Thank you, Debbie! I'd still like to lose another 100 pounds although I'll stop at whatever looks and feels good on me. Right now I'm more concerned with getting the blood sugar under control...and without meds (hopefully). Your numbers give me hope.

Thanks for bumping the other thread!

Melody

Holy mackerel!! Normally, my BS right before lunch is around 140-170 lately even on low carb (under 30gm) on Atkins.

This morning, instead of 2 eggs and 2 slices of bacon, I ate 1 egg, 2 tsp butter and 6 sl bacon. Just took my BS reading and it's 114! I'll be interested to see what it is after lunch since I don't dare take my Humalog for fear of dropping too low. I hope this is a good sign!

Melody

Elfie, I don't count calories. I do count grams of protein, carb, and fat. When I look up the calories in Fitday it's between 1300-1500.

Debbie like you sometimes I go over the protein if I have a hungry day. 75 instead of 65.

I think when I have too much protein I can't lose either. I think it's because my body is super, super good at gluconeogenesis after so many years of protein and sugar burning (I was never ever one of those low protein carb eaters). So excess protein gets turned into fuel very well - and I don't need that.

Not OD or Groves - she just can't bring herself to welcome fat. She's using a standard low-calorie protocol - no special tricks or named diet; just avoiding the food to which she's been shown to be intolerant.

Please post the weblink (URL) to that discussion.

http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=394198

I started the OD on Wednesday and, despite BG going down, am moving back to Atkins, at least temporarily. Nothing against the OD but it takes more time than I have right now to plan my menus to make sure I'm within the right ratios. I'm in the process of remodeling my kitchen (which sadly includes replacing some rotten wood in our support walls) while trying to run a business and getting ready for the holidays.

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Good luck, Elfie. I hope this thread (or the other thread ) stays alive. It's too bad many folks get discouraged by number crunching. I don't bother with it if I'm too busy - using my rules of thumb is usually good enough, and I find that when I do plug the numbers into Fitday, they work out most of the time. Close enough for government work, as they say. Besides, how could Kwasneiwski's precise ratios work for everyone, anyway, with all of our individual variations in metabolism?

My extremely simplified rules:
- Cut protein servings in half... literally. Half a can of tuna, half of a large burger patty, half of a pork chop, 3 egg yolks instead of 3 whole eggs, etc.
- Ample fat, preferably animal in nature. Throw a little extra cream in the coffee, butter on just about everything else, etc.
- Have a starch for the SO and steal some. A few bites of a potato or banana. That type of deal.

Mind you, I DO usually have the time and inclination to plan foods ahead of time and achieve the ratios. I'm certainly not dismissing the real Kwasneiwski plan. That's just a suggestion of what I often do. Maybe it's helpful to newbies who would otherwise dismiss it as "too complicated."

Hi Kristine,
I'll still be checking into this thread as the OD has made me more aware of how protein has been affecting my BG so I won't be throwing it all away and perhaps, after we finish the remodeling, I'll be less overwhelmed with everything that's going on in my life and go back to it.

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Kristine - over 14,000 posts! That's very generous of you - so many people must have benefited!

I would suggest that although Kwasniewski puts precise numbers to his ratios (1 : 2.5 - 3.5 : 0.5), remember there is a very broad range for the fats in those numbers and on pages 17-18 of Optimal Nutrition he gives other ratios for people in different circumstances. I reckon your "simplified rules" are spot on! My own diet is Palaeo, but I have begun loading in the fat and reducing the protein a little. I probably won't take my carbs up to the recommended OD proportion.

Golden thread, I will try cutting protein to 60g or so per day. I may have been way over-consuming protein into the region of about 150g per day, I checked a small packet of salmon fillets yestarday, something which I would normally consume at dinner, never mind other meals during the day, and those salmon fillets already had 52g of protein!

I have found that after a while, I know pretty much how much I can have of various foods. I make every attempt to log all that I eat, just because doing so helps to keep me on track. But if I go a bit over or under on the protein or carb, I don't give it much thought. The fact is, even weighing and measuring everything, we're still estimating most of the time. If I have some rotisserie chicken, for example, the macro breakdown would depend on exactly how much skin, white, and dark meat I eat, so I'd have to weigh them all out separately. That's not going to happen.

For the most part, I use a system similar to Kristine's: That is, I eat about half as much protein as I would have had before, and I make a conscious effort to increase the fat. I sometimes use rice cakes to add a bit of carb to a meal, but usually I have a bunch of mixed veg sauteed in coconut oil. And once again, I have to estimate what that comes to.

Ubizmo

True, we just do the best we can and know we will never be totally spot on. I *have* been trying to weight and measure everything lately, just to get on track and keep a relatively accurate food long here on MyPlan. But it's never possible to be perfect. And a couple times I have eaten away from home when I just had to "guesstimate" my portions - and just made the best guess I possibly could.

But I'm having a better feel now for allowable protein portions sizes (small, damn it) - and finding the last couple days that I actually should probably bump up the fat a bit. But I'm enjoying the food, and my scale dropped a little bit again today to another new low.

Need help I'm really struggling to keep protein portions at around 60g per day while keeping carbs at 40g aswell. It doesnt help that in London in UK most foods are still low fat.

Ive had to drastically cut my meat portions in order to keep protein at 60g, and now cream is making up a large portion of my calories. Now I see how its extremely hard to buy fatty meat here in london.

Hello kindke, do you have any ethnic shops where you might be able to purchase meat, such as Asian or Polish? I find that the regular markets here have the meat so trimmed of fat, also. Best of luck.