Sheldon’s Corner: The Difference Between Paleo and Low Carb
What do Paleo and low carb diets have in common?
Well – low carbohydrates. If you are already eating Paleo, you might have by now figured out (and felt with the pain of sugar cravings during the first weeks) that paleo is by default a somewhat low carbohydrate diet. Without all those grains and sugar, your carbohydrate intake drops.
That being said, there is a huge difference between Paleo and most low carbohydrate diets out there, especially Atkins.
Guaranteed fat loss? Not so much.
Low Carb diets: What you will hear is that as long as you limit your carb intake you will still lose weight, no matter how much you eat. Not so fast. Unless you incorporate calorie restriction into your your low carb diet, you are not going to lose weight, and what’s worse – you may even end up with high LDL cholesterol levels. It’s eating only what we were supposed to eat and the right kinds of fats and wild caught protein that will bring the desired fat loss results without having to restrict your calories.
Learn your fats!
Low carb diets simply preach to ‘eat high fat, low carbohydrates’. They don’t care what kind of fat you eat. Bacon and eggs fried in vegetable oil, it’s all the same fat. Rigth??? Wrong. And that’s the biggest problem with traditional low carb diets. There are monounsaturated (good), saturated (sometimes bad if it comes from the wrong source) and polyunsaturated fat (some good and some very bad) fats, and you need to learn which to be healthy and lean.
Click Here to Learn more about the different fasts.
Low carb, meaning no fruits and vegetables?
Many low carb diets virtually eliminate fruits and restrict vegetables. While fruits, as long as you eat a wide variety of vegetables, are somewhat optional, eating lots of vegetables is key to reaching optimal health. You can not be healthy and lean in the long term without eating your vegetables.
Osteoporosis?
Low bone density, or osteoporosis, is the result of low calcium in your bones. Some assume that all that cheese and milk from low carb diet will help with calcium supply. Not really. According to Dr. Loren Cordain (The Paleo diet) – what you have to consider isn’t just calcium consumption, but also calcium retention. Without potassium, present in fruits and vegetables, your body will excrete a lot of the calcium you have accumulated.
The omega 6 havoc.
Many people in low carb diets will over-consume omega 6 fatty acids (present in vegetable and seed oils) and reach high inflammatory status, putting themselves at higher rick of cardiovascular disease. Paleo is balanced in the Omega 3 and Omega 6 ratios.
I could get into what causes CVD, and that it’s inflammation caused by eating the kinds of foods our body isn’t genetically adapted to eating (such as grains or vegetable oils) and not atherosclerosis caused build up of cholesterol and calcium, but this issue may deserve another blog posts some other time. If you are interested in learning more about this topic, I recommend another great book by Dr. Loren Cordain: The Paleo diet.
Below is a few Charts to summarize the differences:
