The Importance of Exercise While on a Low Carb Diet. Articles | Low Carb Lifestyle Pages

By: Darren Williger

The Atkins Diet, which received widespread public interest in 1972, did not fail to encourage the introduction of regular exercise. The dieter who has agreed to abstain from carbohydrates must appreciate the extent to which new chemicals can build up in a system that looks to protein as an energy source. Those chemicals form in the body muscles.

Still, the formation of those chemicals should not be viewed as a reason to cut back on the use of muscles (or in other words, to cut back on exercise). In fact exercise can help to push unwanted chemicals out of the muscles. Prolonged exercise improves the circulation of blood in the muscles.

Exercise should be seen as an essential part of all low carb living. After all, even low carb food contains calories. Exercise gives the dieter an added way to burn off those calories. Moreover, the expected changes in the body biochemistry, changes that take place in a body on a high protein, low carb diet dictate the need for exercise.

Following exercise, the number of muscle capillaries increases by as much as 50%. At the same time, the existing muscle capillaries develop an even larger opening. Blood flows faster in those capillaries. The faster-flowing blood speeds removal from the exercised muscles of unwanted chemicals.

At other locations on these low carb pages you will find information about low carb recipes and low carb snacks. While those foods all contribute to the value of a low carb diet plan, the willingness to stick with those foods does not guarantee success with that same plan.

In order to feel secure about the results expected from adherence to a low carb diet, the dieter needs to take time to exercise his or her muscles. Research on weight loss has revealed that any effort aimed at a reduction of body fat should include sessions during which the dieter engages in muscle strengthening exercises.

A person on a low carb diet might take-in a good deal of fat. Of all the tissues in the body, muscle tissues are best equipped to use the calories that are found in fat. The more muscle that a dieter can develop, the greater the amount of fat that his or her muscles will manage to burn.

Those muscles do not need to be exercising at all times. A muscle burns some fat, even when it is at rest. Still, muscle building exercises can help a dieter to develop a set of fat burning “tools.”

One word of warning: Muscle weighs more than fat. At first the stronger muscles formed by someone on a low carb diet can cause a slight weight gain. Eventually though the dieter will loose weight. Moreover, the exercising dieter will facilitate removal from his or her muscles of any chemicals that form while the body uses protein as an energy source.

Dieting should make the dieter feel healthier. A dieter is more apt to enjoy that feeling if he or she takes time to exercise while adhering to any sort of low carb diet.