The Secret of Setting New Year’s Resolutions You Can Keep

The Secret of Setting New Year’s Resolutions You Can Keep

Special Event Diet The Brutal Way

With 2013 right around the corner, on January 1 or soon thereafter, there’s going to be a lot of people either starting a low-carb diet for the very first time, or they will be returning after regaining part or all of their prior weight loss. Unfortunately, most of those people won’t stick around for very long.

They’ll probably drift away by Valentine’s Day because New Year’s Resolutions are harder to keep than they realized.

Want to know why?

The truth is, sticking to a diet plan – any diet plan – won’t work very well (including a low-carb diet) if it’s your latest attempt at self-improvement. That’s right. Trying to self improve doesn’t work. It’s negative and painful, and we always try to avoid discomfort. That’s programmed into us. We are literally programmed to seek after pleasure and avoid all forms of pain.

Don’t believe me? WATCH yourself sometime. WATCH your family interact with each other. WATCH your friends, and WATCH people you don’t know. Just plop yourself down on a bench at the mall or eavesdrop on the couple over at the next table the next time you go out to dinner. LISTEN to the people you work with when they talk. LISTEN and just WATCH people.

You’ll learn more about our initial infant and childhood programming and conditioning that controls our everyday behavior and reactions than you ever wanted know.

Most New Year’s Resolutions Focus on What We Don’t Like About Ourselves

In fact, I’m willing to bet that – for most of us – that’s why we’re on a low-carb diet. Because there’s something about ourself that we don’t like.

Regardless of the general low-carb mantra that says, “It’s not a diet; it’s a lifestyle,” and regardless of the general low-carb mantra that insists that following a low-carb diet is about regaining health, few of us truly believe that. It’s taken me literally years to wrap my brain around that Truth. We aren’t doing low carb to improve our health. We’re doing low carb to fix something we don’t like. We’re doing low carb because we want to fix something about ourselves that we believe is wrong.

Am I right?

Common New Year’s Resolutions

There’s far more resolutions than I could ever list in a single blog post, but these are just a few:

• weight loss through dieting
• buying a gym membership, or a set of weights
• plans to quit smoking
• trying to lessen stress or control anger
• commit to be more organized
• try to make more money
• plan to get out of debt

All of them are negative things that we don’t like about ourselves, things that maybe other people have mentioned that we should fix about ourselves. Could that be why only 8 percent of those who ever make a New Year’s Resolution are able to keep them? Could that be why less than half of the American population even bother with setting annual goals?

We are programmed to break them. We are programmed to fight against anything that causes restriction, discomfort, insecurity, fear, and pain.

So What’s the Secret? Seeking After Pleasure?

I suppose that we could travel to the other side of the pendulum and seek after things that are pleasurable. We could seek after things that make us happy. If we decide to do that, those goals and resolutions would be much easier to keep:

• spend more time with family, rather than on yourself
• take a class at your local community college
• read a book you’ve been wanting to read
• plan an exciting vacation or weekend
• start a new hobby or business venture
• take the kids to the park regularly
• go to a movie once a month with your spouse

Depending on our inner beliefs and attitudes, we would be far less likely to break those types of resolutions than we would were they to cause us discomfort. But unless we remain extremely aware, our negative programming (the suggestions in our lives that we have accepted without experimenting with them for ourselves) could raise its ugly head and ruin it all.

The Secret of the Middle Path

Extremes are never helpful. Think about a child whose parents give him or her everything they desire. What happens? They turn into a tyrant, a bully, a selfish adult who doesn’t know how to tolerate even a speck of discomfort. That’s because a lack of opposition in our lives can be just as destructive as too much.

We need an opposing force. We need something working against us in order to polish away the roughness. We need life to be just the way it is. So perhaps the whole business of setting goals and resolutions is what’s wrong with the process, because a goal is always attached to an ideal. And ideals always provide disappointment and frustration when things don’t turn out the way that we hoped.

Now, that is the real reason why people leave a low-carb diet, isn’t it?

You start off in January with a ton of excitement, hoping that you can finally correct what is wrong with yourself, but something goes wrong. A few weeks down the road, you discover that the diet doesn’t work as well as it did for others. Your weight loss is moving along at a crawl, or maybe there is no weight loss at all. Maybe, you’ve even gained a few pounds.

So we start to think of ourselves as a failure. We are disappointed because our ideal didn’t bear fruit. Sometimes, we feel angry and deceived. Sometimes, we feel like it’s our fault. And sometimes, we begin to encounter even stronger forces of opposition because when we’re different or when something doesn’t work for us that worked for someone else, it makes them feel uncomfortable.

The Key Lies Within Our Subconscious Minds

THE KEY to making New Year’s Resolutions is to first recognize that discomfort is going to surface in our lives from time to time. We need to accept that discomfort for what it is, and move on. Put your focus somewhere else. Because the Truth is, the discomfort doesn’t really matter. What matters is that we stop fighting life and begin asking, “What is life trying to teach me?”

“What does life want me to know?”

What am I doing that is causing me to forget who and what I am? What am I doing that is causing me to make carbohydrates so important in my life?

What we believe is True when coupled with strong emotion is what will come true. That’s how powerful our subconscious mind is.

So the secret to setting New Year’s Resolutions that you can keep isn’t found in fighting against our subconscious minds. It isn’t found in setting up unrealistic goals. It isn’t found within the various plans for self-improvement or even diets that make us all sorts of wild promises that may or may not happen.

The SECRET is found in reprogramming ourselves to let go of all of the false beliefs that have brought us to this very moment of existence. The SECRET is to let go, and let LIFE FLOW…

Can Keto-Adaption Increase Weight-Loss Success?

Can Keto-Adaption Increase Weight-Loss Success?

Questions??

I was reading Jimmy Moore’s latest n=1 Nutritional Ketosis report that he posted to his blog recently, and discovered that Regina Wilshireof the Weight of the Evidence blog is beginning to post again. I thought that she might be around because someone with that name recently “liked” my author fan page at Facebook. I’ve always enjoyed reading Regina’s posts because she’s not fanatical about a low-carb diet. She’s extremely realistic.

Since she’s a professional nutritionist, her focus has always been on the nutrient density of food rather than typical low-carb topics such as Ketosis, Keto-Adaption, or that most carbs are evil. Her approach is what I would call The Middle Path. She doesn’t subscribe to extremes. She simply calls it as she sees it.

I wish I would have known that she had put up a few posts over the past year, because it would have saved me much of the misery and weight gain (a whopping 22 pounds!) I’ve suffered from experimenting with Nutritional Ketosis over the past few months. She gave some excellent advice to a low-carber who had stalled part-way to her goal. But at least, I now have something I can work with – a real, honest, down-to-earth method for correcting my current weight problems.

Today, however, I want to talk about a misconception within the low-carb community that keeps surfacing – this time, in Jimmy’s response to one of Regina’s latest blog posts about his experiment. Regina has a couple of ideas as to why Jimmy’s current low-carb diet plan is going so well, but Jimmy has perceived her posts to be an attack, rather than realism, so in his latest report, he tried to save face by explaining his opinion about what Regina thinks might be going on.

“So one question remains: Was it the keto-adaption or the calorie-cutting that has worked in producing the weight loss success I’ve seen? If you ask me, I say WHO CARES?! The fact is it’s working. Whatever the mechanisms for bringing it about, the bottom line is I’m burning stored body fat and improving every measureable health marker I have tested so far. At the end of the day, the results are much more interesting than any attempt to explain why they happened. It’s my contention that becoming fully adapted to using ketones (fat) for fuel has allowed my body the opportunity to run as it was intended to without the need for arbitrarily counting calories, carbohydrates or really much of anything.”

That response to Regina’s post is loaded with things I could talk about, but today, I’d just like to address Jimmy’s opinion about keto-adaptation being responsible for his weight-loss success because he’s a strong player within the low-carb community, and a lot of folks tend to accept his opinions and ideals as Truth without experimenting with them for themselves.

Granted, that isn’t Jimmy’s fault. Experimenting with suggestions and ideas that we’re presented with on a daily basis is our own responsibility, but a lot of folks within the low-carb community hold similar misunderstandings about ketones and fat.

