The following Mark's Daily Apple article was written by Mark Sisson.

And is narrated by Tina Lehman.

Eight reasons why low-carb diets actually work.

The popular story of how low-carb diets work goes something like this.

Reducing your carbohydrate intake lowers your insulin levels.

Since insulin keeps fat locked into adipose tissue,

lowering insulin can increase the amount of fat released to be burned for energy.

For the portion of the overweight obese population with insulin resistance and chronically

elevated insulin levels, this is a fairly accurate description of why low-carb diets work so well.

When you're an insulin-resistant hyper-responder in whom even a baked potato can cause elevated,

protracted spikes in insulin that hamper fat burning for long periods of time, or a person

living under the backdrop of perpetually elevated insulin, dropping the most insulinogenic

foods can be your way out of obesity.

That doesn't explain everyone's positive experience with low-carb diets.

There are many other mechanisms by which low-carb diets

exert their beneficial effects on body weight and body composition.

Let's take a look.

They increase protein.

Increasing protein intake has many beneficial effects on health, particularly if you're attempting to lose weight. Of all the macronutrients, protein increases satiation the most. This means a low-carb diet, replete in protein, can help control your appetite naturally. I wouldn't say effortlessly because deciding to eat more

meat and fewer carbs technically requires executive functioning. But you're no longer fighting

your own body's physiological desire for more food. You just don't want anymore. More protein also

helps you retain or even gain lean mass during weight loss.

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