Telling yourself carbs is the reason you’re overweight,
is akin to blaming your council tax instalment for going overdrawn!
The reality is that it’s the total calorie intake that is cause of being overweight. Consuming more calories required for the amount your burn. Through movement and body function (metabolism). And yet so many people think that carbs are to blame.
It’s like cutting any macronutrient or food group from your diet. All you are doing by omitting a macronutrient (protein, fat, carbs) from your diet is cutting hundreds/thousands of calories from your diet.
In doing so you have achieved a calorie deficit! That’s all.
The biggest impact in weight loss (not fat loss) is when people take the carb cutting option i.e. keto/carnivore. This is because for every gram of carbohydrate you store (glycogen in your liver and muscles) with it you hold onto approximately 2.3 grams of water. So you have lost that water weight too along with the drop in body fat from creating a calorie deficit.
Not all that weight lost is from body fat! Which is not the optimal way to lose weight!
Your ideal weight loss would see you lose the majority if not all the weight from body fat. And keep the muscle, glycogen and water.
So what’s the best diet for weight loss you ask?!
Well, I want you to put exercise aside and tackle weight loss from adjusting your diet. Keep your regular exercise going (it would be prudent to do some weight/resistance training as part of it).
When setting up your diet for weight loss (fat loss) your diet needs to start off with a daily or weekly energy target. Download my free guide to work out the target relevant to you.
Then inside that calorie target you want to have a certain amount of calories assigned to protein. This is going to be a high proportion of those calories for several reasons. The most important ones being that high protein diets will aid muscle retention during weight loss. And also you’ll see a reduction in hunger (again very helpful when dieting).
Download my FREE guide to work out how much protein you need during weight loss.
The remaining calories are going to come from carbohydrates and fats. These proportions are going to be personal preference. Although I would try and encourage you to have a higher amount of calories from carbs, which will guard against muscle breakdown, than fats.
The end result will be far better as you will have achieved body recomposition. From reducing your body fat levels and retaining possibly slightly increasing your muscle mass.
There you have it, the optimal way to diet for weight loss. And you get to eat donuts and cake in the process! Which will play a big part in the psychology of dieting as you won’t feel restriction or guilt for breaking erroneous ‘diet rules’.