Low-carb benefits and how to maximize them

Why should you consider eating fewer carbs? There are many potential benefits, at all ages (although there’s hardly ever a reason for healthy kids to do a strict low-carb diet).

Here are some of the main benefits, and how to adapt a low-carb diet for your specific needs, to maximize the positive effects on your health.

The four most common benefits

More common benefits

Possible, less certain benefits

Anecdotal evidence

There are many other disorders that people often report improvements in, but where there’s still no reliable science to prove an effect. This includes many pain disorders, fibromyalgia, and snoring/sleep apnea.

Whether these common improvements are all due to weight loss (which often has a positive effect) and reduced tissue swelling (low carb has a well-known diuretic effect) is hard to say.

Reverse your type 2 diabetes with low carb

Low carb is very effective for reversing type 2 diabetes. This has been demonstrated in a number of modern high-quality studies.

It’s very unsurprising that low-carb diets work well for reversing type 2 diabetes. The main problem in diabetes is too high blood sugar levels – and the sugar in the blood comes from the carbohydrates that we eat.

So, if you eat fewer carbohydrates, it’s very logical that it becomes easier for the body to control its blood sugar levels.

Lots of people have tried low-carb diets and reversed their type 2 diabetes (or controlled their type 1 diabetes). And many doctors have experience in treating their patients with unbelievably good results – here are a few of them:

Stories

Here are two success stories, including their best tips and tricks.

The full guide

If you want to learn more about how to reverse your type 2 diabetes on low carb, or troubleshoot if you run into any problem, check out our full guide below. Alternatively choose the Quick start guide with only two simple steps!

Blog

There are more than 300 posts on diabetes and low carb on the Diet Doctor blog. Get all the news here

Most popular success stories

Beat your sugar cravings with low carb

A low carb diet without sweeteners is very effective at reducing sugar cravings. Not only will you feel satisfied, but also your cravings for sweets will also be significantly reduced.

For many people this is enough to stay away from sweets, enabling weight loss, type 2 diabetes reversal and other health benefits. But if you’re truly addicted to sweet foods then low carb is just a necessary start. You may also need to learn about other tools and tricks to stay sugar free and reap the benefits.

Here are stories of success and our video course with a food addiction expert.

Learn more

Physical endurance

Ketogenic diets can vastly increase your physical endurance, by giving you constant access to all the energy of your fat stores.

The body’s supply of stored carbohydrates (glycogen) only lasts for a couple of hours of intense exercise, or less. But the fat stores carry enough energy to easily last for weeks or even months.

The problem is that when your body is used to burning primarily carbohydrates – as is the case with most people are today – your fat stores are not easily available, and they can’t fuel your brain. This results in your constantly having to fill up by eating before, during and after longer exercise sessions. Or even just to fuel your daily activities and avoid “hanger”.

On a ketogenic diet this problem is solved. As the body and brain can easily be fueled 24-7 by your powerful fat stores, you can keep going forever, like the Energizer Bunny.

Whether you are going for a physical endurance feat, or just staying focused on reaching some other goal, your body has the fuel it needs to keep you going and going.

Two problems

So, why do most people believe that carbs are necessary to perform exercise? There are two reasons. To unlock the power of ketogenic diets for physical endurance, and not instead suffer reduced performance, you need:

1. Enough fluid and salt. When starting low carb, it is very important to drink a large glass of water with a half teaspoon of salt 30–60 minutes before exercising. This can make a huge difference in performance.
2. Two weeks of adaptation to burning fat – it does not happen instantly. The second cause of reduced early performance is not as quickly fixed. It simply takes time for the body to transition from being a sugar-burner to burning primarily fat for energy, even in the muscles. This may take takes weeks or a even a few months. The more you exercise while on a low-carb, high-fat diet, the quicker this will happen. The end result has many benefits (see below).

Increasing performance

While transitioning to a low-carb, high-fat (LCHF) diet often reduces early physical performance, there are many long-term benefits. This is something that has only recently begun to be appreciated. In fact, a lot of elite athletes are now experimenting with LCHF diets, and in some cases they are crushing the competition.

The benefits of LCHF diets in sports are mainly seen in long-distance running and other endurance events. The body’s fat stores are huge and dwarf the minuscule glycogen stores. This means that once an athlete has transitioned to burning fat instead of carbohydrates, he or she will be able to perform for long periods of time without needing much (if any) additional food for energy.

This frees the athlete from having to activate his or her gastrointestinal organs during activity. Instead, a large amount of blood flow can instead be directed to the muscles. This also minimizes the risk of stomach problems during the activity.

Another benefit comes from the reduction of body fat that usually occurs on low carb. This reduction in body fat percentage and lightening of the body is a huge bonus for most sports.

Learn more

Do you want to learn much more about maximizing your physical performance on low carb? Then check out our interviews with several of the world’s leading experts on the topic, as well as movies and advice from people with their own experience to guide you: