LOW CARBOHYDRATE AND HEALTHY FAT (LCHF)
Low Carbohydrate and Healthy Fat (LCHF) is the replacement of carbohydrates in your diet with fresh food, which is lower in carbohydrates and higher in natural fats. This is similar to the well-known keto diet in Australia.
If we use a car as a simple analogy, it needs fuel in the tank in order to run. Now, if you think about your own body’s fuel system – it requires a certain amount of fuel each day just to perform basic daily tasks.
Imagine your own carbohydrate or sugar tank, this can only hold a maximum of a few hours of fuel at one time (around 2,000 calories of energy). Each time we fill the carbohydrate tank up, our body shifts into gear and is ready to burn this up.
But what happens when we overfill the tank? That’s right. It gets stored as fat!
Our fat fuel tank is very large in comparison (up to 40,000 calories of energy). It can be stored on the outside and inside of our bodies – causing many life-threatening health risks.
However, the human body is very clever. It is designed to also burn fat as a source of fuel!
If your carbohydrate tank is left empty for a period of time, then your body will switch over to its other, reserve, fuel tank (the fat tank) and start using fats and protein as its primary fuel source. Therefore, fat burning and weight loss can be achieved, and blood sugar levels can be stabilised, giving you much greater control over your own health.
With your body efficiently fuelling on an LCHF lifestyle, you will have more sustained energy, you will experience a reduction in weight (if overweight prior to commencing), and the overall functioning of your body will improve. You will have less pain, less inflammation, improved movement, improved healing… and many more health benefits.
At Nutrition for Life Healthcare we really do believe Food is Fuel and that Food is Medicine. When you choose the right foods, you will be choosing improved health, disease management and disease prevention.
The Ketogenic Diet
The ketogenic (or “keto”) diet is quite similar to the LCHF approach.
It centres around drastically reducing your carbohydrate intake to below 25g per day. This reduction in carbs puts your body into a metabolic state called ketosis. If the macro-nutrient balance is right, your body can tap into its own fat stores for fuel.
You might be thinking that this sounds very much like LCHF?
The fact is, that maintaining a state of nutritional ketosis requires a very strict calculated balance of macro-nutrients, extremely low in carbohydrates, high in natural fats and moderate protein.
Ketosis can have positive health and performance benefits in some cases for endurance athletes and for chronic conditions such as some cancers and neurological disorders.
In most cases, a less restrictive Low Carbohydrate Healthy Natural Fat approach is adequate for improving health and maintaining healthy weight loss.
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