Research
Macro partitioning
Low-carbohydrate diets improve long-term cardiovascular risk factors (specifically triglycerides and HDL cholesterol) compared to balanced diets, despite no long-term difference in weight loss.
Even if your weight stabilizes to match a balanced diet after a year, your blood lipid profile may improve on a low-carb diet. Specifically, expect lower triglycerides and higher HDL ('good') cholesterol, which are positive markers for heart health.
ModerateSupportsMEDIUM confidence
a long-term reduction of triglycerides (23.26 [-45.53, -0.98] mg/dl at 18-30 months), and increase of HDL cholesterol (MD 4.94 [0.30, 9.57] mg/dl at 18-30 months), were observed.
Why this rating
Moderate quality evidence for lipid changes; heterogeneity exists but trends are consistent.
Source
Effectiveness of low‐carbohydrate diets for long‐term weight loss in obese individuals: A meta‐analysis of randomized controlled trials
Giovanni Antonio Silverii et al. · Diabetes Obesity and Metabolism · 2022
DOI 10.1111/dom.14709
Meta-analysis · 25 studiesCited 36×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Low-carbohydrate diets produce significantly greater short-term weight loss (3-8 months) in obese individuals compared to non-carbohydrate-restricted diets, but this advantage disappears in the long term (10-30 months).Good
- The renal safety of long-term low-carbohydrate diets in obese individuals remains undetermined due to insufficient reporting of renal function data in clinical trials.Limited
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