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@federica said:
And we all know what happens when a member starts being rude and arrogant, don't we?
Yes, being mostly Buddhists here, we treat them with understanding, love and compassion (maybe the odd ban if they get too out of hand I suppose).
The odd sarky reply never hurts either.
Much.
Love you truly, madly deeply @Tosh but unfortunately, Moderation has nothing to do with Buddhism.
It's my job, and I have to wear two heads, and believe me, it's a tricky task to juggle. But fundamentally, my job is to keep it decent, polite, courteous and acceptable.
I don't let Buddhism influence my decision, but I try to act in a Buddhist manner with regard to my own attitude.
Starting with detachment.
Hope that helps.
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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
@Tosh said: Oh, the behaviour of the sugar industry is being compared to the tobacco industry too.
Did you know that cigarettes are loaded with sugar...?!
@Kerome that's a really good point. That might be part o the problem. Scientists are so often very particular types of people who perhaps aren't so good at the PR. They work really hard and publicize their work in journals, but that is where it ends. Getting that work to the public in an understandable way is hard, and right now a job mostly put out by the media, and we know how well that is going. Most people don't know how to read studies, so they just go by what the media says which is why there is so much confusion. Having taking many classes of statistics I can read them and know whether the results are as valid as is being claimed by the media. How to bridge that gap, though? Also, most people never find out about any study on anything unless the media brings it to their attention. Too many, sadly, simply aren't interested, even though these studies shape their very lives.
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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
The guy in @Tosh's video is a scientist/Doctor.
Doctor Michael Mosely is a scientist as well as a Doctor.
So I certainly take your point @Kerome, and I think @karasti answers it well.
As an aside, I have known quite a few teachers in my time, both as a student myself, and as a Parent-Governor at my kids' school.
All very knowledgeable, all eminently qualified in their subjects, all very experienced in their subject.
I would say only a few knew really well, how to communicate their subjects in a constructive and educational way.
It's one thing to know something.
It's quite another to know how to reach your audience and really 'click'.
I would suggest we can all remember our teachers, but I would guess that only one - maybe two, with luck - really stand out as an influence and example to us.
I think the same might be said in this field...
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
edited March 2017
We do have some good science communicators to the public, people like Prof Brian Cox, Dr Michio Kaku, Neil Degrasse Tyson, even Richard Dawkins. But we don't seem to have many politician scientists, or scientists who specialise in communicating with politicians.
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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
edited March 2017
At the risk of steering this discussion into risky and off-topic waters, I would suggest that Politicians are just as equipped with all the components we are; minds, hearts, eyes and mouths. Sadly, they are also often puppets and devotees of where there is money to be made. And the Food Industry is a huge and immeasurably wealthy puppet master.
Profit trumps proof (small 't').
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
It does, for many politicians and ordinary people, but should it? I feel people should take honesty, heartfulness and virtue much more seriously. There should be websites tracking the moral integrity of all politicians and people in public office.
I don't think right now that anything like that would even help. People who are so stuck on what they think and believe now just claim everything that disagrees with their opinions as "fake news." I've had people tell me that the senate roll that logs every senators vote on various bills was "biased." Fact does absolutely nothing for these people whatsoever. And the more you try to show them facts, no matter how sound and provable they are, the more they claim they are fake and biased. Their brains simply don't work that way I guess (per a few studies that have been done about it). The only thing they believe is how they feel, and they've been whipped into a frenzy using their feelings on various things. Science is taking a back seat more than it ever has and it seems like a focus on our health is going to go even further back. Our current government is looking to change what little progress we've made on improving our institutional meals and give even more power to the people who make it hard to find the facts about food science.
Really when you think about it, it's kind of crazy we need or want the government to tell us what and how to eat at all. Eating should be a pretty natural thing if we pay attention to what we need and what we've always needed throughout human history. Just because ads and stores tempt us with their crap doesn't mean any of that has changed but we've sure made it one of the most complicated aspects of our lives.
Quite a long time ago 20 years or so, i was reading a book for a class in college called "Lights Out: Sugar, Sleep and Survival" which was mostly about our circadian rhythms and our sleep cycles, but sugar came into the discussion. While I was reading the book, I wondered what life would be like if I lived more like the Natives would have lived here years ago. Or the way my ancestors lived in Finland, since this area is very similar (and why they chose it when they immigrated here). I came to my own conclusions long before LCHF became a thing or before Paleo was a thing. To me, it made the most sense that fish would be a major source of food. It is catchable (and fairly easily when you know how) year round, with an ample supply. We also have ample tree nuts. After that, white and red meats by hunting grouse and deer and bear and preserving it as pemmican and jerky. Plants here are kind of rare, they are impossible to grow much of the year, our growing season is like 88 days. Root veggies do well as well as things like kale and spinach (not that they grow wild, but asparagus does). Fruits are even more rare, a sweet treat in the summer and fall-berries, some grapes, and apples. Other than the ability to preserve some things like potatoes in underground root cellars, people in the climates I lived on lived almost entirely on animals because that is all there was for 8 months a year. We only have green plants from mid-May to early September.
So then I started wondering how we got vitamin C, since obviously we had no access to oranges back in the day. I assume it had to have largely come from the foods that the animals were eating (and when animals eat wild foods, it translates to nutrients our bodies can use much better than farmed animals).
As paleo and LCHF started to gain steam, i found out my theories were largely correct. Cold climate people got much of their vitamin C from organ meats and some from plants in the summer and fall. Fish is a good thing, when it's not laden with mercury and other metals. Some fruit, but not too much and what kind is ideal kind of depends where your genes spent most of their time climate-wise. While I love citrus fruit, it wasn't even available widely to my ancestors until the last 60 years. My grandparents rarely had them.
We are lucky to have the world's variety of food available at our fingertips all year round. But that doesn't mean we don't still have to pay attention to the natural cycles of what those foods offer us at different times a year. It works quite well with the hormonal cycles of the body. Somehow the human race managed to survive and obviously thrive despite some of them living in places where plants were not available most of the time. Knowing how good they are for us now is a good thing. I am glad I can get kale and spinach in January! But my body rarely craves it until spring, for good reason I think. In the winter I eat a lot of beets, potatoes, sweet potatoes etc. But the one thing that is clear is that in most of human history no matter where people lived, grains were not a part of our diet and we did just fine without them. Diets of people around the world were low carb for most of human history. I don't think changing that has done us many favors.
Sorry for the novel. It's a topic I love to talk about,
This isn't very Buddhist, and I hope it isn't too inappropriate, but I've a pic of myself after two months on LCHF, with a pair of trousers that used to fit me, but don't now:
I've always ran, and done a fair bit of lifting, but always had a belly on me; I just couldn't move it.
You can't outrun or out lift a bad diet, but on the changeover to LCHF, the fat just melted off me. No hunger too.
I do suffer with a sugar addiction, which I'm great with for about three weeks, and then I crack and fall off the wagon with style.
Which I've just done.
Time to get back up though.
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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
I think the photo would only be inappropriate if there was a distinct lack of underwear...
I have only just begun a different regime and am changing my attitude to foods, thereby going for the LCHF option (I refuse to call it a 'diet'. The word is just too negatively loaded and implies restrictions on a temporary basis, meaning an eventual return to bad habits. IMO... Besides, eating anything is a diet....)
I'm still struggling though and would ask if I can pick your brain...
I know the amount of carbs need reducing to between 50 - 100 max per day. But I presume that I should also be taking note of "of which are sugars" indicator.
What would you say is an acceptable ratio of sugar to carb quantity?
For example, I love Finn Crisps, and each crisp has 3.8 carbs of which 0.1 is sugar - which I would estimate to be a good ratio.
I lead an active life, but am limited in the type of exercise I can take because, briefly, my left leg is functioning at a much lower level than the right.
I have to wear a brace to stop my ankle rolling outwards, so my movement is decidedly restrained and reduced.
I reduced my carbs to 20 grams per day and so did Mrs Tosh, but I know that's pretty harsh. If you're after weight loss I don't think exercise is that important; I'd say it's 80% diet if I had to pluck a figure out of the air.
I just check the carb content on an item; sugar is just a carb; and I'd look at the total carb content and subtract the fibre from it.
