I need help.. To stay on the phase one or go on to OWL

by | Jan 17, 2013 | Food Choices, Low carb diet, Meat Products | 0 comments

This is a copy of my comment on a post over at forum.lowcarber.org regarding induction

 

kim_va said:

Hello everyone
I have been on phase one now for 3 weeks. I dont know if I want to move on or not. I want to say on phase one to lose more weight, but then again, I want to move on to OWL because I can have a little bit more food. How long did you all stay on the induction phase/? Thanks

 

My reply:

Hi kim_va,

If staying on induction is working for you, carry on but do make sure that you take a good range of supplement to make sure that you’re getting all the vitamins and minerals that you need.

A lot of people seem to be worried about opening themselves up to temptation when they move on from induction. Whilst that may be a legitimate fear, there are a number of things you can do to lessen the chance of temptation because really the temptation is only there if the extra foods you consider adding back into your diet come from the same range of choice that you’ve had before you started  your low carb journey.

My advice is to increase your horizons and instead of adding back smaller amounts of the same choice of foods that you’ve had before, look for new foods to try. Simply choose low carb new foods, so that’s different types of meat. If you’ve only ever eaten beef, pork and chicken, why not try duck or pigeon or guinea fowl or wild boar. If your vegetable choices before has only ever been potatoes, carrots, peas, parsnips and beans, say, why not go through the vegetable section in your local store and try something you’ve never tried before. If you fish choice has only ever been a nondescript piece of white fish covered in bread crumbs, why not try lobster or shrimp. I’m sure you get the picture.  

We don’t always have to move on from induction. We can take induction along with us for the journey simply  by making new food choices.

 Hope that helps,

Mark

Stop Trashing Eggs: Large Study Finds No Harm

by | Jan 17, 2013 | Food Choices, Low carb diet | 0 comments

Below is a copy of a recent post where I have commented on about eggs

IdahoSpud:

Link to article here:

Link to study (warning: long-winded) here:

No food has had more ups and downs over the last century or so than the common egg. Following a long period in which eggs were ubiquitous and highly regarded, eggs fell from favor with the rise of concerns over cholesterol. Currently the American Heart Association recommends that people restrict dietary cholesterol to 300 mg per day, which effectively limits people to 1 egg per day at most. However, the relationship of dietary cholesterol and serum cholesterol is, at best, tenuous, and a significant number of experts now believe that egg consumption poses no risk to cardiovascular health.

In a new paper published in BMJ, a group of researchers from China and Boston performed a meta-analysis of 8 studies that included 263 938 participants for coronary heart disease (CHD) and 210 404 participants for stroke and followed them for 8 to 22 years. The authors found no evidence for an association between egg consumption and either coronary heart disease or stroke:
•Relative risk of coronary heart disease for adding 1 egg per day: 0.99 (CI 0.85 0 1.15, p=0.88)
•Relative risk of stroke for adding 1 egg per day: 0.91 (CI 0.81 – 1.02, p=0.10)

However, an increased risk for CHD was observed in the subgroup of patients with diabetes in the group of participants with the highest egg consumption compared with those with the lowest consumption (relative risk 1.54, CI 1.14 to 2.09, p=0.01). No similar increase in the risk of stroke was observed in this group, though a protective effect against hemorrhagic stroke was observed in those with the highest egg consumption (relative risk 0.75, CI 0.57 – 0.99, p=.04). The authors cautioned that the findings in the diabetes subgroup required confirmation in additional studies.

The authors concluded that the findings of their meta-analysis “do not support a positive association between egg consumption and cardiovascular disease outcomes in the general population.”

On CardioExchange, the ever-refreshing Richard Lehman waxed eloquent in praise of eggs and offers the following thought:

Quote:

Why anyone should be troubled by the consumption of eggs as a medical issue, I cannot imagine, but this dose-response meta-analysis of the subject simply reinforces my advice to eat lots of eggs. They do not increase your risk of stroke or coronary disease, but even if they did, it would simply be a good reason to eat as many as you can while you still have the chance.

Comment: The AHA should long ago have revised its recommendations regarding dietary cholesterol and eggs. There is a reasonable chance that the current position is doing more harm than good. Even if eggs are ultimately found to be somewhat harmful– though that seems unlikely at this point– they are almost certainly better than the replacement foods– mostly containing starches and sugars– toward which most people are likely to turn. Are eggs really worse than, say, a “low fat” (but high calorie and high sugar) muffin?

 

My comment:

The healthiest types of eggs to eat are free-range ones but make sure they’re guaranteed to be free from genetically modified food types such as GMO corn and so on.

The healthiest way to eat the egg is raw; simply because cooking them will damage the valuable nutrients like lutein and zeaxanthin which we find in the egg yolk.

