Low-carb diets linked with slow, long-term weight gain

ABC NEWS (Australia)

As we get older, it's almost certain that we'll all put on weight. So more and more of us are trying low-carb diets to try and stop the inevitable and lose weight, but there are many types and it can be hard to pick the right one.

Transcript

00:00 Most people go on a low-carb diet to lose weight, but the reality of life is that we

00:07 gain weight as we get older.

00:09 And we gain weight because we lose muscle bulk, we don't exercise as much, our fat becomes

00:15 a bit more entrenched in our bodies, and our metabolic rate goes down in order to burn

00:19 fewer calories at rest.

00:21 So this is the depressing future of us all.

00:25 And what this study was, was actually the effect of low-carb diets on reducing that

00:30 weight gain as you get older, rather than turning the boat around, which is unrealistic,

00:35 what happens to the trajectory as you get older.

00:37 So there are various kinds.

00:38 I mean, there's like the Atkins diet, which is high animal protein, high saturated fat,

00:44 very low carbs, a keto diet, a ketogenic diet.

00:48 Then there's more healthy ones, like a vegetarian diet, which is low on refined carbohydrates,

00:53 but got a lot of complex, more complex carbohydrates, and the fat is more like olive oil, or a healthy

01:00 fat in the diet.

01:02 And then there's variations in between.

01:05 And this was a huge study going over many years, following health professionals actually

01:09 on their diets.

01:11 And what they found was that if you were on the Atkins kind of diet, which is high animal

01:15 protein, high animal fat, low carb, your weight gain went up higher.

01:21 In other words, your weight gain speeded up.

01:24 On the Atkins diet, specifically?

01:26 On the Atkins diet.

01:28 The best low-carb diet, if that's what you're choosing to go on, was one where you're, essentially

01:34 it's a healthy diet with complex carbohydrates, vegetables, and so on.

01:40 So not quite, not so ketogenic as the Atkins diet.

01:45 A little bit of animal protein, but not a lot.

01:48 And that was the one that was associated with the lowest weight gain.

01:52 And if you were vegetarian or vegan, that was also a pretty healthy one diet, if you

01:56 were on a low-carb version of a vegan or vegetarian diet.

02:00 So not all low-carb diets are the same.

02:04 So does everybody respond in the same way to those individual diets?

02:08 Do you tend to put on more weight with the Atkins diet?

02:11 Do you tend to put on less weight if you eat it the way you want?

02:15 Yeah, that's a good question.

02:16 So this is the average of thousands of people followed for decades.

02:22 I'm sure there would be individual differences.

02:25 And people who go on an Atkins-style diet do lose weight, but they put it back on again.

02:32 What's sustainable?

02:33 And in many ways, the Mediterranean diet is not that high in carbohydrates.

02:39 It's higher in fats, but it's fats like olive oil, so healthy fats.

02:43 Why do we put on weight as we age?

02:47 Nobody's too sure.

02:48 So women blame it on their hormones as they go into menopause, but there's not a huge

02:51 amount of evidence that it's worse for women than for men.

02:55 It's that we tend to exercise less as we get older.

02:59 As we age, our muscles deteriorate, so you've got to exercise harder to maintain your muscles.

03:04 And muscles are highly metabolic tissue.

03:06 They burn a lot of calories.

03:08 They're important for your metabolism.

03:09 So if you lose muscle mass, your metabolic rate goes down, so you burn fewer calories

03:14 at rest.

03:15 And also, a recent study from Sweden suggests that as you get older, your fat tissue becomes

03:24 a bit more recalcitrant.

03:26 When you're younger, it's easier to mobilize fat, say, from your abdominal fat, and lose

03:31 that fat.

03:32 It gets a bit harder as you age to do that, as everybody watching us knows.

03:37 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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