What is a Ketone?

A Ketone is the waxy by-product that’s left over when the liver breaks down triglycerides into fatty acids to fuel the process of gluconeogenesis after our glycogen reserves (the storage form of carbohydrates) fall below a certain level. It is not a fat. These ketones are a signal that the body is predominantly burning fatty acids for fuel, rather than glucose. However, the presence of ketones in the urine or the blood do not signal that your body fat stores are being used for fuel. They simply show that glucose is in short supply. Nothing more, as ketones are also made from dietary fats.

Keto-Adaption Explained

When the body enters a famine situation, most of the body’s tissues can use fatty acids for fuel, but there are a few exceptions. The brain, kidneys, red blood cells, bone marrow, and certain muscle fibers cannot use fats. They require glucose. However, the fact that the brain cannot use fatty acids doesn’t mean that the brain can only use glucose because certain portions of the brain can use ketones. When glucose is in short supply and ketones are readily available, the brain will adapt to that situation and begin using ketones for up to three-quarters of its energy needs.

The purpose of keto-adaption is to save what little glucose there is for body organs and tissues that cannot use ketones or fatty acids for fuel. Ketone adaption is a life-saving mechanism designed to come into play during those short periods of time when carbohydrates are not available. Initially when carbs run short, most body functions can use ketones for fuel. That’s where the idea that a low-carb diet is fueled by ketones from. However, this only holds true for the first three weeks, or so.

After three weeks, most body tissues including muscle begins using fatty acids for fuel – not ketones – so that the ketones in the bloodstream can be saved for the brain. This form of physical salvation is called keto-adaption. Ketones in the blood are not about fueling the body. They are a life-saving mechanism that keeps the brain functioning so that the body can survive a famine situation.

The Ketone build-up in the blood has absolutely nothing to do with weight loss, but everything to do with brain and heart function because when you have an excess of ketones over what the brain needs, the heart can use what’s left over. Keto-Adaption is simply when the body stops using ketones for fuel and saves them for the brain in order to protect your life. This saving mechanism works independently of the body mechanisms that determine body fat loss, energy balance (maintenance or energy equalization), and increased body fat storage.

So What Good is Being Keto-Adapted?

A ketogenic state works to correct hormonal imbalances such as insulinemia, so that ketones can be made more readily available to the brain. In order for the liver to break down stored triglycerides into fatty acids that the body can use, insulin levels need to be low. While all dietary fats are initially stored as body fat and then drawn out of the fat cell throughout the day as needed, this in-and-out flow of fat can become blocked if insulin levels do not return to normal shortly after meals.

Despite what most low carbers believe about insulin, nutrients cannot get into your body’s cells without that initial insulin spike. It isn’t the spike that locks up stored body fat. It’s the way your body responds to the insulin you produce. In individuals who have problems with insulinemia or insulin resistance, being keto-adapted can help reverse those abnormal situations. However, low insulin doesn’t guarantee that you’ll burn stored body fat.

As Dr. Michael Eades has stressed time and time again: low insulin keeps the doors to your fat stores open, but if you eat more fat than your body can use in a day, or if you eat the exact amount of fat that your body can use in a day, you will not see weight-loss success. It cannot happen. A low-carb diet doesn’t negate the laws of physics. It simply teaches you how to use them to your best advantage.

Why Does it Matter? WHO CARES?

While some people like Jimmy don’t care why their current low-carb program works, ignoring the principles of why and shoving them aside as being insignificant can create disastrous effects for those who try to duplicate the same success. Why? Because in Jimmy’s case, he consistently tells his readers that he has raised his dietary fat and lowered his protein. He consistently tells his readers that dietary manipulation, along with keeping his blood ketones high, has been the way to his salvation – even though that isn’t what he’s actually doing.

When someone decided to take a look at what Jimmy is doing, and raised a few ideas about what it might be – in order to actually help some of the rest of us understand – Jimmy’s reaction was to perceive attack and brush off those ideas with a simple “who cares.” His reaction was that the Truth of the matter doesn’t matter.

Well, you know what? I care! And it does matter, because when I attempted to implement his advice into my life, mirroring what he said he was doing, it completely backfired on me.

• Why?
• Why didn’t it work?
• Why did Jimmy insist on Twitter that if it wasn’t working for me, then there was something metabolically wrong with me, because it has to work?

Maybe...because as Regina hypothesized, raising fat might not be what’s Jimmy is actually doing. He might not have raised his fat grams per day. He might have merely raised his fat percentage. If that's true, then it could explain why I gained 22 pounds when I raised the number of fat grams I was eating per day.

Percentage isn’t the same thing as fat grams and it changes when you manipulate the other macronutrients. Regina’s hypothesis is that Jimmy’s meals are probably lower in fat grams and calories, even though his fat percentage is higher.

That might be why his high-fat, low-carb diet program is working so well for him, and why my own high-fat, low-carb diet program did not. Because there were not the same thing. Either way, it’s not about Keto-Adaption. Keto-Adaption is about saving your brain cells from destruction when glucose runs low. It isn’t about weight-loss success or failure.

Why Does a Low-Carb Diet Plan Stop Working?

Why Does a Low-Carb Diet Plan Stop Working?

Questions??

Why Does a Low-Carb Diet Stop Working?

A low-carb diet plan is an effective weight-loss tool because it promotes satiety and teaches us the importance of eating nutrient-dense foods. We learn how our prior eating habits contributed to our present metabolic situation. We learn that our personal metabolic defects can cause us to crave the very foods that create these imbalances. We also learn that changing our diet can literally correct those imbalances and change our lives.

However, for many dieters, counting carbohydrates and staying within a certain daily allotment isn’t enough to achieve success.

In my own case, the problem with not losing weight on a low-carb diet can be traced to a variety of issues:

• hidden food sensitivities
• celiac disease
• leaky gut syndrome
• endocrine disruptors
• fat malabsorption
• probably excessive ASP
• and who knows what else

But weight-loss problems are never the same for everyone. In general, the closer you get to goal weight, the more important calorie counting, fat intake, and portion control becomes. However, for many individuals, the amount of weight you’ve already lost and the length of time you’ve been low carbing plays just as large a role in the final outcome. Maybe, even more.

Misunderstandings Regarding Fat Storage

Many low-carb dieters believe you cannot store dietary fat without high insulin levels. They believe that low basal insulin and avoiding all insulin spikes always creates a favorable environment for fatty acid mobilization and utilization. If that were true, it would make calorie counting obsolete. However, fat storage and fat mobilization are accomplished quite differently than the method that most low carbers believe in.

When you eat dietary fats, Acylation Stimulating Protein, or ASP, rises significantly. This rise does not occur from glucose. Elevated ASP levels are independent of insulin and cause all dietary fats not immediately needed for fuel to be stored in your fat cells. This is opposite to the ongoing belief within the low-carb community that says insulin stays unchanged when you eat fats (therefore high fat is good) and only rises when glucose spikes (so eating carbs is bad). They conclude that low insulin therefore means easy fat mobilization.

However, later on, when the body needs fuel, Hormone Sensitive Lipase, or HSL, is stimulated. HSL breaks triglyceride down into fatty acids. Fat storage is not stagnant. It’s more like a constant river that runs in and out of the fat cell. Fat cells are not actually storage depots. The flux of ASP fat storage and HSL release can get clogged. When that happens, more dietary fat enters the fat cell than leaves. That is what actually causes overweight and obesity: the inability to use stored body fat for fuel.

How Dietary Fats Affect a Low Carb Diet Plan

Most people following a low-carb diet plan do not find value in counting calories. Others believe that eating more dietary fat will provide better weight-loss success. However, if dietary fat provides more fuel than is needed to achieve effective weight loss, the body will store more fat than it can mobilize. HSL only releases enough fatty acids to meet your daily metabolic needs. It doesn’t release extra just because you’ve upped your dietary fats.

Coconut Oil Doesn't Help Everyone Burn Fat
(Photo by Pseph)

So those who start spooning in the coconut oil or drowning their foods in sour cream and cheese on top of their current daily fat intake often do not experience what those who preach “up the fat” claim they will. More likely, they are not losing weight despite strict adherence to their low-carb eating plan.  