Now if you don’t like them raw, then I guess the next best thing would be the soft boiled or sunny-side up. But in any case, leave the yolk as runny as possible.

I think I’ll go and make some bacon and eggs now.

Cheers,

Mark

Atkins “flu” again?….

by | Jan 17, 2013 | Low carb diet, Questions about low carb | 0 comments

Another copy of a recent post I have commented to at forum.lowcarber.org about Atkins

 

Post from KristyRusi,

So 2 days after my induction “day 16” i’d lost an additional 1lb bringing my total to a 13pounds lost. Then on “day 17” i gained the pound back, and now today, “day 18” i’ve lost the same pound again. But the weird thing is that today i’ve been experiencing the symptoms i had during “day 5-9” of induction. Feeling foggy headed, my ears feel like they won’t pop and ache, my head is killing me and i’m extremely tired and have zero energy. I have pretty much changed NOTHING about my diet from induction to now, other than starting to add a bit more fat to each meal. For example i make the same omelet i made in induction only now i will add 2 tbsps of butter instead of 1 because i’ve heard it helps you stay in ketosis to have the extra fat. Does this mean that perhaps i had gotten OUT of ketosis and now i’m going back into it or is this just a deeper level of ketosis or what’s going on… i thought after that miserable induction Flu those days were in the past? It’s pretty cripling to feel like this and i get NOTHING done.. i’ve started having to drink broth again for sodium to ease the headache, but it’s as if i’m ammune. I feel like that kid in that viral video of him waking up after the dentist… “isss…. thiiisss….reall…liffee?” head all bobbling as well lol. Also my neck has the worst pain and cramping even worse than before in it i can’t turn it left or right without sharp bad pain. I will say i’ve been suffering from insomnia for nearly 5 days now, only sleeping maybe 4-5 hours in a 24 hour period. I’m just “not sleep” i had very high energy and good spirits and felt very clear headed until yesterday, and this afternoon after finally falling a sleep i woke up feeling like garbage. What’s going on?… Thanks for all the advice in advance.

 

My comment:

Hi KristyRusi,

The key to what’s going on here and both what you’re experiencing and what other people experience with what they seem to call “Atkins flu” is enzymes. As you may be aware, our body produces enzymes in order to help break down the food that we eat into something that the body can use more easily. Enzymes are produced by the pancreas and basically come into salts. Digestive enzymes which do exactly what their name suggests; they help us break down food so that it can be absorbed and transported and then utilized by the cells in our body. It also produces metabolic enzymes. These are used within the cells of our body where they help the cells to reproduce and replenish itself. But the pancreas isn’t the only source of enzymes. Many of the foods that we can eat contain with them exactly the enzymes our body needs to break them down. However, processing those foods in any way destroys the enzymes. And it’s true to say that the greater amount of processing the food goes through, the less amount of enzymes will end up in what we eat. So therefore, food that is eaten raw will come with all the enzymes we need to break it down.

That’s just a bit of a background. What’s it got to do with Atkins flu and the way your feeling is simply like this: Our Western diet which consists of highly processed food still needs to be broken down. The only thing that can produce the enzymes to break it down is the pancreas. If the pancreas is having to work overtime in order to produce digestive enzymes, its capacity to produce metabolic enzymes will be greatly reduced. That means that there is lot of undigested food passing through our digestive system. This then becomes a breeding ground for all sorts of harmful bacteria, viruses and many other things that will slowly build up within our system causing all sorts of different health problems.

Now when we start on a low carb diet, the fact that we cut out so many complex carbohydrates, sugars and at the same time reduce the amount of food that we eat, has both benefits and short term consequences. The first of those benefits is that our need to produce digestive enzymes greatly reduces simply because we’ve cut out or cut down carbohydrates which require a lot of, to use the term, “enzymic energy” to be dealt with. At the same time, those digestive enzymes that are produced and work more efficiently and more effectively on the foods that we do eat which will result in less undigested food passing through our intestines creating a more healthy environment within them and at the same time getting rid of unhealthy bacteria and so on. This therefore allows the pancreas to produce more metabolic enzymes which then go to work in the rest of our body and start clearing up all of the garbage, viruses, bacteria and other harmful substances that are built up over the years.

It’s this elimination process or the detoxifying that causes us to have, what people describe as “flu-like symptoms”. This can happen a number of times through the first part of a low carb journey. How many times and how severe the symptoms will depend on a large number of factors. Principally, these will be things like the type of foods that we previously poisoned our bodies with, whether we were smokers or not, whether we had long-term courses of antibiotics, whether we have been on medications as in some cases there can be quite a lot of, what one might call, “residue”. Even something as mundane as what type of job we have done and what poisons and other chemicals we might have absorbed during the course of doing it.

