This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon associate I earn qualifying purchases. Click here for more about this policy.
Learn why low carb diets are not necessary for fat loss for mid-life women and what a nutritionist says is the real problem.
I've been working with women over 35 on sustainable weight loss for 11 years and time and again I see women struggling with low-carb diets.
Yes, they can do them and typically they do lose weight when they do them. However, they never sustain the weight loss once they begin eating carbs again.
As I always say, unless you can stick with a diet (a way of eating) until you are 85 years old, any weight you do lose will eventually come back.
Doing a low carb diet to lose weight is often done by women out of desperation, not because they truly want a life without carbs.
Are there some women who can do and make it a lifestyle? Absolutely, this low carb podcast discussion is not for you.
Time and again I see women fearing carbs, scared of gaining weight when they eat carbs and struggling to stick with a healthy dietary pattern to reach their weight loss goals because they truly do not understand carbs or how to balance their plates nutritionally.
Unfortunately, we are not taught how to nutritionally balance our plates and more than anything this is what I have observed with clients time and again.
Eating tiny meals that are deficient in protein and fiber and snacking on high-calorie snacks throughout the day.
Their diet consists of mostly fat and carbs with a tiny bit of protein. 99% of the time I am teaching clients how to rebalance their plates to eliminate cravings for carbs and snacks.
This eliminates those cravings unless those cravings are from unregulated emotions or having a poor relationship with food, which are things I have to work on with many of my clients.
The downside is that learning how to appropriately put together a well-balanced meal that meets your nutritions needs takes some learning and practice.
Often, women will do low-carb diets to avoid that critical step in their health and weight loss journey because it feels easier to just eliminate a food group.
You don't have to think and you can shut off your brain.
In this podcast episode, I explain the common misunderstandings women have about carbohydrates, the cravings caused by having unbalanced plates and why women need to focus more on fat loss than scale loss.
The good news is whether you are peri-menopausal, menopausal, have hypothyroidism, insulin resistance, PCOS, pre-diabetes, have an autoimmune disease, are a man, a younger person or older person low carb diets are not necessary for you to achieve health and reach your weight loss goals!
In this Dish On Ditching Diets, I break down the details for you so I encourage you to listen to this episode so that you can feel empowered to live a life enjoying all foods.
In this Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episode, You Will Hear:
- Common Misunderstanding Women Have About What Foods Are Carbohydrates
- What Science Says About Low Carb Diets vs. Calorie Restricted Diets
- How Unbalanced Meals Drive Cravings
- Importance for Mid-Life Women To Focus More On Fat Loss vs. Scale Loss
- The Types Of Carbohydrates You Should Be Adding More Of
Never Miss An Episode! Subscribe to the Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast on Apple, Stitcher, Spotify or Amazon Music
Related Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Episodes
- Healthy Is Not A Scale Weight
- Fix Your Relationship With Food
- The Silent Progress Killer of Weight Loss
- Is The Scale Sabotaging You
- How To Stop Obsessing Over The Scale
- Why The Scale Goes Up When You Eat Carbs
- Hormonal Weight Loss
Why Low Carb Diets Are Not Necessary For Weight Loss Dish On Ditching Diets Podcast Transcript
Hello friends!
Today we are talking all about carbs. I’ve been meaning to do an episode speaking about carbs because I see so many clients in my nutrition practice who have been doing these low carb diets, often extremely low carb diets like keto and carnivore and they usually lose weight doing them but aren’t able to sustain them.
I’m going to break this up into two episodes – today’s episode on why it’s not necessary to cut carbs as a midlife woman and a future episode where I talk about the dangers of extreme low carb diets like carnivore and animal based.
Now, remember what I always say, if you cannot cut carbs until you are 85 years old, then any weight you lose will come back because you haven’t learned how to lose weight while eating them.
And of course, everywhere you turn it looks like low carb and no carb diets are a sure thing.
Dramatic results where people drop weight fast. People lose massive amounts of weight very quickly like 10 pounds in a week and they feel better.