If you fall into the obese category, your ASP fasting basal levels are 58 to 400 percent higher than ASP basal levels found in those who are not. Higher circulating ASP interferes with HSL stimulation and therefore fat mobilization. Regardless of low insulin levels achieved by following a low-carb diet, when ASP levels are consistently elevated, stored body fat cannot be broken down into fatty acids for fuel. When such individuals raise the fat content of their diet, the result is easy weight gain rather than fat loss.

Why Portion Control and Counting Calories Matter

In the beginning of a low-carb diet, carbohydrate levels are low. Depending upon how much you weigh and how much you need to lose, most people initially find they can eat high amounts of dietary fat without having to focus on portion control or calories. You can experience effective weight loss rather easily because your energy needs are high.

For example, when I first started low carbing in 2007, I weighed 256-1/2 pounds. Even though I’m only 5-foot tall, at that weight, maintenance for me was over 3,000 calories a day! Since most people are much taller than I am, maintenance calories in the beginning of your journey will be quite high. This enables a dieter to adjust to the changes that a low-carb diet demands.

At some point, as body fat is lost and body fuel needs change, if a low-carb dieter continues eating high-calorie foods, energy input catches up with and balances energy output resulting in a long, lengthy stall. If you’re still in the obese category as I am, that also means higher circulating ASP. Plus, depending upon how long it has taken to reach your current level of health, your metabolic rate may also have dropped since we’re utilizing and optimizing the body’s starvation pathway.

What most stalled low-carb dieters fail to consider is that their new smaller body now needs less fuel. While maintenance for me in 2007 (working in a boys’ home) was 3,000 calories per day, today, (writing online) it’s less than 1800! Plus, my body is going to extensive measures to replace the body fat it’s lost. While that doesn’t happen to everyone, it has happened to me.

Weight-Loss Success Sometimes Requires Less Dietary Fat

The purpose of all diet plans is to help you learn healthy eating habits. A low-carb diet plan can be an effective way to focus on and zero in on nutrient-dense foods. It can help to get you off of the processed carby junk and onto a more whole-foods diet. However, a low-carb diet doesn’t automatically translate into long-term, effective weight loss. Eventually, many of us come to realize that a 16-ounce porterhouse steak is not everyday life. It’s an exception to the rule.

Most Low-Carb Recipes Are High Fat

If you search through low-carb recipes, you’ll quickly discover that most of them are heavy on dairy, heavy on fat, and heavy on calories. They can sometimes work when you’re at the beginning of the path, but that isn’t always the case. While a few individuals have been finding success by turning to a Nutritional Ketosis plan that lowers protein and raises the amount of dietary fats you eat, that type of program won’t work if you don’t easily burn dietary fats. It also won’t work if your ASP levels are high.

That’s why it’s essential to customize your low-carb diet plan to fit your desires, health needs, lifestyle, food sensitivities, and metabolic issues. There is not a single low-carb program that works for everyone. Low-carb diets as written are wonderful starting points, but that’s all they are – starting points. They give you a place to start from. The Atkins Diet was never designed to be a one-size-fits-all diet plan that the low-carb community has turned it into today.

In fact, Dr. Atkins himself has said that some individuals do better on a low-fat diet. His nurse has said that sometimes calories do have to be addressed because the diet works best if you eat only as much as you need to avoid the discomfort of hunger. Now, that’s very different then the high-fat mindset being preached today.

Personal Effects of Eating High-Fat Low-Carb

The bottom line is that some people do best on a high-fat low-carb diet. Some people do best on a moderate-fat diet, and some people do best on a lower fat diet, but that doesn’t mean that if you need to eat lower fat you’re doing something wrong. It doesn’t mean that you need to change what works best for you to fit someone else’s ideal. It’s fantastic when you find something that works for you. It’s fantastic that so many people want to share what they’ve discovered about themselves.

But let’s not forget that these discoveries are personal discoveries. For me, I cannot eat a high-fat diet. I have never been able to eat a high-fat diet, even when I was doing Atkins in 2007. I did do some recent experiments with Nutritional Ketosis and high-fat eating because I was hoping that my fat issues might have actually been about eating too much protein, or were tied into my intestinal inflammation problems, but that hasn’t turned out to be the case.

I’ve come to a few realizations about myself that I wasn’t aware of before. Because I adopted suggestions made by others, I’ve paid a high price for those experiments. I’ve paid a high price for listening to and embracing the personal discoveries of others. My weight is up. My cholesterol numbers came back very bad two weeks ago, as did my A1c. Both were excellent when I was eating low-fat low-carb, so the only variable that has changed in my life was moving to a high-fat diet.

In addition, my overall health has taken a dump. The vertigo is almost as severe as it was when I lived in California and has not corrected itself even though I stopped eating a high-fat diet last week. My neuropathy and arthritis are back, even though both were in remission before I raised my fat intake. I am really, really tired, but that’s not surprising given my high triglycerides right now.

The point is simple. A low-carb high-fat diet isn’t magic for everyone. Some of us need to eat a low-fat low-carb diet. Some of us need to eat a low-fat, low-carb, very low-calorie diet in order to achieve weight-loss success. That’s just what is. The question I now have to answer for myself is this:

Is it worth the price?

I’m not sure that it is.

References:

Journal of Biochemistry, Murray, Ian, and Kohl, Jorg, and Cianflone, Katherine, Acylation-stimulating Protein (ASP): Structure-function Determinants of Cell Surface Binding and Triacylglycerol Synthetic Activity, 342:1, 41-48, 1999

Journal of Lipid Research, Kramer, Fredric B. and Shen, Wen-Jun, Hormone-sensitive Lipase: Control of intracellular Tri-(di-)acylglycerol and Cholesteryl Ester Hydrolysis, 43:1, 1585-1594, October 2002 (doi:10.1194/jlr.R200009-JLR200)

Obesity, adipocyte.co.uk, "Acylation Stimulating Protein" (accessed May 7, 2010)

Eades, Michael R., M.D., and Eades, Mary Dan, M.D., The Protein Power Lifeplan, Creative Paradox LLC, 2000

Protein Deficiency – Am I Getting Enough Protein?

Protein Deficiency – Am I Getting Enough Protein?

Questions??

Am I Getting Enough Protein?
(Photo by Florian)

With Nutritional Ketosis being held up lately as the Holy Grail of low-carb eating, there’s a lot of confusion regarding protein consumption, and just how much you need. Most of those who are turning to the Nutritional Ketosis way of eating are doing that because they have stalled in their weight-loss efforts. They are not dropping their protein intake because it’s healthier than a traditional low-carb diet. They are doing what they need to do to succeed.

So How Much Protein Do You Need?

Some of the numbers being tossed around lately are as low as .6 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass, but that’s the bare minimum a sedentary person needs to keep up with muscle repair. That doesn’t cover gluconeogenesis to supply the amount of glucose the brain, red blood cells, and kidney needs to function properly or the extra damage you do to your muscles during heavy exercise. That’s just the bare minimum a person who’s eating carbohydrates needs if they’re sitting at a desk or in front of the computer all day.

If you’re chasing after kids, running them to activities, lifting weights, participating in some form of aerobics or cardio, or have a job where you’re on your feet all day, the body needs at least 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body mass (and sometimes more) if you’re eating a low-carb diet. The fewer carbs you eat, the more protein you need to keep your body from losing muscle and going into protein deficiency.

When the body is deficient in protein, it reacts by going into starvation mode and shutting down body systems not immediately necessary for survival. This is especially true if you’re following a low-carb diet because the brain cannot survive without a certain amount of glucose every day. While the body can make that needed glucose from amino acids, if it can’t get those amino acids from dietary protein, it will turn to its protein stores – your muscles and body organs.

Starvation doesn’t just occur when you don’t eat enough calories. Starvation mode also happens if you don’t eat enough protein.

