Many people want to know if low carbohydrate/high protein diets even work. Eating as much protein as you want sounds easy, even painless. While many famous people swear by them, are they really worth a serious dieter's time?

You can eat all of the fat and protein that you like so long as you reduce your overall carbohydrate intake.

What's interesting is that carbohydrates are often thought of as a main part of healthy eating, while fats are considered a dietary no-no. This apparent rebellion against modern thought does not go unnoticed.

And research is starting to show the effectiveness of lowering your carb intake, and my own personal experience leads me to believe that this diet can be a good way to shed unwanted, pounds -with a few slight changes.

Insulin and low carbohydrate diets

It's the effect on insulin that seems to make a high protein diet healthier for people. Insulin is the hormone that regulates the amount of sugar in the body and transfers energy-boosting glucose into blood cells for healthy function. Without insulin, cells could die.

When you eat carbohydrates, it causes the body to relapse insulin in order to signal to the body to store the food energy as fat instead of burning the calories away. The idea is that when you avoid carbohydrates, you can stop the body from storing fat. Still others feel that eating fat in this diet doesn't cause you to store it and that you might be producing a new chemical that will break down ‘old' fat stores.

Another scientific thought is that some dieters may actually be insulin resistant, or that they need to produce higher levels of insulin in order to control the sugars in their body. In these cases, the overproduction of insulin leads to the storage of fat in the body.

Faulty logic and dodgy scientific claims

However, some of the scientific claims behind this kind of dieting method are inconclusive at best because scientists don't completely understand the way that the body's metabolism works. Because of this, it helps to question the findings to see if they make sense to us.

But it's no secret that this kind of diet seems to help many people. Whether this is a direct cause of the supposed effects of eating fat and protein on fat storage or that eating these rich foods actually lessens hunger, and thus calorie consumption - we might never know. Another possibility is that eating carbohydrates actually makes you want to eat more carbohydrates, while can leave to a higher overall caloric intake - though some scientists are even skeptical about this.

There is reason to believe that these diets might also be successful because they are low in calories due to the higher vegetable consumption. These diets also suggest increasing your exercise levels to speed up weight loss as well as promote eating earlier in the day to allow your body to burn off the calories. In terms of the rich and famous, they often have personal trainers and free time to spend focusing on their bodies, leading to better results than ‘normal' people.

Potential harmful effects of high protein, low carbohydrate diets

There's something to be said for looking at the possible downsides to eating a high protein diet. These diets have been linked with possible kidney damage, but this might be due to dieters having kidney issues beforehand, like in the case of diabetics. And low carb eating doesn't have to mean high protein dieting.

One of the often cited complaints of this kind of dieting is due to the lack of fiber in the eating plan - which can lead to constipation. However, I've found that increasing my intake of carrots and even apples can help to avoid these problems. Because these items contain a little sugar, they're not normally considered a part of a true high protein plan. Low fiber is also associated with increased risk of bowel cancers.

Duke Medical Center has found that a high protein diet can actually improve the levels of fats and cholesterols in the blood, contrary to what common sense might suggest. However, there are still concerns about the affect of fat intake on the heart and the causing of heart and blood vessel diseases.

Some scientific studies are concerned about the levels of ketones (chemicals that break down fat) in the body during these kinds of diets as they might be adding to the possible health risks.

Some success stories

The Duke University research seems to confirm that a high protein, low carb diet will lead to weight loss, even for the long term. From my personal experience, I found that after trying to lose weight for years, I lost about thirty pounds in less than three months with a plan that I feel I can maintain for the long run.

Losing weight alone has decreased the possibility of my developing diabetes by about thirty percent, with the only down side being that I have to limit my toast and jelly breakfasts now.