So, on the surface you’re like, yes, this works and it’s fast oh yeah!
I will tell you definitively what is documented in research PMID: 35088407 and PMID 32238384 is that you can do a high carb diet or a low carb diet and lose weight.
As long as calories are controlled, you will lose weight. Now... I will say it is not as simple as calories in calories out because the composition of your calories matters which we will get into in a bit. But it is completely unnecessary to cut complex carbs to lose body fat.
But yes, this is the thing we see on social media and there are a lot of people on social media targeting menopausal women saying nonsense like you can’t handle carbs or if you’re insulin resistant you can’t lose weight eating carbs.
None of that is true. It is all nonsense.
I’ve been doing this a really long time, 11 years, working with midlife women and I work with women who have these conditions all the time and they lose weight.
Usually their meals are unbalanced, they are under muscled, are too sedentary and not watching average calories over time.
But you absolutely can lose weight with the right type of carbohydrates, rebalancing meals and by focusing on the things that will really make a significant difference in your body composition and metabolic health vs. just chasing scale numbers.
A lot of people think, oh this low carb diet works because you lose scale weight fast on these diets except you are not losing body fat and the weight comes back because it is unsustainable.
Excess body fat must be the focus for midlife women who are losing muscle mass. This is why I stated you can no longer chase a scale weight.
Let’s consider this example. Tell me which person is healthier?
Person one lost a total of 10 pounds on the scale and of the 10 pounds, 8 pounds was muscle, and 2 pounds was fat.
Person two gained 5 pounds on the scale and of those 5 pounds gained on the scale 10 pounds of muscle was gained and 5 pounds of fat was lost.
Which person is healthier? Which person is more metabolically fit? Which person is going to look leaner and fit into a smaller pant size?
If you answered the person who gained 5 pounds, you are correct.
That means the scale no longer means anything to you in your fat loss journey because your focus should be fat loss, not scale loss.
Fat loss is what is going to improve your health and metabolism and help you look better and feel better in your clothes. Scale loss is not fat loss.
Carbs contain water so when you cut carbs you are losing water from cutting carbs. That dramatic weight loss is just water weight from carbs. It’s not fat.
The hard part about fat loss is that the scale takes a long time to start going down for those women who have very little muscle mass and have a high body fat percentage.
Because when you begin eating protein and doing some strength training, you will begin to build muscle and that muscle weighs something. The scale may not move or begin to increase. That is normal.
A pound of muscle equals one pound of body fat. One pound of muscle takes up less space in your body than one pound of body fat.
So, that means, the scale could be going up like in the example I shared if you are under-muscled, or it may stay the same for a while despite you doing a lot of things right.
But your measurements should be going down and clothes fitting better. If those things are happening, you are losing body fat.
The scale is going to do whatever it is going to do, and a lot of women struggle comprehending that because of all the diet culture we’ve all be exposed to and just lack of education for women around taking care of our bodies.
I was thinking the other day when I was doing my annual wellness visit with my doctor how unfortunate it is that there is not any general education for women on healthy aging and the importance of protein and retaining muscle and strength as they age.
These building blocks of our health are severely under-represented. My Mom who’s 70 was telling me over the holidays how her doctor said her bones were fragile at her age, and I asked my mother if her doctor spoke to her about strength training and protein intake and she said no.
That’s just so unfortunate that women are not being taught these things. These things are preventable. There is just a massive gap in educating women around this.
But in any case, the people you see who lose a lot of weight quickly on these low carb diets are as losing muscle. You do not want to be losing muscle.
Muscle is expensive for your body to keep around, so when you cut an entire food group like carbs or slash calories very low, you are losing water and muscle. You’re not actually losing body fat.
That initial dopamine hit you get from seeing 10 pounds down on the scale is deceiving.
So, when I have clients who begin working with me who’ve done these low carb diets. They will tell me I did it, I lost weight, but I eventually began eating carbs again and gained the weight back and I feel like a failure.