Carbohydrate Cravings are a Sign of Protein Deficiency

The typical low-carb dieter tends to blame carbohydrates for their cravings, but cravings for sugar, caffeine, chips, chocolate, candy, pastries, cakes, and cookies are a sign of protein deficiency. Protein releases satiety hormones that other nutrients do not. Even fat carries less immediate satiety than protein. Dietary fats can have satiety value over the long term, which is why many low-carb dieters believe it’s more satisfying, but that isn’t true for everyone. If you don’t absorb dietary fats properly, eating fats instead of protein will make you hungrier, not less.

Additional Symptoms of Not Enough Protein

Protein deficiency produces a wide variety of signs and symptoms with hair typically being the first place that most nutritional deficiencies surface. Despite what most people believe, your hair is not dead. Hair roots need constant nourishment. Since hair is made from protein, when you don’t get enough, your iron levels drop, your ends split, and your hair color begins to fade. If protein deficiency continues, your hair becomes brittle and starts falling out.  

Muscle wasting is also common. When muscles can’t repair themselves, they become weaker and their appearance and size lessens. You may think you’re losing fat as the inches decrease, but you’re actually losing muscle. You also lose strength, and can even experience pain in your neck, muscles, and joints due to the tightness and stiffness that results as the body uses its protein stores. Additional problems are:

• anxiety
• depression
• nausea
• fainting
• headaches
• diarrhea
• fatty liver
• a full, moon-shaped face
• sleep issues or insomnia
• exhaustion, lethargy, or less energy than you had before
• wanting to take naps when you didn’t before
• apathy (a general lack of motivation to do anything)
• the body takes longer to heal
• nails become brittle and break easily
• ridges in fingernails and toenails
• edema (water retention and swelling, particularly in legs/abdomen)
• skin rashes, dry skin, or scaly skin
• hormone issues
• unstable blood sugar
• bacterial infections
• cataracts
• heart problems

Bones, organs, muscles, lung function, immune system reaction, and even your red blood cells all require an adequate protein intake. In fact, protein is essential to almost every chemical reaction our body has. But if protein deficiency continues for more than a few days, organs begin to malfunction, cholesterol levels rise, and your white blood cell count suffers making infections and sickness more likely.

Dr. Atkins and Protein Nutrition

A high fat, moderate protein, low-carb diet has been preached within the low-carb community for years now – even though Dr. Atkins’ take on protein and fats differed. Dietary fat has been held up by most low-carb dieters to be some kind of miracle that will help you reach your weight-loss goals. No matter what ails you, the typical advice is to eat more fat. While that might be true for someone who has extreme metabolic resistance to weight loss, that isn’t true for the average dieter.

“The rest of the diet should consist of those combinations of protein and fat which occur together in nature and which traditionally constitute our main courses.” (Dr. Atkins Nutrition Breakthrough: How to Treat Your Medical Condition Without Drugs, pg. 35) The whole idea of the Atkins diet has always been to correct the “dysnutrition caused by our twentieth-century diet.” The purpose is to educate the overweight and obese about personal tolerance.

However, Dr. Atkins did tell us not to fear fat. He told us to eat it liberally and design luxurious menus, so we’ll be satisfied and not stray back into carbohydrate territory. Fine. But what do we do with that little tidbit? We apply our own definition as to what liberal and luxurious means and begin preaching high-fat religion. What Dr. Atkins considered to be not fearing fat and what we call not fearing fat isn’t necessarily the same thing.

“One of the biggest reasons this diet works so successfully is because you eat protein and fat. And you eat them in just about the sixty to forty proportions in which they usually occur together in nature: in a reasonably lean cut of beef for example.” (Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution, pg. 132)

The Bottom Line on Protein and Fats

The low-carb community has traveled quite a ways away from the original Atkins Diet, where fat was eaten in reasonable quantities, mostly in the same proportion as it’s found in nature. Today we do a higher-calorie Fat Fast and call it the Atkins’ Diet. Dr. Atkins knew that 58 percent of the protein we eat is converted into glucose. He saw that as a good thing. He saw that as an advantage for the average dieter because of protein’s ability to keep you from being hungry.

If you come to the low-carb table from a low-fat, high-carb diet, you’re going to have a very different idea about what constitutes luxurious eating and what’s gluttony. You’re going to have a different idea about what not fearing fat means. The truth about protein is that it all comes down to the degree of Insulin Resistance you have because the Atkins Diet has never been a standard, across-the-board diet. It’s always been about finding your own personal tolerance for carbohydrates, protein, and fats.

If you’re extremely resistant to weight loss and it’s preventing you from reaching your goals, then a normal protein intake as found in nature might be too high because protein consumption causes an insulin spike the same as carbs. That’s how the amino acids get into your body’s cells. In that rare case of extreme hyperinsulinemia that doesn't respond to a typical low-carb diet, a Fat Fast may be appropriate, but Dr. Atkins has always warned that a Fat Fast is dangerous for those who are not severely insulin resistant.

So be careful when lowering your protein intake that you don’t lower it too much.

Can You Be In Ketosis and Not Lose Weight?

Can You Be In Ketosis and Not Lose Weight?

Questions??

How Can You be in Ketosis
and Not Lose Weight?

In 1972, Dr. Atkins introduced the world to the concept of carbohydrate sensitivity. 

He talked about the damage that excessive carbohydrates can do to your metabolism, suggested that overweight and obesity was caused from a metabolic defect, and played up the necessity of being in the state of ketosis to achieve effective weight loss.

Since then, many low-carb dieters have mistakenly thought that the number of ketones that have backed up in the bloodstream is what makes the diet work. It doesn't, and this strong misconception -- that ketones are vital to the fat loss process -- has caused a lot of confusion. 

While being in ketosis is essential to initially trigger the metabolic changes needed to switch from predominantly burning glucose to predominantly burning fats for fuel, you can certainly be in ketosis but not lose weight. 

Here's why:

Read more »

Indoor Grilled Chicken, Low-Carb Style

Indoor Grilled Chicken, Low-Carb Style

Low Carb Styles Special Event Diet The Brutal Way

Try Indoor Grilled Chicken, Low Carb at Its Best!
(Photo by Ray Dehler)  

What do you normally think of when you picture Italian food? Probably not something that’s quick and easy to fix. Am I right? Most people think about homemade spaghetti, Lasagne, or an extra-large slice of pizza with all of the trimmings. While you can certainly find alternative ways to replace most of those carbs, with the holidays right around the corner, you’re going to need a few low-carb dinner ideas that are quick and simple. Here’s one of my favorites.

Marinate and Grill Your Chicken

Chicken makes an extremely economical low-carb meal. In my own area, we can get boneless, skinless chicken breasts at our local WalMart for less than $2 a pound. I do have to buy a family pack to get it at that price, but many times our small local grocery store runs special deals on Thursdays. Those deals are even cheaper. Sometimes, I can purchase chicken breast for as low as $1.79 a pound.

I don’t use the frozen type of breasts that come in a bag because I don’t know what they’re injected with. The bag simply calls it solution. With all of my food sensitivities, the word "solution" is scary, so I just avoid it, but you can certainly use that type of chicken to make this low-carb dish if you want. Make sure you pick up the plain variety though, or at least something that would blend well with lemon and Italian seasonings.

George Foreman Lean Machine for Fast Low-Carb Food
(Photo by Ray Dehler)

I absolutely love marinades. They make my life so much easier. Not only do they make the chicken tasty and tender, but when coupled with an indoor grill, they enable you to have dinner on the table in only a few minutes. My husband is extremely thankful for our George Foreman Lean Machine. Back before I started low-carbing, I was pretty much bedridden. The vertigo was so bad that most days I could hardly get out of bed. He suffered in silence through many “green beans baked over chicken” casserole meals – sometimes, almost every night. It was the easiest meal I could think of.

(Simply lay chicken legs in the bottom of a greased bake dish and top with one or two cans of green beans, water and all. Cover tightly with foil and bake. If I was somewhat coherent, I might sprinkle in a few chopped onions, tomatoes, and bacon.)

He doesn’t have to do that anymore, because an indoor grill is so versatile. Now he gets pork chops, hamburgers, steak, or chicken breast when I’m dizzy or not feeling well.

This low-carb chicken idea took birth during my hHCG days, but I’ve tweaked it to be far more healthy than it was then. Today, I’ve added extra-virgin olive oil to the marinade for some healthy fat and additional flavor. You can use any type of oil you like. When I don’t have extra-virgin olive oil, I use a little grapeseed oil. I don’t use popular oils such as canola because they all use corn-derived citric acid as a defoamer.

