doesn't market itself as a low-carbohydrate diet plan, it is. The diet, which was introduced in 2003 by cardiologist Arthur Agatston, is a low-carb, high-protein approach to dieting that can yield quick weight loss. The diet's health benefits center on the inclusion of low-carbohydrate foods and healthy fats, such as essential fatty acids, while providing your body with the amino acids it needs to help build muscle tissue. The South Beach Diet requires you to make instant changes to your menu, cutting carbs almost entirely for the first two weeks in a three-phase system.
Personalized
You don't have to follow a popular commercial diet plan to eat a healthy, low-carbohydrate diet. Limit your intake of carb-heavy foods, such as grains, dairy products, starchy vegetables and fruit, and instead focus on lean sources of protein, such as low-fat cuts of beef, grilled poultry, fish and eggs. Avoid significant sources of sugar, such as soda and candy, and keep your daily carbohydrate intake between 50 and 150 grams. Eat smaller portions but eat five times per day instead of consuming the three traditional square meals. Keep healthy, low-carbohydrate snacks on hand --- such as nuts or reduced-fat peanut butter on celery sticks --- to eat between meals and after workouts.
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