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

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

Does extra hunger mean something?

by | Jan 15, 2013 | Food Choices, How Your Body Works, Low carb diet, Metabolism, Sensible Eating | 0 comments

Here is another copy of the post at forum.lowcarber.org where I have responded to about eating and low carb

 

KristyRusi asked:

So i just got out of induction yesterday. I plan on keeping the 20nc induction rule of thumb for at least a few more weeks to keep that fat buring quicker, however today i was sooooo hungry (in the past 3-4 days i’ve not been hungry at all), i grazed like a dairy cow lol. Every few minutes i was wanting to nibble. I think it was because i was craving something sweet (which is rare) and nothing was sating the sweet taste i wanted.

I’ve limited myself to using artificial sweetner only in coffee and the occasional glass of tea. I fear using it in a “dessert” type meal will only make me binge for that flavor and make me want sweets even more. 

My real question is though, does this extra hunger mean i’m out of ketosis? I have not ate anything i didn’t eat in induction today and like i said don’t plan to, but i want to try and stay in ketosis as long as i can. I never used the ketostix but when i was in ketosis before my urine was darker (even with drinking 90% water) and my breath was awful to even taste in my own mouth, my urine was clear today and my mouth is extremely dry but doesn’t taste bad. If i am out of ketosis, what might have caused it and what can i do to kick it back in?

Thanks in advance for the insite!

 

I replied:

Hi KristyRusi,

Does extra hunger mean anything? Well, simply, yes it does. It means you need to eat something.

My food of choice when I’m facing something like that is to nibble on a lump of cheese, maybe dressing it up with some sort of mayonnaise, homemade of course. If cheese isn’t your thing, as DaddioM said, make sure you fill that hunger with protein and fat.

Obviously the warnings from others about being careful what you eat have great merit and should be taken note of. The thing to remember here is that when we start on a low carb diet, we’re not only retraining our bodies, we’re also retraining our minds and frankly, our bodies will retrain a lot quicker than our minds will.

One of the things I liked about the low carb diet was the fact that you could get excellent nutrition to eating smaller portions. This in turn, does mean of course, that our stomachs shrink, meaning we become satisfied with a lower quantity of food. However, if we pig out like we’re inclined to if we go out for a meal,  that can temporarily expand the stomach giving rise to those naughty little hunger signals being sent up to our brain.

Thus far as eating out is concerned, my advice is very simple, if you don’t know what’s in it, don’t eat it.

Hope that helps,

Mark

Pork (bacon)

by | Jan 14, 2013 | Food Choices, Low carb diet, Meat Products | 0 comments

Here is another copy of a post I have commented to at lowcarber.org regarding meat products 

Liz53’s Post:

Excellent post, MarkMoxom. I’ve been eating primarily grass fed beef and free range pork and poultry since reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma in 2006, with nothing but improvements to my health.

I truly believe the body is satisfied with less food if it is of high quality. It makes sense because, bottom line, food is fuel for us. The body is going to continue to signal that it needs food, and we will likely continue to eat, till its essential needs are

Stuart, you may want to check out eatwild.com They have a list of local purveyors of sustainably-grown meat and vegetables in the US and Canada, organized by state and province. You might find something close to you.

My Reply:

Liz53,

Thank you for that link. It’s an excellent one by the way. Another one you might consider is polyfacefarms.com. They have a fantastic program of raising food totally naturally themselves. Also they take on apprentices who then go off and start out farms and repeat the same pattern, naturally produced in the old fashioned time all that way.

Hope that helps,

Mark

Re: I’m Starting Again

by | Jan 11, 2013 | Food Choices, Low carb diet, Meat Products, Weight Loss | 0 comments

Here is a copy of another comment I made at fattoskinny.net about a previous thread on weight loss

 

Here is the thread:

 

From: Itsoversugar

It’s been quite awhile since I’ve checked out prices online. They’ve always been more expensive than I could get locally. Where do you order from?

