by Pamela Grundy

Created on: January 09, 2008

Low-carb diets require the near-elimination of an entire food group: carbohydrates. This ban can mean anything from several weeks of severely restricted carbs on the South Beach diet to all the way to no carbs ever for the rest of your life on Atkins. If you have a very sedentary lifestyle and are steadily gaining weight, the simplicity of the low-carb regimen is very attractive at first glance: No measuring, no counting calories, no group weigh-ins. Just don't eat pasta, bread, potatoes, cereal, cookies, or, if you are on Atkins, most fruits and vegetables. But can you really sustain That? More to the point, should you?

If you are obese and nothing else has worked, a low-carb eating plan is certainly worth trying, but you should start out with the understanding that you will not be able to maintain weight loss with diet alone, not this one or any other. Regular exercise is necessary not just to control and maintain weight, but for general good health as well, especially heart health. Eventually, and the sooner the better, you will have to increase your activity and make that a part of your life too. Many doctors believe that in the case of obesity, any weight loss plan that works is better than not losing the weight at all, but even they know that the hard part is not so much losing the weight, it's keeping it lost.

If you are not obese, think hard about why you want to go low-carb. If it is because you have seen someone lose lots of weight using this method, ask yourself, have they kept the weight off? Is this person a person who diets a lot? Is this a happy person? Are you attracted by the promised ease of the diet? Sometimes it is actually easier and saner to just examine your current routine and find ways to make modest food substitutions while slowly increasing your activity level. To lose a pound of fat you only have to eat 500 fewer calories a day. That's one snicker's bar and a small bag of chips. Replace those two foods with a couple of pieces of fruit and start taking the stairs every day and you'll see a difference in just a week or two.

Some people have good reasons not to go low-carb, ever. Runners and other athletes absolutely need the energy stored in carbs to perform well and feel well. Pregnant women need the B vitamins in whole grains, especially folic acid, which prevents birth defects and is found mainly in whole grain breads and cereals. Vegetarians will not enjoy limiting carbs, since carbs are a major part of a vegetarian diet. For vegetarians,

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