All I do is toss the marinade ingredients together in a bowl, pour it over the chicken, and let the chicken marinate all day. It would be the perfect choice when you’re going to be out Christmas shopping or spending the day carving or decorating pumpkins with the kids. I do slice my chicken breasts horizontally, though, so they look like the breasts that come frozen in a bag. That helps them to cook evenly. I get three slices out of each breast, so this recipe will make about nine cutlets. If you’re feeding a family, you can easily double the recipe if you need to.

If you can get your hands on an organic lemon, grating up some of the zest and adding it to the marinade will really intensify the lemon flavor. Since we live in a very small, urban community, they aren’t available here very often. You can also play around a little with the herbs. Some fresh, minced oregano, seasoned pepper, or one of Mrs. Dash’s unique seasoning blends would be nice.

If you happen to have any leftovers, simply tuck them into a baggie and take them to work with you the next day. They make a tasty, cold lunch, just as they are, but you could also chop or slice the leftovers and serve them over a nice salad.

Since this is one of my quick-and-easy low-carb dinner ideas, I generally serve it with a simple tossed salad made from organic romaine, some chopped red onions, and maybe a little minced hard-boiled eggs. When I have wax-free tomatoes, I toss some of them in there too. Since my husband prefers Thousand Island Dressing, I make my own. In addition, steamed vegetables are particularly easy. A mixture of organic broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots will steam in as little as 30 minutes. But since this main dish is so little work, you could also spend a little more time on a couple of fancier sides.

Indoor Grilled Chicken Makes Fast Low-Carb Diet Meal

Grilled Italian Chicken, Low-Carb Style

Ingredients:

3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

2 tablespoons olive oil

juice of a fresh lemon

1 tablespoon Italian seasonings

2 teaspoons minced garlic

1 teaspoon onion powder

2 teaspoons salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

sugar substitute to equal 2 tablespoons sugar

Method:

Slice your chicken breast horizontally into about three slices. The top slice will be shorter and smaller than the other two. Place the chicken pieces into a gallon zip-lock bag and set aside.

In a small bowl, combine all of the rest of the ingredients, and mix well. Pour the marinade into the bag, scraping the bowl with a spoon, so you get all of the Italian seasonings in there. Close the bag and squish everything around with your hands. You want the seasonings to be as evenly distributed over the chicken as you can get them. Allow the chicken to marinate all day, turning a couple of times if possible, but that isn’t absolutely necessary if you work outside the home.

Heat up your grill for about 5 minutes. Place the chicken cutlets onto the grill and cook with the lid closed for about 5 minutes. Be careful that you don't overcook. You want chicken breast to be just barely done so it stays juicy. You could also sauté the chicken in a frying pan with additional olive oil, butter, bacon drippings, or even the marinade itself.

Endocrine Disruptors – Should I Be Concerned?

Endocrine Disruptors – Should I Be Concerned?

Questions??

As many of you know, my blood glucose levels tend to go wonky every now and then. While I used to believe that phenomenon was connected to the amount of carbohydrates I was eating, that hasn’t turned out to be the case. Yes, the number of carbs I eat matters while my sugars are not under control, but so far, carbohydrates have never turned out to be the cause. Instead, food sensitivities such as gluten and GMO corn have always sat at the heart of the problem. Once I uncover the offending food and removed it from my life, my glucose levels have always returned to normal.

When I started reacting to something again this past summer, I was at a loss as to what was causing it. I wasn’t eating gluten, dairy, or GMO corn. I’d been off gluten for over three years. I’d been without dairy for more than two, and GMO corn for a year. But my numbers weren’t improving. So what was left? Soy? I removed my organic gluten-free tamari, but it didn’t seem to make any difference. My blood glucose levels continued to be wonky, and my weight continued to climb as my blood glucose level tipped over the line into diabetic territory.

Needless to say, I was extremely confused -- and worried!

Sometimes, Vertigo is a Blessing

I have a lot of health problems that interfere with my quality of life. One of those problems is bi-lateral vestibular dysfunction, otherwise known as vertigo. Vertigo isn’t a simple dizziness or light-headedness. It’s a spinning motion that occurs inside your head. Sometimes, it manifests as the world tipping sideways, and sometimes, your legs just go out from underneath you. When that happens, you hit the floor before you realize what’s happening because no matter how hard you try, nothing you attempt to hold onto will keep you from going down. Nothing.

Before anyone asks, no I do not have broken-off crystals in my ears messing me up. That’s already been checked out. I had a massive smoke inhalation from a series of Southern California forest fires more than 10 years ago. The Neurologist I went to back then believed I have Meniere’s Disease, but my Primary Care Physician wasn’t willing to accept that diagnosis. I’m pretty much on my own because even the ENT I was seeing told me to stop being lazy, go back to work – I was a floor supervisor and personal one-on-one educator for low-functioning developmentally disabled adults in a workshop setting – and just learn to live with it.

It’s not fun, by any stretch of the imagination, but such is life for me. If I visit a chiropractor regularly and stay away from the foods I’m sensitive too, the only disruptor in my life is the weather. I always know when bad weather is coming. My inner ears are far more accurate than any weather man. The blessing is that the swelling inside my ears and my vertigo always alerts me to things I need to stay away from, but sometimes that message gets confused. Like any typical elimination diet, the number of variables can easily interfere with figuring out what’s going on.

Allergic to Doing Dishes

One of the constants that I’d been noticing lately was that my ears always swelled and the vertigo seemed to suddenly appear shortly before my husband got home from work. That didn’t make any sense; it was just what I was noticing. I also was able to clearly see that it grew worse after dinner, especially when I was cleaning the dishes to get them ready for the dishwasher. I kept thinking it was something I was eating or something to do with our city’s water because nothing else made any sense.

What I’d forgotten was that my dish soap wasn’t 100-percent fragrance free. Our local health food store had been out of the Dishmate Free & Clear that I typically use, so I’d had to settle for a bottle of Dawn from Walmart – somewhere around the beginning of the summer. I’d bought the least offensive, “pure” type of dishwashing liquid the store had, but it still did have a light scent. What I didn’t know then was that some types of Dawn have an Endocrine Disruptor in them.

What is an Endocrine Disruptor?

An Endocrine Disruptor is a chemical that interferes with your hormones. They can cause attention issues, cognitive problems, learning disabilities, make men more feminine or give women more masculine characteristics. Basically, any body system that’s controlled by hormones can be upset. That’s because these chemicals interfere with secretion, synthesis, transport, binding, action, or elimination of hormones associated with that system in the body. So when you come in contact with an Endocrine Disruptor, insulin doesn’t work properly.

The pancreas is an endocrine organ. It secretes the hormone insulin to take care of the glucose in your blood after you eat. Chemicals that interfere with this process are called Endocrine Disruptors. There are many types of Endocrine Disruptors: the PCBs in plastics, bisphenol A (found in the inner lining of most food cans), dioxin, pesticides, phthalates (found in many shampoos and other soap products), and arsenic (currently found in rice). These disruptors can affect your adrenal glands and thyroid, as well as your pancreas.

That means your immune system, reproductive system, cardiovascular system, central nervous system, digestive system, metabolism, and adipose tissue (body fat cells) are all targets for disruption!

Endocrine Disruptors and Insulin Resistance

As low-carb dieters, we seem to spend a lot of time focusing on the amount of carbohydrates in our diets, but some Endocrine Disruptors can actually increase insulin resistance regardless of how many carbs you’re eating. Bisphenol A, dioxin, PCBs, some pesticides, and the phthalates found in Dawn, shampoo, and other soaps increase insulin resistance.

They also play a role in Type 1 and Type 1.5 Diabetes – the type of diabetes that runs in my family.

This is particularly important because Type 1 Diabetes is an autoimmune disease, the same as celiac disease, and phthalates have been found to induce autoimmune problems in certain strains of mice. This all seems to run akin to what I’ve learned about myself this past summer. Within only a couple of days of dumping the Dawn dishwashing detergent last month and returning to my trusty Dishmate, my blood glucose levels totally corrected themselves.

