Low Carb, No Carb, and You

National Discount Nutrition February 12, 2025

Early Low and No Carb Diets

Low carbohydrate diet plans have been around for a long time. In ancient Greece, Olympic athletes were fed a diet of figs, cheese, and barley porridge, incorporating meats aligned with their sports. A runner and jumper could eat goat meat, a wrestler would eat fatty pork, and beef for throwing events like javelin and discus. There was also wine, but in smaller quantities than would be consumed by non-athletes. Native Americans could survive a whole winter or arduous travel on nothing but pemmican. Pemmican is made from red meat, rendered lard, tallow, or suet, dried berries or chokecherries, a sweetener such as maple or beech syrup, and sometimes native nuts like pecan or black walnut.

Some of the earliest modern low/no carb were to help combat what was then called 'juvenile diabetes' - now called Type 1 diabetes. These early diest recognized that sugar metabolism was the issue, and removed fruits, most vegetables, dairy, and all sweets from the diet. Eventually, grains like wheat, corn, and rice went, along with potatoes. Back before the ability to measure blood glucose, these diets were desperate attempts to avoid deaths by diabetic ketoacidosis - where the body essentially dies from an overdose of sugar. Likewise, in the 1920s, a ketogenic diet was prescribed to children who did not respond to the epilepsy treatments of the time, and remains in modern form on the Epilepsy Foundation's website to this day.

The first documented low carb diet for weight loss was published by undertaker William Bantling in 1863, and dedicated to the public good. Mr. Bantling had great success in losing a significant amount of weight, publishing his booklet entitled 'A Letter on Corpulence.' The term 'dinner' is often used to this day in parts of America to mean 'lunch' or the midday meal, while 'tea' was at the time a snack eaten around 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon, and 'supper' was commonly eaten after 7:00.

For breakfast, I take four or five ounces of beef, mutton, kidneys, broiled fish, bacon, or cold meat of any kind except pork; a large cup of tea (without milk or sugar), a little biscuit, or one ounce of dry toast.
For dinner, five or six ounces of any fish except salmon, any meat except pork, any vegetable except potato, one ounce of dry toast, fruit out of a pudding, any kind of poultry or game, and two or three glasses of good claret, sherry, or Madeira—champagne, port and beer forbidden.
For tea, two or three ounces of fruit, a rusk or two, and a cup of tea without milk or sugar.
For supper, three or four ounces of meat or fish, similar to dinner, with a glass or two of claret.
For nightcap, if required, a tumbler of grog—(gin, whiskey, or brandy, without sugar)—or a glass or two of claret or sherry.

Nowadays, however, popping down 'two or three' glasses of wine at lunch would be frowned upon. Alcohol is a personal choice, with some studies advocating for a moderate intake while others insist that any alcohol is bad for you.

Proceed with Caution

Diets and the way our bodies respond to them are highly individual. Any diet needs to be measured against your current state of health and if you have a chronic condition, must be accompanied by a consultation with your doctors. No diet is a 'magic bullet' and all diets should be accompanied by physical activity according to your current ability whether it is chair yoga, or walking, or even going whole gym rat. However, low carb diets have been unfairly maligned, and there is some evidence that they may even protect kidney function under certain circumstances.

This is Your Brain on Carbs

For some, carbohydrates seem to be as addictive as nicotine, alcohol or drugs.

Carbs are comfort food for a reason, they make us feel good. A Snickers bar from 7-11, a sweet treat from Starbucks with your coffee (let's leave alone their sugar-loaded drinks), or Nana's mac-n-cheese, they light up the pleasure centers of your brain. Serotonin and dopamine are the 'pleasure chemicals' released when consuming sugars and carbs, or nicotine and whiskey for that matter.

Our brains consist of a complex network of pathways and regions that control for all our bodily functions. Chemical messengers called neurotransmitters allow signals to pass from one nerve cell to the next to aid in these functions. One neurotransmitter, dopamine, plays a major role in the brain's reward pathways. For example, the brain gets flooded with dopamine when people take addictive drugs including cocaine and nicotine.

To find out how food intake was regulated by the dopamine-reward pathway, Ludwig and his colleagues recruited 12 overweight or obese men between the ages of 18 and 35 years old. On two occasions, they were fed milkshakes that were almost identical except one had a high-glycemic index and one was low-glycemic. The glycemic index measures how fast blood sugar levels rise after eating that item. High-glycemic carbohydrates get digested rapidly, and include white bread, pasta, rice and baked goods, WebMD notes. Low-glycemic carbs are digested much slower, and include fruits, vegetables, unprocessed whole grains and legumes.

Four hours after the meals, they were given fMRI brain scans that measured activity of these networks and pathways.

Participants who drank the high-glycemic milkshakes saw their blood sugar levels surge, only to sharply crash four hours later. When their blood sugar dropped, not only did they feel excessive hunger, but the fMRIs showed "intense" activation in the nucleus accumbens, a region of the brain involved in addiction.

