It seems like fad diets pop up every year. Some stick around and some are discovered to be dangerous or at the best unhealthy. One diet that has gained traction in the mainstream and has grown in popularity is the low carb diet. The effectiveness of the diet and its quick results has fed the growth of the acceptance of the low-carb diet. In this article, I break down the everyday benefits and potential downsides of eating a low carb diet. First, what do I consider a low carb diet? It's typically when you reduce the calories from carbs you consume to between 10-30 percent. Although if you eat a 90% carb diet and reduce it to 50-60%, you will notice positive results in your health and body.

Good Carbohydrates and Bad Carbohydrates

When reducing carbs as a method for diet, I am typically referring to sugars and grains and not carbs found in vegetables like green beans, spinach, legumes, lentils and other healthy vitamin rich foods. Carbohydrates lower on the glycemic index won't spike your insulin as much as foods higher on this index and won't result in the negative effects carbohydrates might have on your body.

A Large portion of your diet should consist of eating healthy greens, vegetables, and legumes that are low on the glycemic index.

Benefits of a Low-Carbohydrate Diet

• Fewer cravings
  • Eating more fat and protein instead of carbohydrate helps your body turn-off ghrelin, also known as the hungry hormone.
  • Carbs spike insulin which will cause hunger as the blood sugar drops and ghrelin increases. The blood sugar drops because the insulin spike causes the glucose in the blood to be pushed into muscle and fat cells.

• Faster Weight Loss
  • Carbs cause insulin, the "fat-storage hormone" to be released and signaling cells to store as much available energy as possible. This energy is stored as glycogen which is from the glucose you get from carbs. Less insulin means the body uses up the glycogen then burns body fat for fuel instead.

• Increasing Healthy Fats and Protein in Diet
  • It's true that the more carbohydrates someone consumes, the less healthy fats and protein they eat. This inverse relationship causes those who reduce carbs to consume more healthy fats and protein to satiate themselves in a more healthy way. Fat and protein provides the body essential nutrients while processed carbohydrates, grains and sugars do not.

• Natural Diabetes Treatment
  • Studies show that a low-carb diet helps to prevent type 2 diabetes. Since type 2 diabetes (a root cause in many deaths around the world) is related to blood sugar which is directly related to our diet, eating a low carbohydrate diet can greatly prevent or treat this particular disease.

• General Key Indicators of Health Improve
  • Very important indicators of health, such as triglycerides  (lowers), blood pressure (lowers), LDL (low-density lipoprotein increases) will improve.

Downsides of A Low Carb Diet

• The downside of reducing carbs is often the difficulty of maintaining a diet that eliminates refined carbs, something most of us grew up eating. Much of this difficulty is reduced once your body and habits adapt to the new low carb diet.

• If your carb consumption is too low or your body goes into ketosis, you may feel ill from the extreme change in diet. It's up to you at this point whether you want to push through the pain and (most often) temporary side effects of the diet or increase the carbs you eat to a more comfortable level.

• You may find it difficult to substitute all the refined carbohydrate calories you used to consume with other more healthy alternatives in fat and protein and carbs from vegetables. However difficult this may be, it is essential that you do so as replacing a high carb diet with a diet high in other junk food will most likely be detrimental to your health.

Are Fruits Bad For You

• Many fruits contain  fructose which is a type of sugar but since they are also high in fiber, vitamins, and minerals, eating fruits is generally a good idea. There is also very little evidence that being overweight and getting fat is correlated solely to a high fruit diet.

Science

• The table below has information on 23 scientific studies on low-carbohydrate diet versus other  diets. The data on the table is from the authoritynutrition.com website's article here.

• The glycemic index chart below shows the index and the foods associated with it. Foods that are low on the glycemic index won't spike your insulin as high and are safer to eat if you are trying to comply with a low-carb diet.