5 Reason NOT to do Low Carb Diets

Low carb (carbohydrate), high protein diets are the latest dieting rage. However, before you jump on the band wagon, you may want to consider a few things:
1. Low carb diets reduce the healthy glycogen (storage form of glucose) stores in your muscles and liver. When you reduce glycogen, you also get dehydrated, often causing the scale to drop significantly in the first week or two. This is usually interpreted as fat loss when it’s actually from dehydration and muscle loss.
2. Lessening of muscle glycogen causes you to tire easily, and makes exercise and movement unpleasant. Research shows that muscle fatigue increases in almost direct proportion to the rate of reduction of muscle glycogen.
3. Reduction of muscle glycogen leads to muscle atrophy. The reason for this is because muscle glycogen is the fuel of choice for the muscle during activity. Without muscle glycogen, the muscle fibers that contract, contract less when glycogen is not directly available. Reduction of muscle glycogen also causes you to exercise less than normal leading to muscle loss and the failure to maintain sufficient muscle tone.
4. Loss of muscle triggers a slow down in your basal metabolic rate (metabolism). Metabolism occurs in the muscle. Less muscle/muscle tone means a slower metabolism meaning, fewer calories burned every day.
5. Your muscles become saggy and cause you to look saggy. Saggy doesn’t look good and causes you to look unhealthy.