Tyler, How do low-carbohydrate diets work?

Over the last few years, the low-carbohydrate diet has become one of many common trends to help with weight lose. With all infomercials and friend’s friend’s miracle stories aside, are diets like the popular Atkins Diets really beneficial for our health? This diet works by cutting back on carbohydrates, which reduces the number of calories through out the day. With less calories, there is less fat that is stored in the body. During the introduction of the diet, the dieter loses what seems like an amazing amount of weight due to the low number of calories that are being transformed into storage (fat). In addition, the diet slows down after the first few weeks and it can cause bad breath, constipation, loss of energy as well as cancer or heart disease. If anyone is thinking about trying to loss some unneeded weight and go on a diet they should find out if they really are medically under- or over- weight. To figure this out, one should use a body mass index to calculate how fit they are. A person whose BMI lies between 25 and 30 is often classified as over weight and over 30 is obese.

BMI= To calculate your BMI, multiply your weight in pounds by 700, then divide the answer by the square of your height in inches.

Glycogen= functions as a short term energy for animal cells

South Beach Diet= Diet that was developed by Author Agatston and is based on eliminating “bad” carbohydrates

I have witnessed the low-carbohydrate diet fad first hand. When I was in high school my mother and cousin tried the popular Atkins diet. They both lost weight but after a few weeks it seemed as if the progress had stalled. This is expected due to the fact that the chapter article predicted this outcome. I personally think that it is a healthy diet to reduce the number of calories because they do lead to fat but to eliminate all carbohydrates seems too extreme.

Baird, Colin. Chemistry in Your Life. New York: H.W. Freeman and Company, 2006