WEll Wednesday -

I do heavy tennis training, swimming and running on low-carb. I eat carbs right before tennis training - around 30g. I do this because it makes my performance much better. The rest of the time I eat lots of animal fat, some protein and some low-carb vegetables. On training days my carbs are around 40-50g total, and if I am just doing swimming or running, they are very low indeed (only around 10-20g carbs) - as for me these sports don't involve lots of anaerobic sprinting.

I eat double the calories I used to and have lost a little weight (although I wasn't that big to start with). BEfore I had to constantly restrict calories to avoid excessive weight gain - now that isn't a worry. I used to eat around 1,400 Kcals and now I eat over 2000Kcals. My skin cleared up 90% (eczema and acne) also.

I am not restricting my calories and I am losing. You can lose weight any number of ways. I don't think I have once read on this forum a post in which anyone denies there are other ways to lose weight besides low carbing.

What most of us are saying is that this way of eating or way of life is suitable for US. I have tried a number of diets and fallen off the wagon for various reasons. I tried Weight Watchers and found that counting points (just another way of counting calories) too tedious and time consuming. I tried the Rice Diet which is mainly vegetarian cycled with lacto-ovo vegetarian and got bored with it. I tried Medi-Fast and it tasted awful and I tried just scaling back on what I eat but that didn't work because if there is a bowl of mashed potatoes or pasta in front of me I will pig out on it and STILL be hungry in a little while. I personally don't think Low Carbing is the "be all and end all" of diets or ways of eating. One thing I do like about LC though is that there are various ways to do it and it can be customized. Most people who have done it, start out on a plan like Atkins or some other well-known plan and then tweak it to suit their own needs. If you tried it and didn't like it, so be it, but why keep bashing it on here? You have not shown any proof other than personal anecdotes that it doesn't work. Since various factors go into why a diet doesn't work (such as you not liking meat and cheese) then you can't just dismiss this way of eating out of hand as bad for everyone. You have stated several time that you don't like it. That's OK. No one went out and found you and dragged you over to this low carb forum to make you try Low Carbing did they? Those of us who stay on this board like low carbing. End of story.

Hey wooo, is there a recipe for these out there someplace?

No more than it would have had you never reduced carbs...If anything, LCing augments insulin sensitivity... making the rate of post-loss regain and tolerance for carbs temporarily better.

There is nothing about low carbing that makes your body permanently more sensitive to carb related weight gain. For the first few days, you will regain water very quickly, this usually totals less than 10 lbs. Also, at first one might be spiking harder in response to carbs. This makes your body make more insulin (because of spikes), which makes your body more likely to store fat. However, once your body gets used to carbs again after it makes the metabolic shift... everything is back as it was and any weight you gain is just the weight associated with relapsing from a diet.

If your carb tolerance is good, and you are eating a normal diet with normal amounts of energy (i.e. not relapsing into over eating of junk), then there shall be no dramatic weight regain following introduction of carbs. Lots of people on the forum have went from something like Atkins induction (almost no carbs) to a low GI plan or something similar, and they did *not* regain weight.

Speaking personally, I am very carb sensitive, and if I eat even half the carbs you're eating I start gaining weight really easy... unless I do rather low cals. If I ate 1700 cals and 200 carbs I would gain a tremendous amount of weight rather quickly. 1700 cals plus 125ish carbs put on so much weight in just about 2 or 3 weeks time (christmas week to mid/early jan). I gained like 10 pounds, 5 of them in true fat weight. On LC I can eat so much more food, and if I keep my carbs low enough, it is almost impossible to gain weight. First, I can eat a tremendous amount of food for my size and really not gain (sometimes the more I eat, I seem to *lose* if anything). Second, I simply cannot put away as many cals as I can of a higher carb diet. I become satisfied before that.


That's BS.
If she were eating 1000 cals of LC and exercising the same, I can gaurentee she would lose *very* well and probably become underweight. I know because I did the same... except, less exercise .

