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Most people who diet to lose weight regain the pounds within a year or two, in part because the body adapts by slowing down metabolism and burning fewer calories. A new study known as the Framingham State Food Study, or (FS)2, suggests that low-carb diets can help people keep the weight off, showing that eating fewer carbohydrates increases the number of calories burned. The findings, published today in the BMJ, could help make obesity treatment more effective. …
David Ludwig, MD, PhD, an endocrinologist at Boston Children’s Hospital, has written popular books espousing a low-glycemic, low-carbohydrate diet for weight control. He has argued that high-glycemic diets are contributing to the epidemic of type 2 diabetes. But he hadn’t given much thought to carbohydrate restriction for type 1 diabetes until 2016.
At a conference, Ludwig met a surgeon with type 1 diabetes who maintains normal hemoglobin A1c levels (indicating high blood sugar control) on a very-low-carbohydrate diet. This surprised and impressed him: he had never seen any patient with type 1 diabetes able to completely normalize their hemoglobin A1cs. Moreover, most diabetes experts discourage very-low-carb diets, believing they pose a risk for hypoglycemia, or a dangerous drop in blood sugar. …
When a woman goes into pregnancy already carrying excess weight, she’s at particular risk for metabolic and hormonal abnormalities that boost her odds for diabetes, preterm delivery and, ultimately, cardiovascular disease. And increasing evidence suggests that obesity creates a toxic in-utero environment that increases the baby’s birth weight and affects its development and future health.
So a big focus for obstetricians is to minimize weight gain during the pregnancy. Now, a small but intriguing randomized trial suggests that a low-glycemic-load diet is the best way to do that. …