Low Fat & Fat Free Foods Will Get you Nowhere

Low fat or low carb diets seem to be very popular these days. Yet, many of us have been dissapointed with the results of these diets in our battle with staying healthy and losing weight.

Everybody has heard of "low carb" diets since they are emerging as the newest trend in dieting.

But do they really work? And if so, are they the solution to weight loss that everybody is looking for?

I don't think so, because most low carb diets have several problems which make losing weight very difficult for the "average" dieter.

For example, if you follow the Atkins diet (a popular low carb program)the restriction on carbs for the first couple weeks is very severe (by almost any standards). The Atkins program allows just 20 grams of "net carbs" per day during the first phase of the diet (which usually lasts for 2 weeks).

Just to give you an idea of how few carbs that really is even a large apple has more than 20 grams of "net carbs".

With respect to low fat or fat-free foods, if you walk down the aisle of any grocery store you'll see dozens "low fat" and "fat free" food items nearly everywhere you look. The whole world has gone "low fat" crazy, and most people think that if they just begin eating low fat foods then their bodies will have less fat too.

Sounds logical right? Wrong. You see, the problem with this type of thinking is that there is no "direct" relationship between fat calories eaten and fat tissue on a person's body.

The truth is that your body can convert ANY type of calorie to fat tissue, not just fat calories. For example, if you eat 2 lbs. of sugar every day then you'll probably gain some fat tissue after a while but yet sugar has ZERO FAT CALORIES in it.

So eating 2 lbs. of sugar every day is a "fat free" diet, but yet you'd still gain fat. Likewise, if you eat a huge bowl of white rice at every single meal then you'd soon gain fat tissue on your body but yet this is a fat free food too.

So what does that tell you about eating fat free foods? Not only that, but there are plenty of low fat cakes, cookies and desserts sold at every grocery store. Yet, do you honestly think that these foods are "healthy" merely because they are low in fat? Of course not, and you'll gain extra fat if you eat too much of them.

In fact, our entire society has been eating low fat foods in greater quantity over the last decade but yet our society is still getting fatter and fatter. So that should tell you something about low fat diets.

You should stop thinking "non fat" and "low fat"- since those are just buzz words designed to make you feel as though such foods are healthy. The truth is that you don't need to worry about "fat" calories so much, and you also don't need to worry about total "carbs" so much either.

What you need to worry about is the exact types of foods that you combine together at each meal, so that you get the proper portion of fat calories and carbs at each meal which will maximize weight loss.