So if the total carb content said 15 grams and the dietary fibre said 3 grams, I'd class that as 12 grams of carbs.
I don't know if that's the right way to do it, it's just the way we do it.
I'd also say it's time to let go of Finn Crisps; sorry! Well at least for 21 days, then have a break maybe, before getting back on the LCHF.
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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!
(Oh, ok......)
The bonus is that my H has agreed to re-educate his palate too. He's a Type II Diabetic, but he's determined to try to improve his health and actually rid himself of the affliction, naturally....
He really does have a love of carbs and has a distinctly sweet tooth. He'd probably meet your Gateau and trump it with two or three cream horns, a chocolate eclair and a couple of doughnuts too.... quite happily.....
So what Carbs DO you include in your diet to provide that necessary component?
I know it sounds like a dumb question, so I will elaborate.
My H is a meat lover and it's a struggle to get him to eat vegetables. I mean, seriously.
But he loves a good salad with my Italian dressing, (Olive oil, naturally!) and is fond of peas, though he favours tinned to fresh. Go figure. Dislikes carrots, and will eat broccoli, as long as there is a good Hollandaise sauce with it.... It's a problem for me, because meals can be limited....
Peas are out. Green leafy veg is in. As a general rule any VEG that grows above the ground is okay, but anything that grows in the ground isn't. Onions are okay in moderation.
www.myfitnesspal.com
Is pretty good for checking what's in your food.
And if I haven't posted this yet, Sarah Hallberg is great; I must've watched her Type II Diabettes Ted Talk about three times (she explains how it all works, so suitable for non diabetics too); she's a doctor who specialises in obesity:
Reversing Type II diabettes:
She also has a very good youtube channel; full of good advice:
How to start LCHF:
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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
(I think the first video is in your first post in this thread, if I'm not mistaken?) .... but (it's late! I have work in the morning!) I'll watch the second tomorrow....
Thanks for your help, @Tosh!
With our son, we subtract fiber from the total carb count. It has no impact on blood sugar because it doesn't digest. So a Finn Crisp serving here is 10g of carbs, but 2g of fiber, so it would count as 8g. I count it the same for myself. I eat more carb than Tosh does though, more like 50-80 a day. Even though they only have 1g of added sugar, the flour that is used to make them is basically treated like sugar and is converted to fat just the same (and resistant to normal insulin just the same in someone who is type 2). When you stay in a ketogenic state, the weight loss is much faster. Everyone seems to have a slightly different sweet spot where they can still enjoy some carbs if they want but still lose weight (but slower than if they were keto). But the magic # for almost everyone I've read about for a keto diet is 30g or less. I'm not ready to stick to that long term yet, but I definitely noticed a different when I did it for a few weeks.
This time of year I crave asparagus, artichoke, and avocado like crazy. And eggs. So i eat them together. Soft boiled eggs over asparagus, over avocado slices, (not over artichoke though), over spinach with some cheese melted on top. My husband just this week has asked to jump on the LCHF option too (I like that use of option, I hate the word diet, too). He will be the same kind of challenge, loves meat, hates vegetables. He likes smoothies, but they always have apple and banana. His meat is breaded 75% of the time. It's going to be a big change for him, lol. But he wants to look better in his bathing suit when we go on vacation in June and he can't deny how much it works for me.
Pinterest is a great place to find LCHF meals and snack ideas!
going from a high or higher carb "diet" to a low carb one, you can expect to feel off for a few days. Tired, headaches, just generally icky. It takes a few days to work that out. It takes longer for your body to adapt to using fats instead of sugar, but once it does, you'll be amazed how good you feel, and steady through the day instead of craving things, feeling tired, needing a pick-me-up etc. Those rollercoasters stop when you go low carb.
@karasti said:
going from a high or higher carb "diet" to a low carb one, you can expect to feel off for a few days. Tired, headaches, just generally icky. It takes a few days to work that out. It takes longer for your body to adapt to using fats instead of sugar, but once it does, you'll be amazed how good you feel, and steady through the day instead of craving things, feeling tired, needing a pick-me-up etc. Those rollercoasters stop when you go low carb.
Thanks @karasti - I must admit I have been feeling sh*tty today. I suspect it is for the reasons you've mentioned above......
@karasti Northern peoples got, and still get, much of their vitamin C from gathering wild berries, and making jam to last year-round. That's a great source of C, because the different berry varieties are high in other vitamins, lutein, and other important nutrients, as well.
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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
edited March 2017
So what about pulses? Lentils, chickpeas, beans....?
Oh, okay (ETA), it's the fibre, right........?
So, going back to my Finn crisps, while the Carb content is 3.8, the fibre is 1.3, leaving 2.5, of which sugars make up 0.1....so it's 2.5 carbs, which isn't in and of itself, too bad.....
@federica said:
wow, this carb counting is a bit intense!!
There's some hardcore advocates who calculate what their intake of carbs, protein and fats should be, and stick to that.
I don't, though we did do a few weeks of counting carbs and calories. What I (I do the cooking) did then was to keep the meals really simple; chicken breast, brocolli, and green beans would be a meal, with added fat (like pesto or a full fat cream cheese sauce), so I'd only have a minimum of ingredients to track.
A work lunch would be boiled eggs, some ham, a little cheese and a little mayo. Everyday.
The book I first got this from advocates 'listening to your body' with regards when and how much to eat, so I try (unfortunately my body often screams "CHOCOLATE").
Mrs Tosh is stricter than me mind; she does LCHF to run ultra marathons. Carb fuelled running relies on glycogen which is in limited supply, whereas fat-adapted endurance athletes have an almost unlimited fuel supply (body fat). It means she shouldn't have to fuel as much when she does those really long distance events (she ran 100 miles in June in 24 hours, but really struggled with eating after 70 miles; there was puke, snot and tears; it wasn't pretty).
For us pulses, lentils, chickpeas and beans are out. Green beans are okay though.
Thanks @karasti - I must admit I have been feeling sh*tty today. I suspect it is for the reasons you've mentioned above......
They call it 'keto flu'. I didn't get it; maybe a little.
It'll pass. Maybe 3 days to a week. After 21 days you'll be swinging it. After decades of relying on carbs as fuel, changing over to being a lean-mean-ketogenic-fat-burning-machine can have a few bumps.
Try to be strict, especially during your first 21 days. Primal Endurance reckons that after doing this for a while, we can dip in and out of being ketogenic; our bodies become accustomed to both ways of eating.
I don't know if that's true; in things like this there's a lot of 'bro science', so for me it comes down to experimentation.
Changing over for me wasn't terribly difficult, but my carbs were already lower than what most people eat, as I found myself getting rid of stuff a little at a time. Got rid of pop, got rid of beer, got rid of sugary sweets, greatly reduced bread and pasta. So I didn't have so far to go. I had a day or 2 of feeling a bit fuzzy headed and tired and I think I had a headache one day (but that could have been from other things, too).
When I did the Vegan diet in January, I felt good, but my body just cannot handle that amount of grains and legumes. I started small and upped my servings a bit each week but no matter how small the serving was, I got horribly bloated from them and over 5-6 weeks it never resolved. Even though my total calorie intake was the same, my carbs went from about 75 a day to over 150 a day on the vegan diet (because of all the quinoa, brown rice and chickpeas, and more starchy veggies) and I gained weight. Even though it was all really healthy food. My body just does best on low carb.
@Tosh that 60-70 mile mark seems to hit a lot of people, whether they are high or low carb, even the pros struggle. I watched alot of the Western States race online last summer and many of them were puking their way through those last miles. They looked so miserable, poor things. But it does seem to be less frequent and less extreme in those who eat low carb. They just don't have as much need to HAVE to stuff their bodies with cookies, chips and coke. I wish your wife well. It's an amazing feat to me, to run 100 miles.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
I've had various experiences with low-carb diets... I tried the 4-hour body diet from Tim Ferris's book, which was quite good because it allowed some more variety in the way of legumes and beans. I also tried the original Atkins diet and another low-carb diet, and lost a lot of weight on those.
However I don't seem to be able to just maintain weight when I'm not on a low-carb diet, over the last eight years I've yo-yo'ed twice and at the moment I'm trying a vegetarian variant which has some lentils and rice crackers in it. We'll have to weight and see.