The carbs are the difference. Calories are just units of energy, metabolism controls what it does with calories. Metabolism determines wither calories go into energy & lean tissue making/wasting, or into fat storing. Low carb orients metabolism toward the first set, carbs the latter. Calories matter, I'm not going to say otherwise. They affect orientation of metabolism to a point, and the more imbalanced your metabolism the more they matter (to avoid blowing up) but for me and many others *type* of calories matters the most.

The bacon contributes fat energy, and will not orient your metabolism to sugar burning. The apple will.
It is good to eat fat to lose fat, and not to eat sugar containing foods like apples in quantity. Sugars impair catabolism of body fat by raising insulin and suppressing glucagon. This makes you more food dependent (you get hungrier and eat more), and you are more food dependent because your body has a piss poor ability to make its own energy on the fly (from protein and fat). If you're trying to avoid being a fat body, then you want your body in a state where it can liberate stored fat for lipolysis to create energy, and create sugar from gluconeogenesis. If your insulin levels are higher because you're eating "good carbs" then this becomes a bit of a challenge for your body. You are not only hungrier (this is the least of your problems) but your body is in a constant energy deprived state. This means energy is lower, you simply aren't losing weight in spite of restricting, and odds are your body is falling apart inside, slowly, bit by bit.

By the way, did you hear what I ate the other day? Didn't sound deprived or unnatural to me.

For breakfast I had a bit more brownie (tiny piece), some chicken, and a bowl of cereal with strawberries, bit of peaches, almonds, and LC milk. Why would I eat carbs when I can have whatever I want (within reason) on a way of eating that works *so much better* for my metabolism? I can't even imagine how sh*tty I would feel if that cereal was special K with real sugar, skim milk and copious amounts of fruit. Forget it.


If you are a vegetarian you can do LC by making it based on soy, nuts, and higher fat vegetation like avocados, olives and olive oil... do you like eggs and fish, as those are perfect LC foods. Do you hate *all* cheese, because there are many dairy products that aren't like your typical sharp salty cheddar.

No it doesn't if you find your maintenance level. Check that out in the Atkins maintenance section.

And as this is low-carb board, we are most likely to be those for whom low calorie doesn't work very well. Lord knows, low cal is the first eating plan that doctors and nutritionists hand out.

Glad you're doing well on your plan, but don't assume that we haven't weighed all the options before choosing this way of eating. We really aren't in need of enlightenment from someone who #1 doesn't fully understand low carbing and hasn't read the literature, #2 hasn't read through a few of the threads on this board and #3 obviously hasn't experienced what we have experienced.

http://forum.lowcarber.org/showpost...7&postcount=502

When they're warm, they taste exactly like a gooey brownie fresh out of the oven. When they're cool, they become like fudge.

This is easily the best LC brownie I've ever had.

Tips:
-The synergy in sweeteners is important to get a real sugar taste; and I used sweeteners equal to 1 cup (1/3 erythritol, 1 packet ace-k, and the rest in sucralose)
-Use a higher quality dark chocolate; the extra effort to get the unsweetened ghiradelli is so worth it (the stuff is good enough to eat unsweetened ).
-Carbalose instead of carbquick works way better IMO, because carbquick tastes like bisquick and you don't want that in a brownie.
-When in doubt ask a question, because every time I go and experiment on my own I wind up making a mistake someone else already made . Scott & KevinPA are great cooks know all about how various flour/sugar substitute thingers behave.

The brownie is close to perfect. Taste wise, it's spot on. When it's warm, it's very brownie like. The only problem is it is a bit too fudge like when cool. I suppose the way to fix this problem is to use more carbalose and less polydextrose.
Also, because I baked it following scott's advice, the corners didn't "crunch up", nor did it get hard and crunchy like the brownies I'm used to (that is, burnt in a glass pan ). I like a brownie that is crunchy on the outside (burnt) and gooey on the inside. Next time I make this I am going to use more carbalose and less polydextrose, and I'm going to bake it the normal way. I want my burnt sugar crunch damnit!

