Low Carb Diet

There are quite a few good low carb diet plans on the market these days, South Beach Diet and Atkins Diet being probably the two best known. The craze for diets that change the relative amounts of food groups has brought us a wealth of new low carb diet products, from low carb snack bars to ready-to-serve low carb diet foods that just need thawing and heating, making this one of the easiest ways to diet ever. But are all low carb diet plans equal? Is low carb always good, or are there low carb diet products that you should avoid?

Low carb diet plans

The major low carb diet plans are all based on an initial tight restriction on carbohydrates that can't be sustained in the long term. After this first phase, which lasts from a week to two weeks usually, the plans start to add carbohydrates gradually until the dieter gets to the balance point at which they neither gain or lose weight. Hopefully by the time they get to this point, they have already lost enough weight, and can start working on staying thin. This is a fairly well accepted general plan, and as diets go, it works. But not all the low carb diet plans work like this, and some can be restrictive for longer. If your low carb diet plan restricts carbs for longer than two weeks, or doesnt help you to find the balance point, you should suspect its not doing the job.

Low carb diet products

Low carb diet products are a more complicated story, and it can be hard to decide what is really going to help you lose weight and what is just not worth buying. First of all, you should know that low carb diet foods dont have to be low calorie. There are quite a few snack bars on the market which are very low carb, but are high in fats and protein. Some low carb diet plans allow high fat and protein snacks, for instance the Atkins diet will let you eat one of these per day. Other diets count the calories as well, or use a different balance of food groups, and for a dieter on one of these plans, a high fat snack is definitely out. In any case, foods and snacks which are labelled as low carb diet products sound as though they should be good for you, but this can be misleading in some cases, so read the small print!

What about the low carb diet foods you can buy in the supermarket? Well, these usually conform to one of the major low carb diet plans, and are often labelled so that you can fit them easily into that diet. These products are usually very good, save a lot of time and can be used as part of your diet. Still, if you buy one from a manufacturer that you havent used before, read the dietary information and check the fat and protein percentages.

There are so many low carb diet products available today that it isn't difficult to find ones which suit your taste and diet needs. It is worth shopping around, because prices do vary a lot and large supermarkets. Also remember that these products arent really neccesary, most low carb diet plans give plenty of alternatives for healthy snacks from vegetables or fruit.