What’s wrong with me? I was hungry all the time and kept overeating carbs. If I could just stay away from carbs, I could lose weight.
But when you dive deeper into what’s going on here, there’s several things that most people just don’t realize that are the real problem and it’s really not the carbs. Again, because we are not educated on these things.
So, first let’s discuss what foods are carbohydrates. If you ask someone, they will generally say bread, oatmeal, pizza, chips, crackers, granola, ice cream, candy bars, cookies. Not all those foods are carbohydrates.
Pizza, ice cream, chips, candy bars, cookies, granola and even some crackers are mostly fat sources as in most of the calories are coming from fat not carbohydrates.
If you read the back of the label and do the math of how many calories come from fat vs. carbs, you will find in most of the snack foods and convenience foods most calories are coming from fat.
A lot of people mis-categorize carbs and do not realize that these foods are not really classified as carbohydrates. They have carbohydrates in them, but most calories are coming from fat calories.
When someone goes on a low carb diet, typically what they do is cut out these types of foods. Pizza, ice cream, chips, candy bars, granola, crackers.
Processed foods that are high in calories they cut out and then because of cutting them out, they begin eating more nutrient dense foods, feel better and lose weight. And they are not losing weight because they cut out carbs quote-on-quote.
They lose weight and feel better because they are consuming higher nutrients and fewer calories. They also feel less inflamed because excess body fat does create inflammation.
So, ideally most carbs ideally should come from complex carbs that are higher in fiber and that is what you want to be including in your meals most of the time.
This is true if you are a menopausal woman, a man, prediabetic, insulin resistant, have hypothyroidism.
Whatever your age, gender or condition, fiber is highly critical to get enough of. 95% of Americans are deficient in fiber and fiber is literally a highly important nutrient.
It has been shown time and again to help with weight management, increase fullness, stabilize blood sugar, reduce your risk for developing diseases like cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes (PMID: 15797686)
Fiber is also incredibly important for gut microbiome, helping the liver detox, assisting with health bowel movements and managing blood cholesterol levels.
So, most of the carbs we should be eating that are higher fiber we are absolutely not eating enough of. Complex carbs like rice, beans, lentils, quinoa, whole grains, fruits and vegetables, potatoes. These are the things we want to be including in our meals.
The problem most individuals run into is that their meals are not balanced and so they are hungry all the time and over snacking and that is why their caloric intake is high even though it doesn’t seem like it is high because the snacks are so small in volume, so perception wise you don’t feel like you’re eating much.
When I do a nutrition audit with my clients, I find 99.99% of the time that most of their calories are coming from fat sources, then carbs with very little fiber and then protein is last. If you’re trying to lose weight, balancing those macronutrients is important.
More lean fiber, few calories from fat and getting more of the fiber.
So, I’ve talked about this topic many times on here about balancing meals. Primarily making sure you are including enough protein in your meals and hitting your daily protein goal.
Most individuals only get sufficient protein typically at dinner. Their breakfast and lunch are very deficient in protein and they’re just hungry all the time.
Before I forget I have a free guide in the show notes to help you calculate your protein and figure out how to include that.
But if you ensure that your meals have a solid amount of protein with enough fiber from complex carbohydrates then you will feel fuller and more satisfied.
Typically, what I see with clients is they are having these tiny, unbalanced breakfasts and lunches and then struggling with overeating snacks in the afternoon and late at night. Right because your meals earlier in the day are deficient and unbalanced.
It is not uncommon for me to see someone eating a lunch that has a little bit of protein with a vegetable like a salad with some chicken breast. There is no complex carb and very little fiber there. It makes sense why you are hungry.
Making a meal like a sandwich using a higher fiber bread or wrap along with the right amount of protein is going to make that better balanced and keep you fuller.
But people have been so convinced by the people on social media screaming bread is bad for you that they are literally avoiding the foods that could help them eat healthier and make them feel better and reach their goals.
