Cut carbs, quit sugar, eat MORE fat to feel fabulous
SUPERB RECIPE PULLOUT INSIDE
EATING healthily all the time can be a big challenge. With 57 per cent of women and 67 per cent of men in the UK now overweight, it’s clear that conventional dietary advice isn’t working.
Our obesity epidemic is out of control — and although we try our best to ‘eat less and exercise more’, we are only getting sicker and fatter. All that received wisdom has succeeded in doing is to fuel a billion- pound diet industry, while turning us into a nation of sugar-guzzling, disillusioned yo-yo dieters.
But pioneering academics and medics in the U.S. and South Africa have compiled a mountain of research to show that the endlessly promoted low-fat, carbohydratebased diet recommended by dietitians and nutritionists around the world is not only ineffectual, but may in fact be to blame for making us fat and unhealthy.
They now believe that, regardless of our weight, we should all be eating MORE fat, not less, and cutting back severely on carbohydrates — particularly sugar.
In Saturday’s paper, leading British cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra set out the case for a radical change of thinking to embrace a low-carbohydrate diet high in healthy fats as the key to ending our obesity epidemic and slowing the escalation of diabetes and heart disease.
All this week, the Daily Mail is serialising a new book by Karen Thomson, the greatgranddaughter of pioneering South African heart surgeon Dr Christiaan Barnard.
Karen, like Dr Malhotra, believes a lowcarb, healthy fat diet (LChF) is the most beneficial way to eat. She is convinced this is the only safe route out of the sugar addiction that hinders so much of our healthy eating resolve — and that it’s the key to losing weight, staying slim and feeling fabulous forever.
In today’s paper, we outline the fundamentals and get you started on your weight-loss journey with a five-day meal plan and delicious recipes to entice you into a new LChF way of life.
Over the coming days, we’ll give you tips and tricks to stay at it — and delicious daily recipes so you’ll never feel hungry.
You could lose as much as a stone in a month without cravings or hunger, and set yourself up for a lifetime of healthy eating — without ever having to worry about dieting again.
THE EFFORTLESS WAY TO BEAT CRAVINGS
THE new approach is all about re-thinking what you eat and it starts with the simplest of steps: cutting down sugarrich foods in your diet.
Even if we don’t realise it, most of us eat 22 teaspoons of sugar a day — that’s 350 empty calories our bodies don’t need. Remove it and we’d all be on course for effortless slenderness. Simple? Well, not quite. Sugar has a sting in its tail. It is highly addictive.
The sugar-rich, carbohydrate-heavy diet on which so many of us have depended for decades plus the proliferation of sugary snacks available and the power of advertising by big food manufacturers have left many of us hooked on sugar and starchy foods. With these so much a part of our lives, quitting completely can seem impossible — but that’s the sugar talking.
Over the coming days, we will show you how to do it. Even if carbohydrates have been the staple of your diet since you were a child, and if sweets are your reward, chocolate your treat and puddings your joy, you CAN do this.
DIET THAT MAKES YOU SLIM AND HEALTHY
THE healthiest and easiest way to quit sugar and lose weight is to adopt a diet low in carbohydrates and high in healthy fats. Although this is diametrically opposed to much conventional dietary advice, it is a medically accepted regimen, which is gaining interest and gathering expert backing across the world.
It has a massive social media following, with highly respected medics arguing that it is the ONLY healthy way to lose weight and protect against diabetes and heart disease. To take one example,
respected American dietary expert Dr Gary Taubes recently argued that tackling obesity isn’t about changing how much you eat, but what you eat. He and many other experts all now believe that LCHF is the answer.
Curiously, the roots of LCHF go far back in history, to an eating regime known as ‘banting’, after a 19th- century British undertaker called William Banting, who popularised a weight-loss diet based on limiting sugary carbohydrates.
It worked wonders for the formerly obese Mr Banting himself and later became so well-known throughout Europe that in Scandinavian countries, banta is still the main verb for ‘to be on a diet’.
In its modern incarnation, it was designed not as a short-term ‘miracle weight loss’ programme, but as a long-term healthy way to eat.
Yet the bonus people have found is that they can lose up to a stone in a month, without counting calories and without feeling hungry. This is because our bodies process the foods we eat in different ways.
With a typical carbohydratebased diet, carbs are converted into blood sugar, which your body burns for energy. Any excess sugar is converted to fat (under instruction from the hormone insulin) and stored away.
But if you restrict carbohydrates to 50g a day or less, your body can no longer get the energy it needs from sugars, so it has to bring in other mechanisms and fuels.
This is where fat comes in. You can get all the energy you need from fat stored around your body and from the fat in your food — there is very little physiological need for carbohydrates, and no place for sugar at all.
The key to harnessing LCHF for weight loss is keeping your total carbohydrates below 50g a day. This liberates the body from the tyranny of sugar addiction and helps you lose excess weight naturally. But cutting right down on carbohydrates isn’t easy, unless you stock up on healthy fats to silence cravings and keep you feeling full.
If you’re active — that is, you exercise regularly or your job keeps you on your feet — or you’re happy about your weight, you should be able to tick along on a higher carbohydrate intake — up to 120g a day — and still reap the banting benefits. But the plan only works if your carbohydrates come not from pasta, rice, bread and doughnuts, but from whole foods such as vegetables, pulses and fruits, which are packed with nutrients and which your body metabolises slowly.
The good news is, you won’t need to count calories. The new balance of nutrients and healthy fats in your diet should mean you’re not plagued by cravings. But if you’re a sugar addict (see our quiz on the back page of this pullout), your body could be well-practised at overriding natural satiety (fullness) signals.
That is why, until you reach your target weight, it’s a good idea to practise portion control for proteins and fats, and moderate your intake of ‘dense’ or starchy vegetables such as potatoes and parsnips.
If you suspect you might have addiction issues, you will need to re-teach yourself to listen and monitor matters until your dietary intake is back under your body’s natural control (see tips and tricks in tomorrow’s paper).
To succeed, you need to reappraise old ideas about nutrition.
FABULOUS FATS
TO ADAPT to having no sugar and far fewer carbs in your life, you have to put something back — and this is likely to mean eating more healthy fats than you were used to. It might seem counter-intuitive if you want to lose weight but fats slow digestion, keeping you feeling full. They are your secret weapon against sugar cravings. And plenty of respected studies now show that most fats — even saturated fats — are very, very good for your health. This dietary change is what many people find hardest to get their heads around — but don’t go crazy and ignore the portion size suggestions above. If you graze on nuts or tuck into tubs of yoghurt all day, you will consume too many calories for the diet’s weight-loss effects to work. Yet if you follow the advice on these pages, you can start slimming — and feeling fabulous — in no time.
IF you have diabetes or high blood pressure or are on any form of medication, check with your GP before making any dietary changes. There’s lots of research to show an LCHF diet brings blood pressure down if it’s high and can help to normalise blood sugar levels if you have diabetes (type 1 or 2). so keep a close eye on your blood pressure and blood sugar levels and be prepared to adjust your medication accordingly. don’t do this without consulting your GP.