I go from significantly overweight - would like to lose 25 kg - to decent weight - lost all of it, but it takes a fair amount of time, both to lose it and to put it back on. Last time I gained a chunk of weight I just didn't watch my weight for a year, and put on nearly 10 kg, and I snack relatively little, but at the moment I'd love to lose some kilos.
I think I'm going to have to admit that a permanent discipline of watching my weight and doing periodic exercise to maintain weight.
@Dakini heating fruits destroys about half the vitamin c content in them. They still have some, but the amount is pretty negligible compared to eating them fresh/raw. I actually spent many, many summers picking gallons of berries and making preserves with my grandparents. But I ate more than I contributed to the pile, LOL. Here, the Natives mostly used berries for pemmican. Meat was by far the largest part of the diet for them, and per my grandparents, for my family back in Finland (they actually lived in Lapland which is above the arctic circle) except instead of deer and fish, they mostly ate reindeer and fish. Vitamin C is is available in much higher concentrations in organ meats than in berries (which rely on ideal weather conditions to grow well at all). Berries were definitely a big part of it, but specific to this area and my ancestral home, meat was a huge part of their daily nutritional needs. My great-grandmother wrote extensively in her journal about what they ate when she still lived there. Not saying it's true for every northern climate, just what I know of this particular area and far northern areas of Finland. I hardly wait for summer for berry season. I am hoping our wet winter will give us a good blueberry crop. Last year was only so-so. We had a heat wave right as they were ripening and many of them shriveled or didn't finish developing. We grow raspberries in our yard, picking them first thing to go with breakfast is my favorite summer activity!
@federica said:
So what about pulses? Lentils, chickpeas, beans....?
Oh, okay (ETA), it's the fibre, right........?
So, going back to my Finn crisps, while the Carb content is 3.8, the fibre is 1.3, leaving 2.5, of which sugars make up 0.1....so it's 2.5 carbs, which isn't in and of itself, too bad.....
wow, this carb counting is a bit intense!!
You've got the idea. Legumes (beans, lentils, split peas), even when you subtract the fiber, have too many carbs for a weight-loss diet. For a maintenance diet, a smallish amount would be ok.
And yes, I've figured out which of those Finn-crisp-type cracker breads have the lowest carb count, and enjoy a crisp with cheese and cucumber occasionally. Mainly, I have a HUGE salad for dinner, with some protein, and perhaps another green veggie, cooked. Sometimes a small artichoke. The big salad, with a variety of greens and other veggies in it, helps me feel full. And a good mixed-greens (etc.) salad is very appetizing.
@Tosh what do you eat to stay below 20 grams? Not something I want to do, i won't give up fruit or yogurt, LOL. just curious. I'm at 15 grams already today, that's before dinner and any snacks (which are rare). I had smoked turkey egg cups with greens and a little cheese for breakfast (and coffee with coconut oil) and baby bella "pizzas" with cheese and black olives for lunch.Dinner will be chicken breast in homemade tomato sauce with asparagus. I have a hard time conceiving of even being able to stay under 20 no matter what I eat, since everything usually has at least a little bit of carb in it. I have a friend, like I said, who has been doing this for 2 years now, and she also sticks to around 20g. But, she basically lives on bacon, cheese and chicken breast. Even a large salad with no dressing is usually like 10-15 grams for me. Just curious how you manage to stay that low.
I have headache and our weather is unpleasant, so apparently cheese is my go-to comfort for today, lol. I usually have a large salad for lunch but not feeling it with the rainy and super windy weather.
Yeah (chiming in w/@karasti), I've been wanting to comment on the 20 carbs limitation, @Tosh. The low-carb diets I'm familiar with limit the meals to 10 carbs per meal for rapid weight loss, 15 carbs/meal for more gradual loss (if someone only needs to lose around 20 lbs., say). A too-strict carb restriction would make the diet difficult to follow, IMO, though some people have managed on Atkins, which allows 0 carbs. But I guess the important thing is that you and your SO are able to stick with it, so ... maybe it doesn't matter that it's so limited.
How do you feel about it? Do you feel deprived, or have you become comfortable with it? I assume you must be ok with it, if you've made such great progress, and like it.
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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
@Dakini said:
How do you feel about it? Do you feel deprived, or have you become comfortable with it? I assume you must be ok with it, if you've made such great progress, and like it.
(Yeah, right.... don't mention 6 cherry bakewells, a large bag of chocolate raisins and Chocolate gateau.... )
@karasti said: @Tosh what do you eat to stay below 20 grams?
Lunch was three hard boiled eggs (we eat a ton of eggs), some sliced ham and full fat mayo. (This is pretty standard for us; most working days). Each egg has 1 gram of carbs. Add another gram for the mayo, though I doubt it's as much as that.
Dinner was chicken breast, asparagus, and some thinly sliced cabbage and peppers, fried. Cabbage is the highest at 7 grams of carbs per 100 grams. With pesto for added fat.
I've also had a low carb protein shake.
I didn't count the carbs, but I reckon that's not far off the 20 grams.
I have went through a phase of counting both calories and carbs, which worked and we both lost weight quickly, but it's a pain counting.
How do you feel about it? Do you feel deprived, or have you become comfortable with it? I assume you must be ok with it, if you've made such great progress, and like it.
Generally I feel great, but I do have a sugar addiction thing going on, but there's no diet that would allow for the amount of sugar I consume when I consume it.
But I can go two-or-three weeks before the wheels fall off and I find myself toughing a bag of chocolate raisins followed by a large slab of Galaxy chocolate! Mmmmm.
The effect of that is an almost immediate 3 lb gain the next day, but over the next three days that returns to normal; it's water weight. Carbs produce glycogen which is liquid based. Once I cut the carbs that burns off.
I do like this way of eating; it's not difficult at all; really, and we both feel healthier. And you do just naturally gravitate towards eating less. Missing meals is easy; I never have breakfast (it's not the most important meal of the day; that's a myth promulgated by cereal companies).
Even my bowel movements are generally healthier and normally don't smell much, if at all (to much information?).
Nor do I get that post-meal sleepiness; energy levels are more evened out. I finished work, walked the dog, made dinner, rested 90 minutes and went to the gym; no problems.
Me on the old diet wouldn't have went to the gym after dinner.
@Tosh, we have to count all day every day for our son, so it's just second nature to us. We know the carb count for virtually every food that exists off the top of our heads, lol.
Carbs also force us to retain water because they require water to be used by the cells.
I just read an article headline this morning about sugar addiction and how it affects the brain, and why. It was really interesting, let me see if I can find it. But basically it is because it acts on the brain the same as any addiction does, and requires more and more, just like alcohol, to get the same brain fix. So that makes sense why you struggle with it, as the article talked about people who have had other addictions frequently trade for a different one, whether sugar, excess exercise, or whatever.
@karasti said:But basically it is because it acts on the brain the same as any addiction does, and requires more and more, just like alcohol, to get the same brain fix. So that makes sense why you struggle with it, as the article talked about people who have had other addictions frequently trade for a different one, whether sugar, excess exercise, or whatever.
It's really common for recovered alkies to get a sweet tooth when we put down the booze.
I go to some A.A. meetings and the gimps have chocolate all over the tables; particularly bad after Christmas when everyone is bringing in their left-overs to the meeting to 'dispose' of them.
I often whine that you wouldn't get Over-eaters bringing in booze to an over-eaters anonymous meeting, yet at A.A. meetings there's often junk food everywhere; but they just smile at me.
If I were in charge things would be soooooo different.
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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
Could I just say that, even though you eat pesto for the fat content, it also still carries carbs, (about 6 grammes) due to the cheese and oil.
I think it's fair to say that all foods have carbs, so even though you're counting the obvious ones, you're omitting the 'hidden' ones.... ('you're' being generic, not specific to you, @Tosh....) No matter how hard we try to omit carbs, the diet would be pretty taxing with just bare proteins (lean meat) and fibre (green leafy vegetables) and fat (flax seed oil, butter, olive oil....)
