I've noticed an increasing number of people that are eating what I would call moderate carb diets after having eaten very low or low carb diets. Some are following WW, some South Beach, some their own plan. How did you arrive at your current way of eating?

If you consider yourself to be eating moderate or low to moderate carb, then you are who this thread is for. Let's not worry so much about numbers of carbs, which I think is in the spirit of moderate carb eating.

I eat what I consider moderate carb. It's the one that really settles out my blood sugar. If I go lower than 60 grams, I have real problems with low blood sugar. If I go much higher than 90 grams, I get a blood sugar rush and then a fast drop, even if I've spread the carbs out over the day.

I've been eating 60-80, sometimes up to 90 grams for 11 years now. It's how I feel best and am my healthiest.

great thread! I always like hearing how people have arrived at their optimum health!

Ann

I'm in, and spreading the word.

You drank the Kool-Aid???!!!

Hi Ann, are you Type 1 or Type 2 diabetic?

The moderate carb-aid.

I'm actually hypoglycemic. My grandmother and mother were both hypoglycemic before they became diabetic and I'm working very hard to not burn out my pancreas! Moderate to lowER carb is what the dietician told my son to eat as well. He went into hypoglycemic convulsions at age 6 and the dr. told us we had to really keep him on track diet-wise so he didn't burn out the pancreas and become diabetic in his teens. He's 18 now and, for the most part, is doing really well. He had to up his carbs last week cuz he went into mild seizures from a really low crash.

We definitely are in this for health. I'm wanting to lose more weight but health is first and foremost. I'm trying to eat healthfully, veggies, a little fruit, and lean protein.

Ann, I'm T2 insulin-dependent diabetic now, and I was hypoglycemic as a late teenager and into my early 20's. There wasn't much info on hypoglycemia then (I'm 46 now), and I wish that there had been. My mom is a T2 diabetic also, but is only on 1 500mg metformin daily. My sister and my daughter are currently hypoglycemic. When I told my PCP about them being hypoglycemic. she told me to tell them to be careful about what they ate, as they have a higher chance of becoming diabetic in the future.

May I pop in here? I have done Adkins and M&E, both had good results but I felt sluggish and I found it hard to stick with. One week ago, I started what I call semi-low carb and I feel great. I have energy to excercise and I don't have the cravings. I eat anywhere from 30 - 50 carbs a day and I am going to start carb rotating 2x a week. I do believe there are benifits if eating nutrient dense carbs.

I do cut back on the fat intake, but on an average day, I eat around 45% fat. I don't cat that low fat, I call that moderate fat. In my opinion, just the way it should be. I also count calories, I tend to rotate between 1,100 and 1,500 calories, it all depends on the day.

I think most diets have merit, but, moderation is the key. Moderation to me is different to others. Moderation with a piece of cake is one every few weeks, to my sister, moderation is one a day. I can't do sis's "moderation", I would be eating the whole cake within hours

Anyway, off the point, I like semi-low carb, the only problem that I saw with South Beach is that they limit fat. If I can't eat a chicken leg or steak I may go nuts! But, the diet does have very good merit as others do too.

Semi-lowcarb obviousely has many different numbers. 125 a day scares the heck out of me

I began LCing for health rather than weight loss and so I never felt the need to go as low as some people do. I also hate counting and weighing stuff. I don't really count carbs. What I do is eat foods that are relatively low carb. I do eat high carb foods, but if I am going to do that I eat a very small portion. On the occasions that I decide to plug stuff into fitday, I seem to eat around 70g/day (sometimes less, sometimes more).

I did try Atkins induction once about two months ago. I did lose about 4lbs, but I didn't like the way it made me feel. I also felt that my thinking was becoming disordered, as it became about which foods I could "afford" to eat as though foods were nothing more than the carbs they were made of. When I quit induction and quit counting stuff, I felt a great sense of relief and clarity, almost like I had come out from under Sylvia Plath's bell jar of carb-counting insanity.

I think a lot of people start to behave that way and develop an unnatural relationship with food where food becomes numbers. That's an astute comment.

Hello everybody,

Please allow me to introduce myself: I'm Liz from The Netherlands. On January 4th, 2008 I was all set to lose 40 pounds, warned by Oprah's/Dr. Oz's program, stating that fat on the omentum isn't good for our health and so I started off with the South Beach diet.

After a couple of months I couldn't stand meat and eggs anymore so I switched to the CAD/CALP program (by Richard and Rachel Heller). When I faced an unwanted 'plateau', I switched to the good old low carb "Scarsdale Medical Diet' (by Dr. Herman Tarnower in the seventies), by which I always tend to shed a few pounds but which I find to be more and more difficult to cope with.

I still have a few pounds to lose but that's not urgent anymore. More importantly I'd like to be freed of wanting 'high carb things' to eat after dinner. When CALP can teach me this new kind of behaviour and 'engrave' that in my system, I would have reached my main goal.

May I assume that you are all familiar with the South Beach Diet program?

I consider the first phase of that diet to be 'very low carb', the second Phase to be 'low carb', whereas the third phase I would call "moderate low carb'.

I got here by losing about 120 pounds on an Atkins variation, gaining about 20 when I quit getting on the scales (getting married again made other things more important), losing about 40 on low cal/low fat and being hungry, losing another 30 or so on Atkins and PPLP.

It was that last stretch that did it. I finally admitted that I was having a hard time losing unless my calories were very low, and that I didn't feel good on a diet that was close to 100% protein and fat. So I decided to go with what, over the years before the obesity epidemic hit, is what the healthy people I knew ate: mostly veggies, sufficient protein, a carb side, occasional fruit, rare desserts, limited snacks. I'm not doing it to lose weight at the moment, just to achieve a normal relationship with food and to feel good.

I am trying to get to the point that I don't measure everything I eat and stop my fixations on food.

Me too, Kallyn. Thinking of butternut squash or brussels sprouts are simply "carbohydrates" is one of the things I realized I was doing that was just not right.

That's interesting! I had a hypoglycemic suitemate who was diagnosed while we shared a suite. The diet she was given was also moderate carb. She even got a list of foods the cafeteria served that had nutrition info on them. That was back in like 1978.

I wonder why they recommend basically a high carb diet to diabetics and a moderate carb diet to people who are hypoglycemic. Or maybe yall just got lucky.

With the calorie restrictions for type 2, it starts to look more moderately carby. There is no such thing now as an ADA diabetic diet. They still have the silly food pyramid though.