The lesson for me always seems to circle back around to balance. While too many carbs can cause insulin problems for many people, carbohydrates should never be our only focus. Endocrine Disruptors literally saturate our environment. We need to become more aware of their presence in our lives and take a more holistic approach to our low-carb lifestyle – instead of just focusing on our diet.

How to Survive Halloween on a Low-Carb Diet

How to Survive Halloween on a Low-Carb Diet

Low Carb Diet

How to Survive Halloween on a Low-Carb Diet
(Photo by ylacarmoberg)

As Halloween approaches, a house loaded with Halloween candy for the neighborhood kiddies becomes a major problem for many low-carb dieters. My husband loves his mini candy bars and Tootsie Rolls, so I can certainly sympathize and relate. In fact, he started asking me on the very first day of October when I was going to buy the Halloween candy. Although he eats candy regularly – now that he’s given up smoking – he has a special fondness for Halloween. To him, it just isn’t Halloween without candy.

He tries to be sneaky about it. The candy is for all of those trick-or-treaters. We can’t disappoint the neighborhood kids, so maybe we should buy the candy early. That way we won’t have to settle for what’s leftover in the stores on the day before Halloween. I only played that game once. Once was more than enough to figure out I’d been duped. We live about half a dozen blocks from the local church, or less, so we don’t get many trick-or-treaters anymore. Most of the neighborhood kids now spend Halloween in the church parking lot playing Trunk-or-Treat.

What is Trunk-or-Treat?

Trunk-or-Treat
(Photo by Alfred Cunningham)

For Trunk-or-Treat, the kids dress up in their Halloween costumes, but instead of going door-to-door trick-or-treating, they simply go from car-to-car in the parking lot. Parents fill their trunks with bowls or sacks of candy and pass it out to the kids that show up. That’s nice and convenient for the parents and safer for the kids, but it cuts way down on the traffic to our front door. That means we actually don’t have to buy very much candy at all. Besides, it’s much cheaper to wait until the day after Halloween to buy my husband's candy because that’s when our local Walmart marks down whatever is left over to half-price.

Most Celebrations and Holidays Focus on Food

When you’re following a low-carb diet, the holidays can be especially difficult. Society seems to be extremely attached to food, especially sugary foods, so the holidays have always been loaded with goodies for as far back as I can remember. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day all have food at the center of attention, and this has been going on since way before obesity was tagged an epidemic. Holiday celebrations do not make you fat.

Halloween Parties Focus on Food
(Photo by Collin Harvey)

When it comes to Halloween, there seems to be a certain degree of attraction and focus on spooky, unique, or comical costumes, haunted houses, and sometimes parties, but if you took the candy out of Halloween, it just wouldn’t feel the same anymore. It would be the same if you tried to take Christmas trees out of Christmas. Certain symbols, traditions, and foods play a major role in each holiday,  and having candy on Halloween is a holiday tradition that isn’t going to die easily. Let’s be honest…it’s not.

We can say that all we have to do is start adopting a few new traditions, and sometime down the road, they just might stick – but who would we be kidding? The fact that society moved from trick-or-treating to simply doing it collectively in a parking lot is a good sign that most people aren’t about to give up their sugary treats. Parties focus on food as much as trick-or-treating does. While that doesn’t have to be the case, currently, that’s the way it is. So rather than fighting against tradition, sometimes it’s best to look into what you can do to survive them.

Problems of Low-Carb Dieting During Halloween

Most food traditions are more noticeable when you begin a weight-loss diet, especially when you’ve chosen to restrict carbohydrates. Suddenly, the dietary habits of others become magnified. What you didn’t pay attention to before, now makes you feel deprived and left out. Your emotions go crazy, your mind tries to talk you into cheating, and you begin to wonder if it’s even realistic to turn this diet into a life-long project.

Spooky Halloween Cupcakes
(Photo by Cat)

When you’re counting carbohydrates rather than calories, you can no longer snatch a mini Hershey’s bar or individual package of M&Ms when you walk by the candy bowl. You can no longer save up a few extra calories to enjoy the spooky cupcakes or a glass of sparkling Halloween punch at the costume party. You might even find it difficult to figure out what to eat at your local restaurant after a trip through the Haunted House. For those that are new to a low-carb diet or those who have stalled in their weight-loss efforts, such times can be critical.

While it’s easy to say focus on everything but the food, when you can’t eat or drink anything that everyone around you is eating or drinking, that’s extremely difficult to do.

Eat Off Plan Strategically

Eating off plan isn’t necessarily bad. It’s certainly one way to survive Halloween. I did that myself almost every year when I was doing Atkins because the Carbalose, modified cornstarches, wheat starch, and Carbquick mixes low carbers were using to make Halloween treats never agreed with me. Today, I know it was because of the celiac disease, but back then, I didn’t know that. I just knew that the wheat proteins and low-carb products made me sick. Far sicker than cheating ever did because low-carb goodies are made with a high amount of gluten and GMO-corn in the form of sugar substitutes and other corn derivatives.

Eat Off Plan Strategically
(Photo by Chris RadCliff)

The key to eating off plan is to limit how much you eat. You don’t plop yourself down on the sofa in front of the television with the entire bowl of Halloween candy. You pick one or two servings of something you would like to have, and then call it good. You don’t wait until next week to go back onto your low-carb plan or even the next morning. You go right back to your healthy eating plan with the very next thing you put into your mouth. You don’t need to have carbs at dinner, carbs for dessert, carbs for snacks, and eat candy all on the same day just because it’s Halloween.

Pick the food tradition that matters most to you, relax, enjoy that particular food item, and then let it go. Now, that won’t work for everyone. If you have a food intolerance to something that’s in what you’re eating – milk or chocolate or wheat or high-fructose corn syrup, for example – it can send you into a binge, cause your blood glucose levels to soar into dangerous territory, make you feel bloated or downright awful. Not because of the carbohydrates, but because of the food ingredients you’re sensitive to.

  

Does that mean you can’t enjoy Halloween? Of course not. What it means is that you need to find a different way to make that day special for you.

Eat Something You Can’t Normally Afford

Now if you’re sensitive to wheat, dairy, or corn, have chosen to adopt a paleo-type lifestyle, or don’t believe in relaxing your diet even for a holiday or special occasion, you can always turn to a food that holds special meaning for you. Are there certain foods you can’t afford to eat on a regular basis? Are there recipes you love but can’t afford to make as often as you would like?

Eat Something You Can't Normally Afford
(Photo by Shawn Rossi)

In my area, chicken wings are extremely high-priced, but they are one of my favorite foods. Wild Salmon is also rather high here. Lamb is out of sight, but we love it. Surprisingly, boneless, fresh chicken breast is extremely low-priced, and we can buy bacon ends and real Amish butter for less than their conventional counterparts, but that isn’t true for everyone. You need to look at your own area and lifestyle and discover what would feel like a special treat for you.

It doesn’t have to be sugary, just because Halloween is associated with sugar and corn syrup, but it can be if that’s what’s important to you. Whip up a batch of sugar-free peppermint fudge, low-carb Halloween cut-out cookies, or a batch of cream-cheese frosted brownies. You can make a cheese ball rolled in chopped pecans and spread onto crackers made from almond meal. How about a nice sweet potato casserole topped with a streusel that’s loaded with dark-brown cane sugar, coconut, and pecans.

Since chicken wings are a luxury for me, I’m planning on having sesame chicken wings. The idea isn’t to fight feeling deprived. The idea is to recognize the holiday for what it is – AN EXCEPTION – and make it feel like a holiday celebration.

Impact of Corn Prices on a Low-Carb Diet

Impact of Corn Prices on a Low-Carb Diet

Low Carb Diet

As GMO corn-containing feed prices continue to rise, ranchers are turning to new and innovative ways to fatten up their cattle. The mad search for alternatives isn’t all that surprising, because the rumors surrounding the potential cost to raise beef these days could result in meat tripling or more in price. That would be bad news for those of us who are on a low-carb diet.