So far, we have totally eliminated bread, potatoes and snacks, such as biscuits, chocolate, cakes and pastries, which is ok by me, because I don't have what could classically be described as a 'sweet tooth'. It's much harder for my hubby, though, who incidentally, is also a smoker, although he really wants to quit (You know.... sugar.....).
This evening, we had:
Fresh crab, prawn salad with home-made Marie Rose sauce, avocado and green salad;
A plate of mussels;
home-made plain yoghurt with grated apple, two walnut halves and 5 pistachio nuts.
I know there were carbs in there, but honestly, it was much less than the proteins, fats and fibre.
Oh, and I made mayonnaise à la Butter Bob: By adding the egg yolks and seasonings to the oil, and then whizzing at unimaginable speed with a hand-held whizzer, which created an absolutely delicious mayonnaise in 7 seconds.
DAFUQ!!! 7 seconds!! I timed it - ! Unbelievable!!
Can't wait to show mother, who has. all her life, made mayonnaise by sl-o-o-o-o-o-o-wly adding oil to hand-stirred egg yolks, which has never taken less than a quarter of an hour!!
@federica said:
Could I just say that, even though you eat pesto for the fat content, it also still carries carbs, (about 6 grammes) due to the cheese and oil.
I think it's fair to say that all foods have carbs, so even though you're counting the obvious ones, you're omitting the 'hidden' ones.... ('you're' being generic, not specific to you, @Tosh....) No matter how hard we try to omit carbs, the diet would be pretty taxing with just bare proteins (lean meat) and fibre (green leafy vegetables) and fat (flax seed oil, butter, olive oil....)
Yes, you're right, fede, I'm not that OCD about it, but I don't think you need to be unless you hit a plateau and then it might be time to try something different.
That Dr Sarah Hallsberg says the last thing she wants to tell anyone is that they have to count anything for the rest of their lives and the book I got most of my info from (Primal Endurance) advocates 'natural intelligence' and listening to your body. To just eat lchf when you're hungry. Train hard when you feel good. Rest or take it easy when you don't; don't be OCD about training either.
I'm like water so I'm experimenting in this direction since it seems easier.
Apologies if I gave the impression that anyone must stick to a rigid 20 grams per day. I think anything under 100 grams is considered lchf and 50 grams could be the 'sweet spot'.
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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
edited March 2017
I saw the first video which (in spite of the squeaky voice!) was very heartening. I'm going to watch the second one in the morning, and I look forward to learning more.... I liked her 5 bits of advice for getting on the right track, eating-wise (towards the middle-end of the 1st video, at 12.11 minutes in) which I'm going to copy out and stick on my fridge. And on the dining-room wall. And in the bed room. And the bathroom. And on the TV. Just so's my H gets the message, that is......
@Tosh I didn't get the impression you were suggesting everyone should go for 20g I was just curious what you were doing after I see what I came up with today. Thanks! I'm at 19g for today (not really for trying, just the way the day went) but am debating if it would be worth the effort to stick with it. We are going to Hawaii on June 2 and it would be nice to maximize the results. Why, I don't know, no one there knows me, lol. More so for my ego when I have to buy a new bathing suit before we go I guess!
@Bunks if you are still feeling crappy the next day, try adding in some sodium. When you go low carb, your body gets rid of a lot of water, and with it a lot of electrolytes, especially sodium. Have some good soup or broth or just add some salt to some dishes, you might find it helps. Some of it is just a sort of withdrawl from carbs and sugar, but a lot of it is that loss of sodium, especially if you have brain fog going on with it.
Thanks @karasti - I must admit I have been feeling sh*tty today. I suspect it is for the reasons you've mentioned above......
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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
I think my drinking copious quantities of ACV and bicarb of soda (diluted, of course!) has certainly helped stave off those feelings....I manage to achieve a combination that actually resembles carbonated water with a squeeze of lemon, which I find very refreshing and thirst-quenching.
I think we have touched on this topic in the past, but we humans drink far less water than we should, and dehydration can cause a lot of problems. Upping fluid intake is not a bad thing.
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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
High fat? I cant belive its good for you to eat a lot of butter, bacon and read meat, your colestrol will increase and your blood pressure aswell.
The 'fat is bad' for you is based on outdated and bad science.
Ancel Keys was one of the first to promote this myth when he observed fat blocked drains. He did a study called The Seven Country study and cherry picked his findings.
They also did stuff like feed rabbits a high fat diet and they all got heart disease. Rabbits produce all their own cholesterol, so adding yet more wasn't going to be good for them. And had they done the same experiment using dogs, they would've gotten a totally different result.
There is no evidence that fat is bad for you.
But I understand that we've had the 'fat is bad' drummed into us from an early age, while we're chugging down fruit juices, which were advertised as healthy, which is basically just sugar water (carbs).
Going back to the last page, where @Tosh posted this picture, I found the Times Magazine Article which makes for sobering, informative and interesting reading.
If Americans - and others elsewhere - are being prescribed and fed anything, it's a whopping load of lies.
the stupid thing is, they based the entirety of that diet advice on ONE flawed study. And now that they've known better for many years now, it's still a fight to get things to change. Who knows how long it'll take. Most people still think the enemy is full fat milk, butter and eggs. So they eat fake butter (oil spreads) which are a million times worse. Ugh. It's interesting that we thought the answer to a recent problem in human history was to eat more processed stuff and less of the stuff people have eating for thousands of years, even millions.
I agree with what @Tosh said earlier, even if it also feels a bit tin-foil-hat to me, too. But it's hard to believe at least some of it isn't some bizarre conspiracy (even unintentional perhaps) between big food, big health and pharma and the government to make particular people rich. They will never admit it or see it that way, but when you really look, that is very much what it seems The End of Overeating was really eye-opening as well. Makes a person mad to realize how much we are manipulated by everyone all to make a buck while we suffer with obesity and all assorted illnesses and eventually, death.
They were looking for an answer to rising heart disease back in the 60s. They should have been barking more up the movement tree than diet at that point. Diet some, as that is when we really started to up our carb intake. But that's really when people started taking office jobs over labor jobs and spending all day not moving and then our diets went down hill on top of it. So much we've given up in the name of societal progress and raising ourselves above savages and peasants.
How do you feel about it? Do you feel deprived, or have you become comfortable with it? I assume you must be ok with it, if you've made such great progress, and like it.
Generally I feel great, but I do have a sugar addiction thing going on, but there's no diet that would allow for the amount of sugar I consume when I consume it.
But I can go two-or-three weeks before the wheels fall off and I find myself toughing a bag of chocolate raisins followed by a large slab of Galaxy chocolate! Mmmmm.
The effect of that is an almost immediate 3 lb gain the next day, but over the next three days that returns to normal; it's water weight. Carbs produce glycogen which is liquid based. Once I cut the carbs that burns off.
I do like this way of eating; it's not difficult at all; really, and we both feel healthier. And you do just naturally gravitate towards eating less. Missing meals is easy; I never have breakfast (it's not the most important meal of the day; that's a myth promulgated by cereal companies).
Even my bowel movements are generally healthier and normally don't smell much, if at all (to much information?).
Nor do I get that post-meal sleepiness; energy levels are more evened out. I finished work, walked the dog, made dinner, rested 90 minutes and went to the gym; no problems.
Me on the old diet wouldn't have went to the gym after dinner.
I'm 47 too; so no spring chicken.
Right--you shouldn't get any post-meal sleepiness, because you've eliminated almost all carbs, so your blood sugar won't spike and crash. It's the insulin reaction that can cause the post-meal sleepiness. The diet avoids that.
RE: sugar cravings--you don't lose those after being off of sugar for a few weeks? In my experience, once you clear refined sugar out of your system, and the gut critters that live off it die off (yeast, etc.), the cravings are gone. One thing that may help is to psych yourself to view other things as "treats"--program your mind to look forward to a half avocado, small artichoke, or whatever else turns you on: bacon for breakfast, or whatever's allowable on the diet that's a favorite of yours. A few strawberries with home-whipped cream (no sugar). Anything you can come up with to designate as a treat. Most dieters (on conventional diets) can't have high-fat items, so you can use that as your "treat" category.
Probably, you've already tried something like that, though.
Still, if you're making progress anyway, it can't be all bad. The 3 lb. weight gain the day after the sugar binge has to do with water weight, but it comes right back off as soon as you get back on the wagon.