Carbohydrates for some folks are like that. There is no 'little bit.' Think about the trope of the girl who has just broken up with her guy, crying with a spoon in one hand and a pint of Ben & Jerry's in the other. There's a reason that the smothered hash browns from Waffle House not only taste good but feel good even when you know that this is not something you should make a regular part of your meals. Your body is dumping all the 'feel good' into your brain's receptors and it wants more. Over millions of years, it comes down to sugar and carbs being good things to eat to get fat for winter - now overtaken by fast food, highly processed foods, and sugar.

When I - the writer - quit smoking it was cold turkey. Nothing else worked, and I have not smoked since 1997.

Carnivore or Low Carbs?

People undertake diets for purposes of weight loss or gain, medical reasons, or ethical considerations. For instance, the vegan diet is popular but also has drawbacks such as B-12 and calcium deficiency, higher incidence of fractures, and protein deficiency. One popular diet that seems to recur every two decades (presumably after memories of its practice have died out) is the cabbage soup diet - skip the video, read the comments. Going back to low/no carb diets, we need to look at the total carb intake, plus which carbs are allowed and how they are taken.

Our brains and bodies run on sugar, and our body converts food to sugar that the body uses as fuel to operate. Excessive unused sugar is stored as fat via insulin, and overloads of sugar due to insulin resistance or insufficient insulin act like poison. Fats can also be converted to sugar, but it takes a lot more effort. Think of the effort involved in going to the store as opposed to going to the fridge - there are a lot of extra steps.

The carnivore diet consists of:

Meats: Beef, lamb or mutton, goat, veal, pork, and game meats like buffalo and venison.
Poultry: Turkey, duck, chicken, cornish hens, and game birds.
Organ meats: Liver, kidneys, tripe, tongue.
Seafood: Fish, shrimp, squid, clams, oysters, and other seafood.
Eggs: Chicken or duck.
Fats: Typically animal fats like lard, tallow, suet, or ghee (clarified butter) but olive oil, avocado fruit and oil, and coconut oil are also permitted.

Dairy is optional and depends on tolerance. Some avoid it because dairy does contain lactose which is a type of sugar, but cheeses are also considered a fat. The carnivore diet is considered a 'ketogenic diet' as the body relies on converting fats to sugars and then burning them as fuel - a state called 'ketosis.' This is a diet for people who do not suffer from occasional hypoglycemia either on its down or who are using insulin. Hypoglycemia can kill because your body can't find fuel ready to burn when it needs it to keep your heart beating and lungs pumping, so consulting with your doctor is very important.

Think about it this way, you can't walk into a gym and clean-jerk 200lbs right off the bat. You need to train and find out your limits when it comes to fully no-carb ketogenic diets like the Carnivore diet. Some key differences are:

Low Carb Ketogenic: The goal of this diet is to have no more than 130 grams of carbs per day.
Modified Carb: Allows up to 200 carbs per day, with the carbs coming from complex carbohydrate sources. This diet does not result in ketosis.
Cyclical Carbohydrates: Allows for consumption of carbohydrates on a metronomic basis. For instance, after exercise or on a treat day having spaghetti bolognese or a serving of a dessert.

When thinking of sweets, use the least-refined sweetener you can find - for instance, raw honey has health benefits as well as being delicious. Maple syrup and sugar, beech syrup, boiled cider, and even sugar cane juice are minimally processed. Agave and corn syrup are highly processed, and should be avoided. Sugar alcohols and sugar substitutes are being shown to have health risks, not to mention the risks of bloating, gas, and diarrhea, and so should be avoided.

Getting Started

You will find that learning to love low carb is a big step, and some people will struggle with it. However, many people on low carb and carnivore diets self-report that they are satisfied with them. Satisfaction with what you're eating every day is one of the key factors in successful dietary changes. Likewise, the ability to exercise each day will help to burn fat and build muscle and muscle health is an important factor in keeping bones safe from fractures and even plays a part in healing as you age. Exercise and diet for health and wellness, and for recovery and rehabilitation, are great goals to keep in mind and to keep you on track.

All Carbs are Not Created Equal

Carbs can be a problem, especially the highly refined carbs that start a cycle of spike-crash-crave-consume. Complex carbs are broken down more slowly because they contain fiber and complex starches. Refined carbs are the ones that have been processed to remove the fiber that turns the sugar spike into a curve. Juices are a big culprit here, and one that your body thinks is good for you. White flour products like bread, pasta, and tortillas are processed, too. White rice is another refined carb to leave at the grocery store.

"But they taste so good!"

We are essentially 21st Century software operating on Stone Age hardware. Our old hunter/gatherer bodies survived harsh winters and even ice ages by having access to the quick energy and fat storage provided by sweet fruits, vegetables, and honey. They taste good because we have been wired to love that taste, we get a big fat whack of dopamine with every bite. However, unless you are spending all daylight hours gathering or chasing a bison across the prairie, this is not going to work for you.

Start your carb reducing journey and find a point where your health is optimized, but one that you can live with at the same time. National Discount Nutrition is your best source for all the supplements and products you'll need to make 2025 your healthy new year!