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If you want your low-carb diet to help you lose weight and keep it off, consider the quality of the food you eat, according to new research that compared five types of low-carb diets.
People who ate an unhealthy, meat-based low-carb diet gained weight over time compared with those who followed a heathier, plant-based version, the study found.
“When people consume diets that emphasize carbohydrates from whole grains, healthy non-tropical vegetable oils, and plant proteins, they have a better chance of keeping excess weight gain at bay,” said the study’s senior author Dr. Qi Sun, associate professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.
The study compared an overall low-carbohydrate diet to one that primarily used animal protein and fat; a second diet that focused on vegetable-sourced protein and fat; a healthy low-carb diet that focused on eating less refined carbohydrates, more plant protein, and healthy fats such as olive oil; and finally, an unhealthy meal plan defined as one that included unhealthy fats, more animal protein and refined grains.
“To my knowledge, examining the effects on lasting weight loss of different low-carb variants is novel,” said Dr. David Katz, a specialist in preventive and lifestyle medicine who founded the nonprofit True Health Initiative, a global coalition of experts dedicated to evidence-based lifestyle medicine. He was not involved in the research.
All of the diets reduced carbohydrates to about 38% to 40% of daily calorie intake. However, people who ate an unhealthy carb diet full of animal protein and fat gained weight long-term compared to people who focused on higher intakes of fruit, whole grains and non-starchy vegetables and lower intakes of dairy, red and processed meat, sugar-sweetened beverages, sweets and desserts.
Those who adopted unhealthy low-carb diets as a primary strategy gained, on average, roughly 2.3 kg, or 5.1 lbs., over 4 years,” said first author Binkai Liu, a research assistant in the department of nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
“Those who adopted healthy low-carb diets as a primary strategy lost, on average, roughly 2.2 kg, or 4.9 lbs., for a mean, net difference between the two of 10 lbs.,” she said via email.
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