@Dakini you'd think that would happen but often it doesn't. I'm not sure if it's true for everyone? Or just some people. I can go months on a low carb diet, and one craving will throw the whole thing off. For me, PMS is the really hard time. I was reading about it not long ago, something about all the hormone that makes carb cravings more common, and for me, giving into them even once is usually a downward spiral. 3 weeks a month I can walk by anything and not thing twice. During PMS it is a literal mental battle. I usually send my husband to the store, because even if it's been 3 months off carbs, I can walk by the bakery and come home with 6 donuts that I then hide from my family and eat, lol. I have conversations with myself about it and the "right" side never wins. It doesn't matter what I tell myself about how long it's been or how I'll feel guilty after, or how it doesn't even taste as good as I'm imagining it will. I know all that. It doesn't stop me.
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federicaSeeker of the clear blue sky...Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubtModerator
...Which no doubt, @karasti brings you to this conclusion.... as they say - 'Many a true word spoken in jest' - !
Just saw this article pop up in my fb feed. It amazes me the number of people who give kids poptarts for breakfast. They are a breakfast item at our school. 72 grams of carbs for 2 poptarts. Gag. Cereal isn't any better considering most kids have 2-3 servings.
@karasti said:
the stupid thing is, they based the entirety of that diet advice on ONE flawed study.
A little like the "vaccination causes autism" lie......
Sort of. Except that there were immediate professional, qualified voiced denying this. And more successfully so due to the social media outlets available.
In the case of 'fats clog your arteries' the "common sense" folk didn't have a broad a stream then, to contradict the findings. I think that plays a part into why the lie was believed for so long.
And is still being perpetuated today.
I bought a copy of a Health magazine yesterday, and there's an article in it on reducing fats to put less pressure on the heart.
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Love you truly, madly deeply @Tosh but unfortunately, Moderation has nothing to do with Buddhism.
It's my job, and I have to wear two heads, and believe me, it's a tricky task to juggle. But fundamentally, my job is to keep it decent, polite, courteous and acceptable.
I don't let Buddhism influence my decision, but I try to act in a Buddhist manner with regard to my own attitude.
Starting with detachment.
Hope that helps.
Did you know that cigarettes are loaded with sugar...?!
http://www.barnardmindsolution.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Special-Report-Sugar-In-Ciggarettes.pdf
and more recently....
https://www.pressreader.com/uk/daily-mail/20170103/282475708499942
It's odd how people are willing to listen to the lobbyists, but not to the science. Maybe what society needs is better science communicators.
@Kerome that's a really good point. That might be part o the problem. Scientists are so often very particular types of people who perhaps aren't so good at the PR. They work really hard and publicize their work in journals, but that is where it ends. Getting that work to the public in an understandable way is hard, and right now a job mostly put out by the media, and we know how well that is going. Most people don't know how to read studies, so they just go by what the media says which is why there is so much confusion. Having taking many classes of statistics I can read them and know whether the results are as valid as is being claimed by the media. How to bridge that gap, though? Also, most people never find out about any study on anything unless the media brings it to their attention. Too many, sadly, simply aren't interested, even though these studies shape their very lives.
The guy in @Tosh's video is a scientist/Doctor.
Doctor Michael Mosely is a scientist as well as a Doctor.
So I certainly take your point @Kerome, and I think @karasti answers it well.
As an aside, I have known quite a few teachers in my time, both as a student myself, and as a Parent-Governor at my kids' school.
All very knowledgeable, all eminently qualified in their subjects, all very experienced in their subject.
I would say only a few knew really well, how to communicate their subjects in a constructive and educational way.
It's one thing to know something.
It's quite another to know how to reach your audience and really 'click'.
I would suggest we can all remember our teachers, but I would guess that only one - maybe two, with luck - really stand out as an influence and example to us.
I think the same might be said in this field...
We do have some good science communicators to the public, people like Prof Brian Cox, Dr Michio Kaku, Neil Degrasse Tyson, even Richard Dawkins. But we don't seem to have many politician scientists, or scientists who specialise in communicating with politicians.
At the risk of steering this discussion into risky and off-topic waters, I would suggest that Politicians are just as equipped with all the components we are; minds, hearts, eyes and mouths. Sadly, they are also often puppets and devotees of where there is money to be made. And the Food Industry is a huge and immeasurably wealthy puppet master.
Profit trumps proof (small 't').
It does, for many politicians and ordinary people, but should it? I feel people should take honesty, heartfulness and virtue much more seriously. There should be websites tracking the moral integrity of all politicians and people in public office.
I don't think right now that anything like that would even help. People who are so stuck on what they think and believe now just claim everything that disagrees with their opinions as "fake news." I've had people tell me that the senate roll that logs every senators vote on various bills was "biased." Fact does absolutely nothing for these people whatsoever. And the more you try to show them facts, no matter how sound and provable they are, the more they claim they are fake and biased. Their brains simply don't work that way I guess (per a few studies that have been done about it). The only thing they believe is how they feel, and they've been whipped into a frenzy using their feelings on various things. Science is taking a back seat more than it ever has and it seems like a focus on our health is going to go even further back. Our current government is looking to change what little progress we've made on improving our institutional meals and give even more power to the people who make it hard to find the facts about food science.
Really when you think about it, it's kind of crazy we need or want the government to tell us what and how to eat at all. Eating should be a pretty natural thing if we pay attention to what we need and what we've always needed throughout human history. Just because ads and stores tempt us with their crap doesn't mean any of that has changed but we've sure made it one of the most complicated aspects of our lives.
Quite a long time ago 20 years or so, i was reading a book for a class in college called "Lights Out: Sugar, Sleep and Survival" which was mostly about our circadian rhythms and our sleep cycles, but sugar came into the discussion. While I was reading the book, I wondered what life would be like if I lived more like the Natives would have lived here years ago. Or the way my ancestors lived in Finland, since this area is very similar (and why they chose it when they immigrated here). I came to my own conclusions long before LCHF became a thing or before Paleo was a thing. To me, it made the most sense that fish would be a major source of food. It is catchable (and fairly easily when you know how) year round, with an ample supply. We also have ample tree nuts. After that, white and red meats by hunting grouse and deer and bear and preserving it as pemmican and jerky. Plants here are kind of rare, they are impossible to grow much of the year, our growing season is like 88 days. Root veggies do well as well as things like kale and spinach (not that they grow wild, but asparagus does). Fruits are even more rare, a sweet treat in the summer and fall-berries, some grapes, and apples. Other than the ability to preserve some things like potatoes in underground root cellars, people in the climates I lived on lived almost entirely on animals because that is all there was for 8 months a year. We only have green plants from mid-May to early September.
So then I started wondering how we got vitamin C, since obviously we had no access to oranges back in the day. I assume it had to have largely come from the foods that the animals were eating (and when animals eat wild foods, it translates to nutrients our bodies can use much better than farmed animals).
As paleo and LCHF started to gain steam, i found out my theories were largely correct. Cold climate people got much of their vitamin C from organ meats and some from plants in the summer and fall. Fish is a good thing, when it's not laden with mercury and other metals. Some fruit, but not too much and what kind is ideal kind of depends where your genes spent most of their time climate-wise. While I love citrus fruit, it wasn't even available widely to my ancestors until the last 60 years. My grandparents rarely had them.
We are lucky to have the world's variety of food available at our fingertips all year round. But that doesn't mean we don't still have to pay attention to the natural cycles of what those foods offer us at different times a year. It works quite well with the hormonal cycles of the body. Somehow the human race managed to survive and obviously thrive despite some of them living in places where plants were not available most of the time. Knowing how good they are for us now is a good thing. I am glad I can get kale and spinach in January! But my body rarely craves it until spring, for good reason I think. In the winter I eat a lot of beets, potatoes, sweet potatoes etc. But the one thing that is clear is that in most of human history no matter where people lived, grains were not a part of our diet and we did just fine without them. Diets of people around the world were low carb for most of human history. I don't think changing that has done us many favors.
