How Does a Low Carb Diet Help You Lose Weight?

There are a number of low carbohydrate ("carb") diets out there in the world today, some of which are quite popular and have devoted followings. The Atkins Diet and the South Beach Diet are probably the two most well-known. But how does a low carb diet help you lose weight?

The simple answer is that all carbs contain sugar in one form or another and sugar is translated in to fat by the human body. (There are many types of sugar in food, but for this purpose consider them all as plain "sugar.") The sugar in food is absorbed in to the body during digestion and is used as fuel to provide energy for the daily activities of life. If the body doesn't use all the energy taken in, the excess is stored for future use in the form of body fat.

Most people are aware that too much sugar means extra body fat. What many people don't realize is that carbs are a key source of sugar. Reducing the number of carbohydrates consumed reduces the amount of sugar absorbed by the body and thus the amount of fat the body creates. If the amount of sugar taken in is reduced enough, the body will consume some of the stored fat and thus reduce the body's total weight. That, in a nutshell, is how low carb diets work.

Low carb weight loss plans aren't really so much about reducing carbs as they are about reducing the hidden sugar contained in the carbs. Many such diets do this by focusing on what is known as the "glycemic index" of foods. The less sugar that is absorbed in to the body from a food, the lower the glycemic index of that food and the more likely it is to be included in the diet.

Carbs aren't the only factor in a food having a low glycemic index. The more fiber a food has in it the more slowly the body absorbs the sugar contained in that food. This is why low carb diets recommend avoiding white breads and semolina or white flour pastas but allow whole wheat breads and pastas in limited quantities. White flour has been stripped of much of its fiber while whole wheat flour has not.

Fats also interfere with the body's absorption of sugar from carbs. Many popular low carb diets either encourage the consumption of fats (especially in the early days of the diet) or do not emphasize reducing the fat in the foods that are eaten. Others recognize that fat is a source of other food-related health issues and work to strike a balance between the sugar-reducing benefits of fat in the diet and the detrimental effects fat can have on the heart and arteries.

Taken together, these components of a low cab diet reduce the amount of sugar taken in by the body and later stored as body fat without the more traditional mechanisms of counting calories or grams of fat.