So that’s the why.  Can anything be done about it? Well yes, much! As the detoxifying process is already going on in our body, it will be a shame to cotale that in any way as we would need to go through the same thing again later on. So the best thing to do is to aid that detoxification. Firstly by drinking more; secondly by moving more which will have the advantage of moving toxins out through the lymphatic system more quickly and also causing us to sweat a bit more profusely again getting rid of toxins. Another thing we can do is actually increasing the amount of enzymes that we actually eat either though increasing the amount of raw, living foods that we eat, chewing our foods thoroughly but avoid using chewing gum and strangely enough, by eating less as up to 75 to 80% of our energy input is used to digest food.

While this part of a low carb journey may not be the most comfortable thing to go through, you can look upon it as a good thing simply because you’re now getting rid of  all the garbage that has built up in your body throughout the years of eating low quality food.

Hope that helps,

Mark

Sleep Problems

by | Jan 16, 2013 | Low carb diet, Questions about low carb | 0 comments

This is a copy of my comment on a post at Jimmy Moore’s regarding sleep problems

 

Post from tcbsoc:

Hi All.
I started low carb this week and have done induction since Wed. Since starting, I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night and having horrible nightmares. Anyone deal with this before? Any suggestions on what to do?
Thanks.

 

My response:

Hi tcbsoc,

Starting a low carb diet is probably one of the biggest changes your body has had to go through in its entire life. In fact the changes going on in your body both chemically and hormonally, you could liken, to going through puberty yet all condensed into a week-long period. 

There are principally, five reasons that I can think of off the top of my head why your sleep will be disturbed since starting a low carb diet. As Mackay has rightly said, it could be just a lack of magnesium and perhaps there are physical things disturbing your sleep.

Other things you need to be aware of are the fact that a low carb diet particularly in the early stages, will mean that your body is having to deal with higher energy levels which leads neatly on to the next thing that you may not be getting enough physical exercise. Another thing that you should pay attention to is the amount of protein that you’re eating or more specifically the amount of protein compared to the amount of fat. It is not uncommon for many people who start a low carb diet who concentrate more on meat and bacon and eggs and that sort of thing and not consume enough fat to balance out their protein consumption.

Coming back to the nightmares though, it may be that you have commenced a diet which although it makes sense to your brain, doesn’t make sense to your emotions because you don’t have a big enough reason why. Without the big reason why, our own conscious mind which nearly always tries to move towards the status quo will be fighting with our conscious mind. One of the outcomes from that will be things like nightmares. So do find yourself a big reason why you want to get fit and healthy.

Something that many people overlook is the way that low carb affects men and women differently. So it would be helpful to know whether you’re a man or a woman, as again, hormonal changes can affect drastically how we react to a change in diet, particularly in the early stages.

Lastly, one other things has just occurred to me, you don’t mention what type of diet you’re on, only that you’re in the induction phase on a low carb diet. So is that low carb Atkins, low carb South Beach? Frankly, a little bit more detail would help us to help you enormously.

Lastly I would say, if you’ve only started your diet this week, then because of your metabolism, history or current weight and many, many other things; it can take time to get into a low carb diet. Every one of us here can testify that the beginning of a diet wasn’t always plain sailing but it was well-worthy effort to persevere.

Hope that helps,

Mark

Crystal Light

by | Jan 16, 2013 | Artificial Sweeteners, Food Choices, Low carb diet | 0 comments

This is another post on fattoskinny.net that I have replied to about low carb drinks

 

Siltz posted:

I know Crystal Light is sugar free.  Does it have any carbs?  It’s my favorite water substitute besides Diet Mtn. Dew!  Can’t live without that stuff.

While I’m here, Umpa do you have any recipes that call for wheat germ?  I have part of a bag in the fridge and hate to see it go to waste.

 

My comment:

As I spent a lot of my time in Europe, mainly in France, Spain and the UK, I have become a great connoisseur of things like bottled water that comes directly from the source.

Obviously you have the two main types, fizzy and flat but in and amongst those, you have a whole range of waters that contain different proportions of different minerals. It just depends on what rocks they percolated through before they came up to the bottling plant and it surprises me how different these waters can taste one from another.

Another thing that’s very popular in Europe are fruit teas and infusions. Now, we probably are all familiar with lemon tea but what about apricot tea, cherry tea and infusion of mint and licorice or even ginger and lychees. Many of these taste as good cold as they do hot.

So what am I saying here? Simply that we don’t need to be limited to stuffs that comes in the bottle and is full of artificial sweetener and other things that we don’t need just to enjoy something tasty to drink.

And you know a splash of lemon or lime in water doesn’t necessarily need a sweetener. You’ll very quickly get use to the refreshing taste particularly if it’s iced cold.

Hope that helps,

Mark