Sorry for the novel. It's a topic I love to talk about,
This isn't very Buddhist, and I hope it isn't too inappropriate, but I've a pic of myself after two months on LCHF, with a pair of trousers that used to fit me, but don't now:
I've always ran, and done a fair bit of lifting, but always had a belly on me; I just couldn't move it.
You can't outrun or out lift a bad diet, but on the changeover to LCHF, the fat just melted off me. No hunger too.
I do suffer with a sugar addiction, which I'm great with for about three weeks, and then I crack and fall off the wagon with style.
Which I've just done.
Time to get back up though.
I think the photo would only be inappropriate if there was a distinct lack of underwear...
I have only just begun a different regime and am changing my attitude to foods, thereby going for the LCHF option (I refuse to call it a 'diet'. The word is just too negatively loaded and implies restrictions on a temporary basis, meaning an eventual return to bad habits. IMO... Besides, eating anything is a diet....)
I'm still struggling though and would ask if I can pick your brain...
I know the amount of carbs need reducing to between 50 - 100 max per day. But I presume that I should also be taking note of "of which are sugars" indicator.
What would you say is an acceptable ratio of sugar to carb quantity?
For example, I love Finn Crisps, and each crisp has 3.8 carbs of which 0.1 is sugar - which I would estimate to be a good ratio.
I lead an active life, but am limited in the type of exercise I can take because, briefly, my left leg is functioning at a much lower level than the right.
I have to wear a brace to stop my ankle rolling outwards, so my movement is decidedly restrained and reduced.
Any suggestions?
I reduced my carbs to 20 grams per day and so did Mrs Tosh, but I know that's pretty harsh. If you're after weight loss I don't think exercise is that important; I'd say it's 80% diet if I had to pluck a figure out of the air.
I just check the carb content on an item; sugar is just a carb; and I'd look at the total carb content and subtract the fibre from it.
So if the total carb content said 15 grams and the dietary fibre said 3 grams, I'd class that as 12 grams of carbs.
I don't know if that's the right way to do it, it's just the way we do it.
I'd also say it's time to let go of Finn Crisps; sorry! Well at least for 21 days, then have a break maybe, before getting back on the LCHF.
Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!
(Oh, ok......)
The bonus is that my H has agreed to re-educate his palate too. He's a Type II Diabetic, but he's determined to try to improve his health and actually rid himself of the affliction, naturally....
He really does have a love of carbs and has a distinctly sweet tooth. He'd probably meet your Gateau and trump it with two or three cream horns, a chocolate eclair and a couple of doughnuts too.... quite happily.....
So what Carbs DO you include in your diet to provide that necessary component?
I know it sounds like a dumb question, so I will elaborate.
My H is a meat lover and it's a struggle to get him to eat vegetables. I mean, seriously.
But he loves a good salad with my Italian dressing, (Olive oil, naturally!) and is fond of peas, though he favours tinned to fresh. Go figure. Dislikes carrots, and will eat broccoli, as long as there is a good Hollandaise sauce with it.... It's a problem for me, because meals can be limited....
Peas are out. Green leafy veg is in. As a general rule any VEG that grows above the ground is okay, but anything that grows in the ground isn't. Onions are okay in moderation.
www.myfitnesspal.com
Is pretty good for checking what's in your food.
And if I haven't posted this yet, Sarah Hallberg is great; I must've watched her Type II Diabettes Ted Talk about three times (she explains how it all works, so suitable for non diabetics too); she's a doctor who specialises in obesity:
Reversing Type II diabettes:
She also has a very good youtube channel; full of good advice:
How to start LCHF:
(I think the first video is in your first post in this thread, if I'm not mistaken?) .... but (it's late! I have work in the morning!) I'll watch the second tomorrow....
Thanks for your help, @Tosh!
Maybe you're starting to convert me @Tosh
With our son, we subtract fiber from the total carb count. It has no impact on blood sugar because it doesn't digest. So a Finn Crisp serving here is 10g of carbs, but 2g of fiber, so it would count as 8g. I count it the same for myself. I eat more carb than Tosh does though, more like 50-80 a day. Even though they only have 1g of added sugar, the flour that is used to make them is basically treated like sugar and is converted to fat just the same (and resistant to normal insulin just the same in someone who is type 2). When you stay in a ketogenic state, the weight loss is much faster. Everyone seems to have a slightly different sweet spot where they can still enjoy some carbs if they want but still lose weight (but slower than if they were keto). But the magic # for almost everyone I've read about for a keto diet is 30g or less. I'm not ready to stick to that long term yet, but I definitely noticed a different when I did it for a few weeks.
This time of year I crave asparagus, artichoke, and avocado like crazy. And eggs. So i eat them together. Soft boiled eggs over asparagus, over avocado slices, (not over artichoke though), over spinach with some cheese melted on top. My husband just this week has asked to jump on the LCHF option too (I like that use of option, I hate the word diet, too). He will be the same kind of challenge, loves meat, hates vegetables. He likes smoothies, but they always have apple and banana. His meat is breaded 75% of the time. It's going to be a big change for him, lol. But he wants to look better in his bathing suit when we go on vacation in June and he can't deny how much it works for me.
Pinterest is a great place to find LCHF meals and snack ideas!
I started this on Saturday......so far so good.
I had scrambled eggs with vegies and tuna this morning for breakfast. I ate too much but I am still trying to work out portion sizes.
I found by lunch time I was craving something sweet (I normally have fruit in the morning) so I had to have a banana. Feel heaps better afterwards!
going from a high or higher carb "diet" to a low carb one, you can expect to feel off for a few days. Tired, headaches, just generally icky. It takes a few days to work that out. It takes longer for your body to adapt to using fats instead of sugar, but once it does, you'll be amazed how good you feel, and steady through the day instead of craving things, feeling tired, needing a pick-me-up etc. Those rollercoasters stop when you go low carb.
Thanks @karasti - I must admit I have been feeling sh*tty today. I suspect it is for the reasons you've mentioned above......
@karasti Northern peoples got, and still get, much of their vitamin C from gathering wild berries, and making jam to last year-round. That's a great source of C, because the different berry varieties are high in other vitamins, lutein, and other important nutrients, as well.
So what about pulses? Lentils, chickpeas, beans....?
Oh, okay (ETA), it's the fibre, right........?
So, going back to my Finn crisps, while the Carb content is 3.8, the fibre is 1.3, leaving 2.5, of which sugars make up 0.1....so it's 2.5 carbs, which isn't in and of itself, too bad.....
wow, this carb counting is a bit intense!!
There's some hardcore advocates who calculate what their intake of carbs, protein and fats should be, and stick to that.
I don't, though we did do a few weeks of counting carbs and calories. What I (I do the cooking) did then was to keep the meals really simple; chicken breast, brocolli, and green beans would be a meal, with added fat (like pesto or a full fat cream cheese sauce), so I'd only have a minimum of ingredients to track.
A work lunch would be boiled eggs, some ham, a little cheese and a little mayo. Everyday.
The book I first got this from advocates 'listening to your body' with regards when and how much to eat, so I try (unfortunately my body often screams "CHOCOLATE").
Mrs Tosh is stricter than me mind; she does LCHF to run ultra marathons. Carb fuelled running relies on glycogen which is in limited supply, whereas fat-adapted endurance athletes have an almost unlimited fuel supply (body fat). It means she shouldn't have to fuel as much when she does those really long distance events (she ran 100 miles in June in 24 hours, but really struggled with eating after 70 miles; there was puke, snot and tears; it wasn't pretty).
For us pulses, lentils, chickpeas and beans are out. Green beans are okay though.
Sorry.
They call it 'keto flu'. I didn't get it; maybe a little.
It'll pass. Maybe 3 days to a week. After 21 days you'll be swinging it. After decades of relying on carbs as fuel, changing over to being a lean-mean-ketogenic-fat-burning-machine can have a few bumps.
Try to be strict, especially during your first 21 days. Primal Endurance reckons that after doing this for a while, we can dip in and out of being ketogenic; our bodies become accustomed to both ways of eating.
I don't know if that's true; in things like this there's a lot of 'bro science', so for me it comes down to experimentation.
Changing over for me wasn't terribly difficult, but my carbs were already lower than what most people eat, as I found myself getting rid of stuff a little at a time. Got rid of pop, got rid of beer, got rid of sugary sweets, greatly reduced bread and pasta. So I didn't have so far to go. I had a day or 2 of feeling a bit fuzzy headed and tired and I think I had a headache one day (but that could have been from other things, too).