Rising Corn Prices
Affect Low-Carb Diets
(Photo by Don O'Brien)

However, the alternatives that have been publicized lately, such as candy bars, hot cocoa mix, marshmallows and other goodies, isn’t really new. Many ranchers have been doing that for decades, which is one reason why some low carbers have switched to eating grass-fed beef and organic dairy instead. With the drought last winter and the rising demand for ethanol, even dairy farmers are starting to participate in the practice.

If you look closely at the following examples of what they’re feeding the cows:

• breakfast cereal
• trail mix
• dried cranberries
• orange peels
• crumbled cookies
• saltines
• tapioca flour
• fish meal
• peanut butter
• ice cream sprinkles
• alternative grains

You can obviously see that these alternative foods mixed in with their normal feed contain a lot of carbs, but they also contain a lot of sugar, starches, wheat, or high-fructose corn syrup. When it comes to HFCS, they aren’t really avoiding the GMO corn issue, they’re just scrounging for a cheaper way of getting it into the cattle.

Impact of Corn Prices

Low-Carb Diets Saturated With Corn
(Photo by Liz West)

Of greater concern for low-carb dieters is the impact these rising corn prices are going to have on all of our low-carb food choices regardless of what the farmers and ranchers are doing. Most people following a low-carb diet believe they are eating gluten free or grain free, but in reality, they’re not. Why? Because GMO corn is as prevalent among low-carb foods as it is among highly processed, high-carb, refined products.

Corn isn’t just found in cornstarch, cornmeal, and corn on the cob. It’s extremely difficult to avoid unless you raise your own food and cattle. For example, it’s used to wash your eggs and produce, keep your supermarket meats fresh, found in most plastic wrappings and containers, and it’s what sugar-substitutes are made from. That means supermarket prices as a whole are bound to skyrocket, which will make it even more difficult to stick to a low-carb diet in the future.

I had an interesting revelation recently about Dawn dishwashing detergent. I noticed that every time I go into the kitchen and start doing the dishes, my ears begin to swell and I get dizzy. For a long time, I’ve been blaming that reaction on cheese and other foods, but I’ve finally narrowed it down to the Dawn. In fact, I’ve even discovered that it contains an endocrine disruptor, so getting rid of the Dawn has straightened out my blood glucose problems that have been giving me trouble lately as well.

I Get to Eat Cheese Again!
(Photo by Richard North)

For me, that also means I can re-introduce dairy products into my diet. Dairy, but not GMO corn. I still react to genetically modified corn and its derivatives. I’ve been adding dairy products extremely slowly, so that I can monitor my reactions. I’ve also been careful to introduce only a single variable at a time. I’ve been using no store-brand products, and only products that do not have natural flavorings, citric acid, or other obvious corn ingredients on the label.

I about choked when I stopped by my local supermarket this morning and found that traditional cheddar cheese has risen to almost $6 a pound! No wonder my local Walmart didn’t have any, at any price, last week. $12 is what it used to cost to buy a giant-sized five-pound block, but now it only gets you a measly two pounds. When you can buy a family-sized package of tender, center-cut pork chops for the same amount of money, it really starts to put a damper on variability – especially, if you’re like me and are only trying to feed two people.

Broccoli with Cheese Sauce
(Photo by Bordecia34)

Granted, two pounds of cheese will go quite a ways. It feeds both my husband and I for snacks, and makes cheese sauce for vegetables, but it’s disheartening when I sit back and realize that no matter how hard I try, I simply cannot get our food bill below $125 a week for two adults. And that’s with me eating about 100 carbs per day, and my husband eating all of the carbs he wants. I can’t imagine how hard it must be to eat a traditional low-carb diet when prices are so darn high right now.

I’m sure there must be low-carb tricks I’m missing, and I’m sure that some of that has to do with where we live. Some of it definitely has to do with what my husband eats for snacks and takes to work for his lunch, but still… Low carb, nor not, prices are climbing and I can’t claim that eating is cheaper that health care costs anymore – not when it’s $200 for a simple office visit in my area.

Although we do have insurance now, Cigna isn’t quick to pay, and they’re spending a lot of time trying to find loopholes. Their latest letter regarding an office visit my husband made six months ago to our family physician wanted to know when my husband went to the doctor for this condition last. Say, what? I guess they’re hoping it’s a pre-existing condition. It’s not, which is why this whole mess is so aggravating! They wait six months to ask us that?

At the moment, I don’t have any answers because I recently looked into the Nutritional Ketosis movement, did an Atkins’ Induction that way, and I gained another five pounds as a result!

I know I really need to stop doing that. I need to just let go of a traditional low-carb diet and go back to what works for me, but I was so hopeful that maybe…just maybe…someone had finally stumbled on my problem: too much protein. And that the Dawn dishwashing detergent I’d been using was the real cuprit behind my dieting failures. But I’ve discovered that isn’t it. My body fights back extremely hard when I try to lower my carbs. When I lower my protein, it fights back even harder.

I’m beginning to think that when you come to the low-carb table weighing as much as I did in 2007, that your body will only allow you to lose so much of your fat stores before it wages war against you. I’ve seen this happen in others, and I’ve seen this happen in myself. Going from a size 24 to a size 14 is great. I’m happy and proud of my success, but I still look FAT. I still look pregnant! I guess, I just need to find a way to live with that.

Another Low Carb Success Story: Captain K’s Unique Approach

Another Low Carb Success Story: Captain K’s Unique Approach

Low Carb Styles

I absolutely love it when I run across a new success story. Not only does it give me a reason to pause and reflect upon this way of eating, but it also gives me an opportunity to gain a little new insight that I didn’t have before. Such is the case with Captain K.

I read a lot of weight-loss articles over at Info Barrel, but it’s like searching for a pearl that’s buried in an entire desert of sand. Most articles are determined to call low-carb eating a fad, want to preach how low-calorie higher-activity is The Way, or just go on and on, rehashing the same basic concepts we’ve read in a hundred weight-loss articles before. Nothing new, and nothing to pass on here.

But Captain K was different. He’s not just a writer trying to write a weight-loss article from an outside perspective. He lost 40 pounds in 10 months and wanted to share how he did it, and what he learned along the way. Even the intro sucked the breath right out of me:

“Once you have gained weight, it becomes a habit to eat what you want, when you want, and how you want.”

He couldn’t have hit me any closer to home than that. That’s how I knew he wasn’t pretending to know what he was talking about, he really did know. And I’d just like to add that when you stop to take a maintenance break, it feels pretty close to the same way. You get used to eating in a way that helps you maintain your current weight, but it’s extremely difficult to find the motivation to get back onto the wagon and complete the journey because it generally means you have to give up something more than you already have.

Captain K’s way of losing those 40 pounds so quickly? It wasn’t your typical low-carb diet. He found a way that was uniquely his own.

First, he zeroed in on one high-carb food at a time. After looking at the calorie count for that particular high-carb food, he replaced it with something that was high in protein instead. For example, the first thing he cut out of his life was regular soda that he was used to drinking at lunch. Instead of drinking all of that high-fructose corn syrup, he ate a larger burger or a larger portion of chicken, and drank water instead.

To trick his body, he simply replaced the soda with meat, calorie for calorie. He did that, so his body wouldn’t suspect he was doing anything sneaky. The result? He didn’t feel deprived or hungry. There was no strong, physical attempt to get himself to go back to the way things were before. That one, simple, drastic cut in carbohydrate content brought success because he chose to own it before moving on.

In addition, he didn’t rush himself either. In fact, he didn’t do anything else for the first couple of months. He waited for that new behavior to become a permanent habit. Only then did he look at himself, his life, and what he was eating to find a new high-carb food to get rid of.

His low-carb approach was based on the observation that most people eat the same 30 to 50 foods all of the time. If you don’t believe him, try logging your low-carb diet meals into an online calorie-counting site such as Fitday or a downloadable phone app and watch yourself.

For the complete article, check out Losing 40 Pounds in 10 Months, and then scroll down to his comments section below the article and leave him a bit of encouragement. We all need that now and then…

What is Nutritional Ketosis?

What is Nutritional Ketosis?

Questions??

I’ve been watching the Nutritional Ketosis movement for several weeks now, and I came to a serious “AHA moment” yesterday.

