The Little Known Problem With Low Fat Diets - Health - Fitness

It is absolutely impossible to escape the hysteria going on in the supermarket aisles around the country today. The low fat craze is everywhere. Think of a food, and there is sure to be a low fat version of it. Some of them seem absolutely unbelievable to any fair minded person. I mean think about it. Low fat ice cream! Do you believe it is true? Well I'm going to reveal to you today that even though foods like this are low fat technically, they really aren't in reality. You're going to learn that you have to see what happens inside of your body when your body digests your food to determine how fattening the food really is.

Before I expand on this, you should first know what the original low fat diet is all about, and how this has shaped food manufacturing in this country.

This diet gets you to eat low fat foods to lose weight. The idea is simple, eat low fat food, and you don't put on any fat. As you are going to find out, your body is far more complicated than that, and just because a food doesn't have fat to start off with, it doesn't mean that it won't end up being fat by the time it is totally processed inside of you.

The low fat diet has gained a lot of traction over the last two decades. So, the food manufacturers had to act, or lose their market share. That's why we have a low fat version of everything when you go to the supermarket. The only problem is that many of these food companies replace the fat in the foods with a huge amount of sugars and other refined carbohydrates to maintain the taste of that food.

Therefore, if you are following a low fat diet, you are probably eating a lot of refined carbohydrates.

So, what does that mean?

Refined carbohydrates get processed as soon as you start eating it, and breaks down into glucose (a potent source of energy for your body) so that it can actually be used by your body. The way your body does this is by dumping the glucose into your blood stream. Now you blood picks up the glucose and transports it to all areas of your body. That way you never run out of energy.

Well what if you don't need this energy right now?

Your body stores this excess glucose as glycogen in your muscles. If all of your glycogen stores are already full, then it is stored as fat!

I hope you understood that. Let me rephrase it ensure you get it.

If you eat a lot of refined carbohydrates, it will eventually turn to fat if you eat more than you need. Unless you are very active, and make use of your glycogen stores, you don't need refined carbohydrates. Even then, you might only use them straight after a workout.

So although you may be eating what's called a 'low fat' food, it is really anything but low fat.

Now the main exception to this is low fat milk, low fat cheese or low fat natural yogurt. These usually don't have refined sugar. Most of the other types of 'low fat' foods though are full of it.

The worst thing about these refined carbohydrates are that they are very addictive. If you study how insulin works in your body, you'll realize that your body starts craving for these high sugar foods, often when you aren't even hungry. It's a vicious cycle you want to stay away from. It's a cycle that most obese and overweight people are right in the middle of. There are also other effects of eating too many refined carbs. These include unstable energy levels, mood swings, headaches and onset of life threatening diseases such as heart disease.

This all explains why there are so many people that buy low fat food religiously, but still don't manage to drop any weight. They blame themselves, their genetics, when its not really their fault. They were just not taught how their own body works. If you have had this experience then you now know why.

The bottom line is that what you eat is as, if not more important as how much you eat.

So next time you go shopping and you see the "Low Fat" sign on the food, make sure you check the ingredients label to see how much sugar and carbs are in it. Now you know that excess refined carbs are pretty much the same thing as fat, you'll be able to see right through the sneaky companies that try and trick you with this.