Again, why low carbs?

People ask again and again why carbs are bad for you. I guess the simple answer is, "because they make your body store fat."

Some people tell me, "I love carbs, I eat a lot of them." One friend in particular eats almost no fat and FREAKS if some fat gets into her diet. Well, if you have no fat in your diet, you are going to suffer somewhere. See my post on sat fats and the fact that they do have some redeeming qualities. But if you are not fat, you shouldn't change your eating habits too much unless you have high triglycerides, low hdl, high ldl, wrong size ldl particles, high blood pressure, diabetes, high inflammation indicators or a history of breast cancer or other cancers. why?

Because a high carb diet affects all of the above. Keep track of your carb intake for one day. Those slices of bread, the hidden sugars in drinks, yogourt, peanut butter and lots of other places all add up. They added carbs when they took out the fat.

Your body will make energy out of fats and stored fat if you cut your carb intake. Eat a piece of toast with peanut butter on it in the morning if you find you can't live without carbs. You'll burn it off quickly, and then your body will go back to burning fat if you eat protein, vegetables that are low sugar, and low sugar fruits. It's all about burning the fat around your middle-it is the most dangerous fat and impedes your organs and strains your heart.

Without carbs, you may have higher cholesterol, but as your triglycerides lower, the size of your LDL particles will get bigger, and that is good for your heart. The small LDL particles are the ones that stick together and cause blockages.

The only for sure scientific correlation is that people who have good levels of HDL have fewer heart attacks. So of course that is the ultimate goal, is to get that number into the approved range. And that takes a change in diet, to include olive oil, oils from nuts, lean proteins, salmon and other fatty fish and vegetables that don't raise your blood sugar.

The easiest route is to follow South Beach as closely as possible. It's the sugar in our diets that is killing us. And carbs equals glucose equals sugar. Bye bye baked potato, rice, white bread, chips and pop.