Heard quite a few people saying a low carb diet works pretty well. How well you respond to a certain diet is of course very individual, but generally the advantages of this diet are that you never feel hungry, that it preserves muscle mass better than normal low calorie diets, and of course that you're free to eat all those delicious fat meats that your body normally doesn't respond well to.
The basic idea of the diet is that almost completely depriving your body of carbs will eventually force it to start converting your fat reserves into "ketones" that your body and brain can use as fuel. Hence, your body will slowly enter a state of ketosis, meaning it'll start using fat as fuel, whereas it would otherwise use carbs for intense physical activity, and muscle proteins when that isn't available.
If you're a healthy person I don't see any risks with this diet. Ketones are of course inferior to carbs as fuel, meaning you'll probably find it more difficult to do intense physical exercises and your muscles wont be able to perform to their maximum. Your brain not operating optimally during the period where you go into ketosis is what has discouraged me from trying it out, what with studies and such. I think having to give up everything containing carbs would be evened out by being able to eat 2 pounds of pork chops every day
And Gangrell, 20 pounds in 2 weeks?
You sure you aren't exaggerating those numbers by quite a bit? A tenth of that weight loss in that period is what is considered safe (meaning little loss of muscle tissue). It's practically impossible, except for very obese persons, to lose more than 2 pounds of body fat per week.
[ 07-10-2004, 02:09 PM: Message edited by: Rataxes ]