Are Low GI Diets Better Than The Atkins/Low Carb Diets?

Low carbing (and specifically, the Atkins Diet) has been my lifesaver. It was only after countless years of miserable, ineffective low calorie/low fat dieting that I read Dr Atkins' books, found I have a very low tolerance to carbs and finally lost my excess weight.

Low GI diets are in some ways the logical successors of the so-called 'low carb revolution'. (Low GI has been dubbed 'the healthy face of low carbing' because it is more closely aligned to the existing healthy eating guidelines).

Whether low GI is a worthy successor to low carb is open to debate. A low GI diet is undoubtedly more healthy than a diet full of 'bad' carbs such as white bread, cakes, pastries, candy and sugary drinks. However it doesn't cater for those people like me whose tolerance is so low that we can't even eat 'good' carbs such as wholegrain bread and rice, quinoa, amaranth, millet, whole fruits and starchy vegetables without putting on weight. Yet we can eat a healthy low carb diet based on fish, poultry, meat, eggs, nuts and seeds, salads and green veg and berry fruits and plenty of 'good' fats and lose weight despite having more calories than on our 'healthy eating' high carb/low fat diets.

It's a pity some people are still trying to find reasons for the Atkins Diet and other low carb diets 'not working', because it's blinding them to the fact that we could stop both the obesity and the diabetes epidemics if we recognized that overweight is, in many cases, simply the outward manifestation of a biochemical/metabolic inability to deal with a high carb diet.

More information on how to choose between a low carb and a low GI diet is available in the
'Easy Guide to Low Carb, Low GI and Low GL Diets'