Hunker down SHAPE UP!

Who says you can't eat carbs if you want to lose weight? Follow our comforting winter warmer plan and get ready for the party season

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WHY CARBS ARE DEEMED 'BAD'

Despite the huge hype behind low-carb diets, there's little evidence that they're more effective for weight loss. In 2018, nutrition researchers at Glasgow University assessed the evidence on carbohydrates and weight loss, and found that most of the headline-grabbing research reviews on low-carb dieting were of poor quality. On the other hand, the more robust scientific analyses - which often had less attention-showed no or little weight-loss advantage of low-carb diets over higher-carb ones.

Want to lose weight without feeling deprived? Well, you can! It's perfectly possible to shed those surplus pounds without depriving yourself of carbs. What's more, you'll probably find weight loss easier when you don't feel that diet deprivation, which often comes from cutting out foods you love. And with carbs still a feature on the menu, your energy levels are far less likely to flag. Win-win!

HOW IT WORKS

Our healthy diet is calorie controlled (to a max of 1,500 calories a day) to achieve the sustained weight loss you need, but it also contains modest portions of carbohydrate foods (including one or two sweet treats), to satisfy your carb cravings. Carbohydrates contain only four calories per gram, compared with nine calories per gram in fat. So you can consume a bigger volume of food on a carb-containing diet than on one that's high in fat, such as keto.