When I did the Vegan diet in January, I felt good, but my body just cannot handle that amount of grains and legumes. I started small and upped my servings a bit each week but no matter how small the serving was, I got horribly bloated from them and over 5-6 weeks it never resolved. Even though my total calorie intake was the same, my carbs went from about 75 a day to over 150 a day on the vegan diet (because of all the quinoa, brown rice and chickpeas, and more starchy veggies) and I gained weight. Even though it was all really healthy food. My body just does best on low carb.
@Tosh that 60-70 mile mark seems to hit a lot of people, whether they are high or low carb, even the pros struggle. I watched alot of the Western States race online last summer and many of them were puking their way through those last miles. They looked so miserable, poor things. But it does seem to be less frequent and less extreme in those who eat low carb. They just don't have as much need to HAVE to stuff their bodies with cookies, chips and coke. I wish your wife well. It's an amazing feat to me, to run 100 miles.
I've had various experiences with low-carb diets... I tried the 4-hour body diet from Tim Ferris's book, which was quite good because it allowed some more variety in the way of legumes and beans. I also tried the original Atkins diet and another low-carb diet, and lost a lot of weight on those.
However I don't seem to be able to just maintain weight when I'm not on a low-carb diet, over the last eight years I've yo-yo'ed twice and at the moment I'm trying a vegetarian variant which has some lentils and rice crackers in it. We'll have to weight and see.
I go from significantly overweight - would like to lose 25 kg - to decent weight - lost all of it, but it takes a fair amount of time, both to lose it and to put it back on. Last time I gained a chunk of weight I just didn't watch my weight for a year, and put on nearly 10 kg, and I snack relatively little, but at the moment I'd love to lose some kilos.
I think I'm going to have to admit that a permanent discipline of watching my weight and doing periodic exercise to maintain weight.
@Dakini heating fruits destroys about half the vitamin c content in them. They still have some, but the amount is pretty negligible compared to eating them fresh/raw. I actually spent many, many summers picking gallons of berries and making preserves with my grandparents. But I ate more than I contributed to the pile, LOL. Here, the Natives mostly used berries for pemmican. Meat was by far the largest part of the diet for them, and per my grandparents, for my family back in Finland (they actually lived in Lapland which is above the arctic circle) except instead of deer and fish, they mostly ate reindeer and fish. Vitamin C is is available in much higher concentrations in organ meats than in berries (which rely on ideal weather conditions to grow well at all). Berries were definitely a big part of it, but specific to this area and my ancestral home, meat was a huge part of their daily nutritional needs. My great-grandmother wrote extensively in her journal about what they ate when she still lived there. Not saying it's true for every northern climate, just what I know of this particular area and far northern areas of Finland. I hardly wait for summer for berry season. I am hoping our wet winter will give us a good blueberry crop. Last year was only so-so. We had a heat wave right as they were ripening and many of them shriveled or didn't finish developing. We grow raspberries in our yard, picking them first thing to go with breakfast is my favorite summer activity!
You've got the idea. Legumes (beans, lentils, split peas), even when you subtract the fiber, have too many carbs for a weight-loss diet. For a maintenance diet, a smallish amount would be ok.
And yes, I've figured out which of those Finn-crisp-type cracker breads have the lowest carb count, and enjoy a crisp with cheese and cucumber occasionally.
Mainly, I have a HUGE salad for dinner, with some protein, and perhaps another green veggie, cooked. Sometimes a small artichoke. The big salad, with a variety of greens and other veggies in it, helps me feel full. And a good mixed-greens (etc.) salad is very appetizing.
@Tosh what do you eat to stay below 20 grams? Not something I want to do, i won't give up fruit or yogurt, LOL. just curious. I'm at 15 grams already today, that's before dinner and any snacks (which are rare). I had smoked turkey egg cups with greens and a little cheese for breakfast (and coffee with coconut oil) and baby bella "pizzas" with cheese and black olives for lunch.Dinner will be chicken breast in homemade tomato sauce with asparagus. I have a hard time conceiving of even being able to stay under 20 no matter what I eat, since everything usually has at least a little bit of carb in it. I have a friend, like I said, who has been doing this for 2 years now, and she also sticks to around 20g. But, she basically lives on bacon, cheese and chicken breast. Even a large salad with no dressing is usually like 10-15 grams for me. Just curious how you manage to stay that low.
I have headache and our weather is unpleasant, so apparently cheese is my go-to comfort for today, lol. I usually have a large salad for lunch but not feeling it with the rainy and super windy weather.
Yeah (chiming in w/@karasti), I've been wanting to comment on the 20 carbs limitation, @Tosh. The low-carb diets I'm familiar with limit the meals to 10 carbs per meal for rapid weight loss, 15 carbs/meal for more gradual loss (if someone only needs to lose around 20 lbs., say). A too-strict carb restriction would make the diet difficult to follow, IMO, though some people have managed on Atkins, which allows 0 carbs. But I guess the important thing is that you and your SO are able to stick with it, so ... maybe it doesn't matter that it's so limited.
How do you feel about it? Do you feel deprived, or have you become comfortable with it? I assume you must be ok with it, if you've made such great progress, and like it.
(Yeah, right.... don't mention 6 cherry bakewells, a large bag of chocolate raisins and Chocolate gateau....
)
Lunch was three hard boiled eggs (we eat a ton of eggs), some sliced ham and full fat mayo. (This is pretty standard for us; most working days). Each egg has 1 gram of carbs. Add another gram for the mayo, though I doubt it's as much as that.
Dinner was chicken breast, asparagus, and some thinly sliced cabbage and peppers, fried. Cabbage is the highest at 7 grams of carbs per 100 grams. With pesto for added fat.
I've also had a low carb protein shake.
I didn't count the carbs, but I reckon that's not far off the 20 grams.
I have went through a phase of counting both calories and carbs, which worked and we both lost weight quickly, but it's a pain counting.
Generally I feel great, but I do have a sugar addiction thing going on, but there's no diet that would allow for the amount of sugar I consume when I consume it.
But I can go two-or-three weeks before the wheels fall off and I find myself toughing a bag of chocolate raisins followed by a large slab of Galaxy chocolate! Mmmmm.
The effect of that is an almost immediate 3 lb gain the next day, but over the next three days that returns to normal; it's water weight. Carbs produce glycogen which is liquid based. Once I cut the carbs that burns off.
I do like this way of eating; it's not difficult at all; really, and we both feel healthier. And you do just naturally gravitate towards eating less. Missing meals is easy; I never have breakfast (it's not the most important meal of the day; that's a myth promulgated by cereal companies).
Even my bowel movements are generally healthier and normally don't smell much, if at all (to much information?).
Nor do I get that post-meal sleepiness; energy levels are more evened out. I finished work, walked the dog, made dinner, rested 90 minutes and went to the gym; no problems.
Me on the old diet wouldn't have went to the gym after dinner.
I'm 47 too; so no spring chicken.
@Tosh, we have to count all day every day for our son, so it's just second nature to us. We know the carb count for virtually every food that exists off the top of our heads, lol.
Carbs also force us to retain water because they require water to be used by the cells.
I just read an article headline this morning about sugar addiction and how it affects the brain, and why. It was really interesting, let me see if I can find it. But basically it is because it acts on the brain the same as any addiction does, and requires more and more, just like alcohol, to get the same brain fix. So that makes sense why you struggle with it, as the article talked about people who have had other addictions frequently trade for a different one, whether sugar, excess exercise, or whatever.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/02/health/sugar-brain-diet-partner/index.html
Thanks, Karasti, yeh I know, I know.
It's really common for recovered alkies to get a sweet tooth when we put down the booze.
I go to some A.A. meetings and the gimps have chocolate all over the tables; particularly bad after Christmas when everyone is bringing in their left-overs to the meeting to 'dispose' of them.
I often whine that you wouldn't get Over-eaters bringing in booze to an over-eaters anonymous meeting, yet at A.A. meetings there's often junk food everywhere; but they just smile at me.
If I were in charge things would be soooooo different.