Woo--

What is polyD, what's it for and where can you buy it?

IT's pretty cheap on netrition.com. Polyd is polydextrose. PolyD gives those taffy-like qualities of chewiness and carmelized crunch you can only get with sugar. It also holds water in food, just like sugar.

By the way, you can also get a lot of this stuff from requesting samples from various chemical companies. I have several pounds of erythritol, resistant starch, glycerol, polydextrose, etc from this.

Again, if you stop doing any diet. ANY diet, you will fail. Introducing too many carbs means you've stopped low carbing. Why would you expect to succeed? The trick is finding something you can live with for the long term.

First, you don't remove all carbs on Atkins. You lower them a lot then you...drum roll...introduce more back in. I eat carbs, mostly from vegetable sources. I don't have to introduce them back into my diet (which has shed and kept off about 100 pounds for three years) because they were never gone. The simple carbs were removed, but there isn't a valid reason to bring them back. They're not all that good for a thin person, nutritionally speaking, and they are deadly to a fat one.

Part of the issue here is that you're arguing on a topic about which you know nothing. If you want to discuss it, you should have a vague understanding of it. Low carb is low carb, not no-carb.



This is because you're not very well versed in low carb or nutrition in general. They have told you that bacon and other fatty food is bad for you for so long that you believed it despite not much evidence that it's true. Look, at your weight you aren't where many of us were when we started. We have become more knowledgable about this than most people. It's not a slam on you to ask you to have some understanding about something before you make arguments against it.

Many here tried low fat. But empirically, low fat has been a devastating diet philosophy. Over the same period we reduced fat consumption in the American diet, we got more obese, we saw diabetes skyrocket, we saw heart disease on the march. All while cutting supposedly-evil saturated fats. The studies are confirming that this has been a dietary disaster, but common sense would also tell you this. We substituted low fat processed crud for natural foods. If you're going low calorie, you're cutting something from your diet. Most RD's will tell you to cut the fat, leaving a lot of simple carbs in its wake as viable calorie sources.

Knock yourself out. I'm glad you have had some success. Come back in a year and see if you've kept pace with low carbers here.

Notice that after several posters here mentioned there is a vegetarian version of low-carbing, a vegetarian low-carber included, the original poster ignored this and continued with the greasy bacon and cheese scenarios that she says make her sick. Obviously, this poster only listens to whoever filled her head with anti-low-carb propaganda without actually going out and reading low-carb books and/or articles. Goodbye Wednesday, we'll see you again when you get older and fatter.

wednesday is a troll from another non-weightloss site. The site she belongs too is a drama forum site. And as a matter of fact what she is doing is cyberstalking. She's been reported on my end.

This is great because even drama-queens can get fat/sick/insulin resistant/unhealthy sooner or later.

It really sounds like we are battling wits with an unarmed and uninformed troll here......

JMHO, Julie

Woo, I haven't used polydextrose as a sugar like food texturizer yet . But I have been using erythritol for years and it makes very low carbing while still enjoying most of the sweet taste sensations you get on a carby diet really easy. Polydextrose is a soluble fibre isn't it, and yields neither carbs nor calories to the human body? You've obviously used both. So which is better as a sugar like texturizer, erythritol or P.D.? Also it's not sweet at all is it? Could it be used with sucralose to sweeten choc. without erythritol for instance. Choc cannot be sweetened with intense sweeteners alone. It needs the texturizing effect sugar gives it as well. So I wonder if polydextrose would do the trick? Erythritol is so expensive. And low carb (and any sugar alcohol -except erythritol- free) chocolate is such a health food.

Seriously, this is silly. Our new friend here has obviously not done her homework, and is not reading the intelligent replies she has gotten. Don't waste your time.