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From: Umpa

Welcome MarkMoxom! I am Umpa Dougs wife if I can help you please ask.  I have a column on the homepage where I can convert your favorite foods to fat to skinny friendly.Enjoy the forum

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From: TooSweet

Welcome to the forum MarkMoxom     I’m curious where you order your meat as well

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From: mouseissue

Welcome to the FTS family, Mark!!!      

We are blessed to live around a LOT of ranchers.

We buy our beef by the side and save a good deal of money compared to stores prices.
And we get the prime cuts too!… Those are the ones usually reserved for restaurants only. 

Tony

***********************

 

My response: 

 

Hi everyone!

Thanks to Umpa, TooSweet and mouseissue for the nice welcome.

I’m now fortunate enough to spend a lot of my time in France so a lot of what we eat comes from the farms, literally, just next door all around us. Our chicken comes from Pernwal who is just across the lane. Our fresh eggs come from Petit Poulet who lived just down the end of the lane. In fact, virtually, everything we eat, vegetables, cheese, meat, you name it, is locally produced because we decided some time ago to make the effort to eat as cleanly as possible, by clean, I mean, free from preservatives and things like that, artificial flavors, colorings, and all those sort of things our body neither needs nor wants. There are two really good things about living in the country. One, you can see exactly where your food comes from and two, because your buying form the actual producers, you’re getting more or less, market prices. This can be typically to a third, or four, even half the price to what you would see the same type or produce in the Bio section of your supermarket or delicatessen in many cases.

So in answer to Itsoversugar, it’s been a while too since I actually ordered naturally raised products by mail order. Some months in fact, I’m now thinking about it, it’s even longer than that. Many of my circles who continue to live the urban lifestyle and they keep me upraised about what’s going on in various parts of the world. One supplier, I’d like to draw your attention to, and I have no connection to them, by the way, I just think they are a brilliant, brilliant operation, is Polyface Farms. They are based in Virginia, but I think they serve Virginia and Maryland but one of the great things about Polyface Farms and many others who follow a very similar pattern is that take on apprentices. Once the apprentice is qualified, they then go off and start farms of their own so you’ve got them in Ohio, Iowa, Oregon, Pasadena, quite a few places around that part of the States. The thing is they’re not alone. It really is a simple matter of going onto Google and  putting in the search term, firstly, “farmer’s market” and the  your local area or “grass fed beef” then your local area, county, state or whatever and you’ll find a whole hosts of different producers producing exactly the type of food that we as low carbers want to eat. If you got the opportunity to go to one that is near to you, you’ll often find that the price that you pay on the farm is a lot less than your paying mail order. The thing to do then is to get together with other people who would like to eat the way you do and buy, say, half a cow, or half a sheep, or that sort of quantity and divide it up. Another good thing about doing in that way is that, if you buy half an animal, you get virtually everything that comes with that half of the animal. They are also buying it a lot earlier in the food supply chain so you can guarantee its freshness.  And as just as mouseissue had said, you get the cuts that are often sold off to restaurants or specialist delicatessen. Where we are, they have a very, I’ll say, a curious system, but it’s not curious in many ways. It’s quite sensible. Quite a number of these small farmers all over Europe, in fact, will at certain times of the year, allow you either on your own or as a group to buy,  say, a calf and you pay for it  there on and it becomes your calf. You are the registered owner of cow number, whatever its ear ticket says but you don’t take it home with you. It stays on the farm and the farmer will continue to raise it for you. This is normally done through the grass feed season as well so you can be sure that most of its feed is on good, natural pasture. Once it has reached its table weight the farmer will also organize the preparation for table giving you excellent quality meat at a very reasonable price.

The main thing I’d like people to take away from this is that we don’t have to accept just what the shops have to offer, that with a little bit of investigation,  a little bit of tenacity, and not being shy to ask around, we can find some of the best food for our table and our families that is possible to find.

Hope that helps,

Mark