Could I just say that, even though you eat pesto for the fat content, it also still carries carbs, (about 6 grammes) due to the cheese and oil.
I think it's fair to say that all foods have carbs, so even though you're counting the obvious ones, you're omitting the 'hidden' ones.... ('you're' being generic, not specific to you, @Tosh....) No matter how hard we try to omit carbs, the diet would be pretty taxing with just bare proteins (lean meat) and fibre (green leafy vegetables) and fat (flax seed oil, butter, olive oil....)
So far, we have totally eliminated bread, potatoes and snacks, such as biscuits, chocolate, cakes and pastries, which is ok by me, because I don't have what could classically be described as a 'sweet tooth'. It's much harder for my hubby, though, who incidentally, is also a smoker, although he really wants to quit (You know.... sugar.....).
This evening, we had:
Fresh crab, prawn salad with home-made Marie Rose sauce, avocado and green salad;
A plate of mussels;
home-made plain yoghurt with grated apple, two walnut halves and 5 pistachio nuts.
I know there were carbs in there, but honestly, it was much less than the proteins, fats and fibre.
Oh, and I made mayonnaise à la Butter Bob: By adding the egg yolks and seasonings to the oil, and then whizzing at unimaginable speed with a hand-held whizzer, which created an absolutely delicious mayonnaise in 7 seconds.
DAFUQ!!! 7 seconds!! I timed it - ! Unbelievable!!
Can't wait to show mother, who has. all her life, made mayonnaise by sl-o-o-o-o-o-o-wly adding oil to hand-stirred egg yolks, which has never taken less than a quarter of an hour!!
Yes, you're right, fede, I'm not that OCD about it, but I don't think you need to be unless you hit a plateau and then it might be time to try something different.
That Dr Sarah Hallsberg says the last thing she wants to tell anyone is that they have to count anything for the rest of their lives and the book I got most of my info from (Primal Endurance) advocates 'natural intelligence' and listening to your body. To just eat lchf when you're hungry. Train hard when you feel good. Rest or take it easy when you don't; don't be OCD about training either.
I'm like water so I'm experimenting in this direction since it seems easier.
Apologies if I gave the impression that anyone must stick to a rigid 20 grams per day. I think anything under 100 grams is considered lchf and 50 grams could be the 'sweet spot'.
I saw the first video which (in spite of the squeaky voice!) was very heartening. I'm going to watch the second one in the morning, and I look forward to learning more.... I liked her 5 bits of advice for getting on the right track, eating-wise (towards the middle-end of the 1st video, at 12.11 minutes in) which I'm going to copy out and stick on my fridge. And on the dining-room wall. And in the bed room. And the bathroom. And on the TV. Just so's my H gets the message, that is......
@Tosh I didn't get the impression you were suggesting everyone should go for 20g
I was just curious what you were doing after I see what I came up with today. Thanks! I'm at 19g for today (not really for trying, just the way the day went) but am debating if it would be worth the effort to stick with it. We are going to Hawaii on June 2 and it would be nice to maximize the results. Why, I don't know, no one there knows me, lol. More so for my ego when I have to buy a new bathing suit before we go I guess!
@Bunks if you are still feeling crappy the next day, try adding in some sodium. When you go low carb, your body gets rid of a lot of water, and with it a lot of electrolytes, especially sodium. Have some good soup or broth or just add some salt to some dishes, you might find it helps. Some of it is just a sort of withdrawl from carbs and sugar, but a lot of it is that loss of sodium, especially if you have brain fog going on with it.
>
Thanks @karasti - I must admit I have been feeling sh*tty today. I suspect it is for the reasons you've mentioned above......
I think my drinking copious quantities of ACV and bicarb of soda (diluted, of course!) has certainly helped stave off those feelings....I manage to achieve a combination that actually resembles carbonated water with a squeeze of lemon, which I find very refreshing and thirst-quenching.
I think we have touched on this topic in the past, but we humans drink far less water than we should, and dehydration can cause a lot of problems. Upping fluid intake is not a bad thing.
Going back to the last page, where @Tosh posted this picture, I found the Times Magazine Article which makes for sobering, informative and interesting reading.
If Americans - and others elsewhere - are being prescribed and fed anything, it's a whopping load of lies.
the stupid thing is, they based the entirety of that diet advice on ONE flawed study. And now that they've known better for many years now, it's still a fight to get things to change. Who knows how long it'll take. Most people still think the enemy is full fat milk, butter and eggs. So they eat fake butter (oil spreads) which are a million times worse. Ugh. It's interesting that we thought the answer to a recent problem in human history was to eat more processed stuff and less of the stuff people have eating for thousands of years, even millions.
I agree with what @Tosh said earlier, even if it also feels a bit tin-foil-hat to me, too. But it's hard to believe at least some of it isn't some bizarre conspiracy (even unintentional perhaps) between big food, big health and pharma and the government to make particular people rich. They will never admit it or see it that way, but when you really look, that is very much what it seems
The End of Overeating was really eye-opening as well. Makes a person mad to realize how much we are manipulated by everyone all to make a buck while we suffer with obesity and all assorted illnesses and eventually, death.
They were looking for an answer to rising heart disease back in the 60s. They should have been barking more up the movement tree than diet at that point. Diet some, as that is when we really started to up our carb intake. But that's really when people started taking office jobs over labor jobs and spending all day not moving and then our diets went down hill on top of it. So much we've given up in the name of societal progress and raising ourselves above savages and peasants.
Right--you shouldn't get any post-meal sleepiness, because you've eliminated almost all carbs, so your blood sugar won't spike and crash. It's the insulin reaction that can cause the post-meal sleepiness. The diet avoids that.
RE: sugar cravings--you don't lose those after being off of sugar for a few weeks? In my experience, once you clear refined sugar out of your system, and the gut critters that live off it die off (yeast, etc.), the cravings are gone. One thing that may help is to psych yourself to view other things as "treats"--program your mind to look forward to a half avocado, small artichoke, or whatever else turns you on: bacon for breakfast, or whatever's allowable on the diet that's a favorite of yours. A few strawberries with home-whipped cream (no sugar). Anything you can come up with to designate as a treat. Most dieters (on conventional diets) can't have high-fat items, so you can use that as your "treat" category.
Probably, you've already tried something like that, though.
Still, if you're making progress anyway, it can't be all bad. The 3 lb. weight gain the day after the sugar binge has to do with water weight, but it comes right back off as soon as you get back on the wagon.
@Dakini you'd think that would happen but often it doesn't. I'm not sure if it's true for everyone? Or just some people. I can go months on a low carb diet, and one craving will throw the whole thing off. For me, PMS is the really hard time. I was reading about it not long ago, something about all the hormone that makes carb cravings more common, and for me, giving into them even once is usually a downward spiral. 3 weeks a month I can walk by anything and not thing twice. During PMS it is a literal mental battle. I usually send my husband to the store, because even if it's been 3 months off carbs, I can walk by the bakery and come home with 6 donuts that I then hide from my family and eat, lol. I have conversations with myself about it and the "right" side never wins. It doesn't matter what I tell myself about how long it's been or how I'll feel guilty after, or how it doesn't even taste as good as I'm imagining it will. I know all that. It doesn't stop me.
...Which no doubt, @karasti brings you to this conclusion.... as they say - 'Many a true word spoken in jest' - !
@federica indeed!
So easy to confuse the 2!
Just saw this article pop up in my fb feed. It amazes me the number of people who give kids poptarts for breakfast. They are a breakfast item at our school. 72 grams of carbs for 2 poptarts. Gag. Cereal isn't any better considering most kids have 2-3 servings.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/04/sugar-alcohol-child-breakfast-diabetes-liver-disease-corporate?CMP=share_btn_fb
A little like the "vaccination causes autism" lie......
Sort of. Except that there were immediate professional, qualified voiced denying this. And more successfully so due to the social media outlets available.
In the case of 'fats clog your arteries' the "common sense" folk didn't have a broad a stream then, to contradict the findings. I think that plays a part into why the lie was believed for so long.
And is still being perpetuated today.
I bought a copy of a Health magazine yesterday, and there's an article in it on reducing fats to put less pressure on the heart.
I aim to write....