Oatmeal is another one I commonly see. I love oatmeal as a complex carbohydrate source, and it is excellent for reducing cholesterol. However, I usually see clients not pairing a protein source with their oatmeal or not including enough protein.
Then they’re hungry an hour or two later. And the people on social media saying oatmeal is terrible for your blood sugar because it makes your glucose spike do not know what they are talking about.
What they are failing to tell you is that if you simply pair oatmeal with enough protein and some healthy fat and maybe another fiber source like fruit, it will keep your blood sugar stable, and you will stay full and satisfied.
I have an easy oatmeal recipe on my website that shows you the exact composition you can use to do that. I’ll link that in the show notes for you.
So, unbalanced meals lacking protein and fiber are usually why women struggle with their body fat, struggle staying in a caloric deficit to lose body fat along with the mindset and self-sabotaging patterns of behavior I speak about on this podcast all the time.
Having balanced meals really does clean up a lot of the food noise and snacking that individuals struggle with.
And time and time again, when I work with a client, and we address balancing their meals and making their meals more satisfying and including fun foods in their meals they realize it wasn’t really the carbs that were root cause of the problem.
So, before you slash carbs and do something you cannot sustain until you are 85 years old, the first thing to do is ensure you are meeting your protein and fiber goals eating balanced meals within your calorie needs, evaluating your average calories over 3 months and getting steps.
Now I understand the desperation some feel and the overwhelm when it comes to doing these things. Sometimes it just feels easier to slash carbs because now you don’t have to think about it. It feels easier.
Except that is a false perception because while temporarily it feels easier down the road when the weight returns and you cannot sustain that way of eating, it feels miserable.
So, while I understand and sympathize with the desperation to feel better immediately, cutting carbs is like putting a band aid on a leaky faucet.
It is not easy to look at your entire lifestyle and re-adjust certain aspects of your lifestyle and balance your meals and working on building muscle.
I want to share a story about a woman who comes to my spin class who’s in menopause. Recently, she told me her body cannot handle carbs and I asked her what made her feel like her body can’t handle carbs and she said the scale goes up when I eat them.
Then I asked her more about her diet and discovered she is eating very little lean protein, drinking a bottle of wine every night, not sleeping well and getting very few steps.
This is an example of what I’m talking about where someone is correlating carbs to be the issue when that is not the problem here.
She is lacking lean protein, lacking fiber and good balanced meals, drinking way too much alcohol which is impacting her sleep and lack of sleep increases hunger and she’s getting way too few steps.
That is not a carbohydrate problem or inability to handle carbs.
Also, notice what she told me about the scale. Of course, the scale goes up when you consume carbs. Carbs contain water. It’s water weight, not fat. So, this woman, like a lot of women who work with me, isn’t focusing on fat loss.
She’s focusing on scale loss, and I spoke earlier in this podcast about how scale loss is not the same as fat loss.
A lot of what she is struggling with is misunderstanding fat loss and correlating weight gain to carbohydrates when that is not the root cause problem here. Hopefully, that makes sense to all of you listening.
Now additionally, I will say I see many women who are eating foods because their relationship with food is poor, and they have unregulated emotions.
They are emotionally eating so they eat to avoid what they are feeling, and these are behavioral patterns that I have to work on with those clients in addition to the things I spoke of today.
I’m mentioning that because there are a lot of layers to what can be going on for an individual which is why having an expert help you is always going to be beneficial in figuring this out.
I plan to do a future episode on emotional eating at some point, but I do have an episode on fixing your relationship with food in podcast episode 117. So, you can go listen to that if you’re interested.
All of that to say that usually what people think the problem is, like carbs, when it comes to their struggles with weight and food is usually not the real problem. It’s not the root cause.
Okay, ladies hope this helps clarifies things on carbohydrates. I hope this is all good news.
Remember I offer free consultations so if you are interested in working with me, make sure you click the link in the show notes and schedule a time to talk to me.
I’ll chat with you soon!
Leave a Comment