Short Articles on Weight Loss

Why You Need Carbohydrate for Successful Weight Loss

Eliminate carbs to force your body to burn fat?  Nope, doesn't work.  Here's why.

According to one weight loss theory (which does have elements of truth to it),  there should be some way to lose weight by simply not eating any carbohydrate.  This should force your body to burn nothing but stored fat for fuel and so use up the fat faster.

We wish the practical reality matched this theory, because in some ways it's an attractive theory.

But there are big problems with it.

We've already explained in another article several reasons why a lack of carbohydrate makes for a very unpleasant diet -- even though you can live without carbohydrate.

There is also an additional reason.

"Fat burning" is really a multi-step biochemical process. If this process is stopped at any intermediate step, less energy is produced and more waste products are produced, which must be eliminated.

In the metabolism of "fat burning", there is a step in the process during which a substance called pyruvate must be present.  If it is not present, the process stops at that point.  Remaining steps in the process produce no energy  (because they never happen), and increased amounts of "unburned" substances of various sorts must instead be eliminated by other methods.

But pyruvate is a substance that is produced mainly by the "burning" of carbohydrate. In other words, no carbohydrate means no pyruvate means incomplete fat metabolism. This is another reason why your body needs carbohydrate -- to allow it to completely metabolize the fat for energy.

Put another way, when you are not eating enough carbohydrate, your body is not getting enough of something that it can only get from food -- and that it needs in order to function properly.

One of your body's most likely reactions to this situation is to stimulate hunger and cravings to try to "motivate" you to get it what it needs.

Not only that, but the "buildup" of the various unusable by-products of incomplete fat metabolism is likely to cause aches and pains and other unpleasant physical sensations during the time before they can eliminated.

And there is also the fact that your body is unable to produce all the energy you need for moving around and living normally.

In other words, a lack of sufficient carbohydrate in your diet is likely to cause hunger, cravings, aches, pains, and low energy levels.

These are the very symptoms that typically make weight loss diets so difficult and often impossible to continue for long enough to lose the amount of weight  people want to lose. That is why you do not want to try to eliminate carbohydrate entirely from your diet.

Of course, a lack of almost any other needed nutrient besides carbohydrate can cause almost identical symptoms.

In general, anytime your body needs more of anything that it can only get from food, and that it must have in order to keep you healthy, it will trigger some combination of hunger, cravings, aches, pains, and low energy levels. This is a signal to you that you have the beginnings of an eventually serious problem.

And that is why it is important not to try to ignore these symptoms -- as many diet techniques and various ignorant people usually recommend.

These symptoms have nothing to do with some imagined "lack of will-power",  or some irrational "association" with an unrelated social problem,  or any other personal failing on your part. They represent a physical need which you ignore at your peril.

Of course, there are smart ways and foolish ways to satisfy such needs.

The smart way is to learn which nutrients you need  and how much of them you need.  Then learn which foods have these nutrients in high concentrations (so you don't have to eat much of them). And then to use these foods to control hunger while you restrict Calories, burn fat, and lose weight for as long as you need to.

You can find all the information you need free on this site. But for the quickest and simplest way, we suggest you buy The Multi-Diet from your local bookstore or buy the eBooks we have available on our order page.