I attempted a real Ketogenic diet several years ago – the type they put kids with seizures on – but I didn’t have much luck with it. In fact, I quickly gained about 10 to 15 pounds within the first week or two, so I haven’t been that interested in doing it myself, but I’ve been curious about it in case it worked well for others.

A high-fat, low-carb diet isn’t new. Barry Groves has been recommending that type of weight-loss program for years! But what the low-carb community zeroed in on when presented with that type of diet was only the high fat. That’s where most people placed their focus because that’s what they wanted to eat. It didn’t matter that Dr. Atkins boldly claimed his diet was not a high-fat diet. Fat is what’s restricted on a standard low-calorie diet and doesn’t raise blood glucose levels, so that’s what makes low carbing attractive to many folks.

For the most part, the low-carb community ignored everything required to make a high-fat, low-carb diet work. The result of that high-fat mind-set was a weight-loss stall that appears around the time where the amount of fat calories eaten equals the amount of fat calories the body needs to sustain your weight. In other words – maintenance. The body won’t access its remaining fat stores if it doesn’t need to. Dr. Eades tried to get low carbers to understand that many years ago, but most low carbers didn’t listen.

Some people have been able to overcome the problem by reducing overall calories and upping activity, but that hasn’t worked for everyone. If you’re short or have serious medical conditions, the amount of calories needed to drop pounds and maintain a healthy weight is often too low for sustainability. On a typical low-carb diet, I found I needed to drop my calories to 900 calories per day or less, in order to lose. At 1200 calories per day, I maintain or gain.

WHY? Because the most important component of a high-fat, low-carb diet is ignored.

And I’m as guilty as everyone else. Although I’d figured out from re-reading all of Dr. Atkins’ and Dr. Eades’ weight-loss books that neither of them recommend a HIGH fat diet – and calories count a whole lot more than most low-carb folks are willing to accept – I was still missing the most critical component of what makes that type of diet work.

Enter Jimmy Moore and Nutritional Ketosis

Within the current low-carb climate, it’s easy to see that Jimmy Moore’s n=1 Nutritional Ketosis experiment is what brought the idea of Nutritional Ketosis to the front of attention. He has an extremely large group of followers, so what he says, recommends (or doesn’t), and DOES, pretty much drives the thought process and actions within the low-carb community. We’re talking about the overall direction of low carbing itself.

Yes, there are groups who are resisting the movement. There are pockets of folks who want to continue eating their large portions of protein foods and low-carb products because they don’t see a reason to fix something that isn’t broken. And that’s fine. If high protein is working, there’s really no GOOD reason to switch to something else because the whole point behind the original Atkins Diet was to find your particular degree of carbohydrate intolerance and stay within those limits.

However, as time goes on, what I’m seeing is that for the most part, our metabolic problems are getting worse, not better.

A Low-Carb Diet Doesn’t Work the Same

In 1972, when Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution first surfaced, there were no low-carb products. Restricting carbohydrates was a relatively new idea, and worked nicely because the body had never had to rely upon that alternative metabolic pathway before. It worked well because our food was still pure and relatively uncontaminated with genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). You could switch from processed foods to a whole-foods diet and easily detox from what the “Powers that Be” were doing to our wheat and other processed foods.

That isn’t true today. For a great many people, what worked in 1972 no longer works because our food and beverages aren’t the same anymore. Animals are fed genetically-modified feed (including most grass-fed animals in the winter when pasture is scarce). Those pastured fed are washed and processed with genetically-modified corn-derived citric acid or lactic acid by law. Eggs are washed in a genetically-modified cornstarch solution.

Meat, poultry and fish are further contaminated with GMOs at the grocery store by their packaging. Fresh fruits and vegetables are picked green (including organic produce), and then waxed with petrochemicals and genetically-modified corn-derived ingredients or gassed with Ethylene. In fact, every product that lists alcohol in it's ingredients such as simple Vanilla extract, contains GMOs. And organically grown, or even the term “organic,” doesn’t mean what you’re about to eat is 100 percent organic and therefore safe.

It’s Not Just About the Carbs Anymore

Nutritional Ketosis is an attempt by Dr. Phinney and Jeff Volek to help those within the low-carb community that are finding it difficult to lose weight following a standard low-carb diet. It’s no longer a simple matter of moving to whole-foods such as Paleo or using a carb-restricted solution such as Atkins. For many individuals, something is interfering with the body’s ability to go into Ketosis when restricting carbohydrates. And it’s that something that Jimmy Moore and others are addressing with their Nutritional Ketosis experiments.

If your insulin response is still in good condition, you won’t have the same problems as those of us whose insulin response isn’t behaving normally anymore.

It used to be, when you ate protein and it was converted into glucose, insulin simply ushered that glucose into your cells to take care of the portions of the brain, kidneys and other cells that don’t have mitochondria. This is called Gluconeogenesis and low-carb authorities considered a good thing. But many low carbers are discovering that their insulin resistance and other metabolic issues are not correcting themselves by simply restricting carbohydrates any more.

In fact, many who have started using ketone meters that measure the amount of ketones in the blood, rather than the urine, are finding they are not in Ketosis at all.

What is Nutritional Ketosis?

In Phinney’s and Volek’s book, The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living, Nutritional Ketosis is defined as having a certain level of ketones in the bloodstream. The term was also used by them in the latest Atkins’ book that they authored. The latest Atkins book has not been well received within the low-carb community because of its stance on dietary fat and higher carbohydrate allowance for Induction. Low carbers are also skeptical because of its contradictory nature. It tries to reach out to as many individuals as possible by correcting a lot of myths and low-carb misconceptions, but for the most part, low-carbers want to continue to believe in Low-Carb Magic.

Most low-carb dieters focus on the amount of ketones being thrown off into the urine because that’s what Dr. Atkins recommended in 1972, but the amount of ketones in your urine does not mean you are in Ketosis! What people are finding is that there is absolutely no correlation to urine ketones and Ketosis.

I’m not going to go so far as to say that Dr. Atkins was wrong, but it certainly isn’t true today that Ketostix measure Ketosis. They absolutely do not!

So what is Nutritional Ketosis? Dr. Atkins used to refer to the condition as Dietary Ketosis or Benign Dietary Ketosis in order to separate it from the very dangerous situation of Ketoacidosis. Ketoacidosis is why many medical professionals are afraid of Ketosis. When that condition occurs, insulin level has dropped to zero, so there is no way for the body to correct an abnormally high level of ketones in the blood.

Too high of a blood ketone level can be fatal. I had a nephew die several years ago from Ketoacidosis, so I know first hand that it’s not something that you want to play around with if you have Type 1 Diabetes. It’s dangerous!

But Nutritional Ketosis isn’t the same thing because in a normal metabolism, the body will secrete insulin to take care of a ketone level that becomes too high. It’s no secret that Insulin shuts down access to body fat stores. In the presence of Insulin, the body is then able to burn its present level of ketones in the blood. After which, your insulin level goes down and your low-carb diet then continues. That’s why Nutritional Ketosis isn’t dangerous. Insulin is a healthy, backup response that keeps the diet totally safe.

But that backup response is also one reason why going too low in carbohydrates can be just as detrimental to your weight loss efforts are going too high. It all comes down to finding the right balance of protein, carbohydrates and dietary fats, which can be a bit tricky.

I now realize that's why my past Ketogenic Diet efforts didn’t work very well. I didn’t understand how important finding the right balance actually was. I ate high fat, and extremely low carbohydrate (sometimes, even zero carb), but I also ate a ton of protein. When I did zero carb, I ate as much as 8 ounces of protein at each meal since I wasn’t eating anything else.

That translated into about 144 grams protein minimum to as much as 200!

Regardless of the absence of carbs, that much protein simply kept my body burning glucose for fuel. And when you burn a majority of your fuel as glucose, insulin goes up, so the body simply stores all incoming dietary fat until it needs it later on.

For me, later on never came!

Update: Well, I tried a Nutritional Ketosis Diet that restricted my protein intake to 60 grams. I ate 1,200 calories and seriously upped my fat. I recorded my experience and results at my After Low Carb blog. If interested, you can check it out and leave me a comment.