Jonny Bowden, author, nutritionist and weight loss coach cuts through all the misconceptions about diet and fitness to help you transform your body, your health and your life.

To lose weight and get healthy, get the majority of your carbs from fruits and vegetables. Photo: [cipher], Flickr

What exactly is a "low-carb" diet, anyway?

Having just finished the revised and expanded edition of my 2004 best-seller "Living Low Carb" (out in January, in case you were interested!), I've been thinking a lot recently about low-carb diets. Specifically, I've been thinking about definitions.

For years, low-carb suffered from bad publicity. Atkins -- a superb nutritionist and very smart guy -- couldn't shake the stigma of recommending "pork rinds" ( a recommendation that was taken out of context), and people who didn't know any better thought his diet forbade all carbohydrates (it most certainly doesn't).

Ketosis-- a harmless metabolic state that the body goes into when carbohydrate intake is very low -- became identified with low-carb diets largely because early editions of Atkins' books stressed ketosis as a desirable goal for the first stage of the Atkins diet (which limited carbs to 20 grams a day). But very few low-carb diets put the body into ketosis.

Then there was the American Dietetic Association and its spokespeople, who frequently have a questionable relationship with the truth (just my opinion, not that of That's Fit). These folks even characterized Barry Sears' "The Zone" as a low-carb diet (even though nearly half of the calories on The Zone come from carbs).

So what exactly is a low-carb diet?

According to Richard Feinman, professor of biochemistry at SUNY Downstate Medical Center and head of the Nutrition and Metabolism Society (of which I am a proud member), 26 percent to 45 percent of calories from carbs is a good range for what we might call "moderate" or "controlled" carbohydrate eating. According to Feinman, less than 30 grams a day should be referred to as a "very low carbohydrate ketogenic diet." The term "ketogenic diet" should be reserved for the therapeutic approach to epilepsy, for which it works quite well.

Some low-carb diets for weight loss limit carbs strictly (20 to 30 grams) for the first couple of weeks (the Atkins Induction Phase), then add them back gradually. Many health professionals and weight-loss experts believe that you can get most of the benefits of "controlled carb eating" with upwards of 100 grams a day. In a recent post, I talked about a study that used a vegan version of Atkins -- containing 130 grams of carbs a day -- and everyone still lost weight, and had improvements in their risk factors for heart disease to boot.

Remember -- hard as it is to believe -- your body has no physiological requirement for carbohydrate. That's not to say you shouldn't eat carbs -- you should! But if you're looking to lose weight and improve your health, you should get the vast majority of them from vegetables and fruits.

Carbs from fruits and vegetables are loaded with vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, fiber and other good stuff that your body thrives on. And you can eat more vegetables and berries than you can imagine and still stay in the range of 100 to 130 grams of carbs a day. Add to that about 100 to 120 grams of protein and about 60 grams of fat, and you've got a blueprint for health and weight management that will work for just about anyone.

For more information on staying healthy and maintaining weight, visit www.jonnybowden.com.