I must confess I've learned to love stone as a unit in which to express weight. I've lost 2 stone in 13 weeks. What an oddly gratifying arbitrary milestone.
I kept a food journal for a while. Not a bad idea. I'll pick it up again and maybe post on a typical week.
Basics are: no wheat, starch, or sugar. Don't worry about fat. Most calories on low-carb will be from fat (you get lots of protein, but a majority protein diet is pretty much impossible to tolerate).
I aim for less than 50g of carbs/day, many days less than 20g (especially after a high-carb day).
Typical breakfast is eggs. At work lunch is often green salad, olives, hard boiled eggs. Dinner a nice meat dish, green veg ok, or tuna melt or something. No bread or pasta or rice. E.g. pizza without crust or use romaine leaves for wraps instead of tortillas or bread. Nuts are generally good, and a common snack at work.
I'm going halfway on this plan: No bread (or very little -- half a flatbread sandwich at work with salad and soup ... maybe), no taters, no rice, etc. Oh, and no beer -- decided that when I got back from Chi. It's all wine now. I'm already feeling better. I'm avoiding cane sugar products, but I can't abide my morning tea without some sweetening, so I'm on honey.
I admit I'm getting tired of eggs for breakfast, though. I'm thinking herring is the next angle to work in the morning.
Rick, you're my example of someone with no insulin resistance problem, who can eat ice cream 3 meals/day and never gain weight.
The thing with breakfast: once you get off the sweet and go savory you open up a lot of possibilities. Doesn't have to be eggs, but for me I like them and they are very quick to cook.
I switched to black coffee and enjoy it much more than I thought.
There is nothing healthy about soy milk. What gives you that idea?
Also, vegetarian != healthy. Many veggies are good for you, true, but still.
What exactly are your goals for your eating regimen? Fruit and fruit juice aren't helping anything, unless one of your goals is high LDL and small LDL particle size.
The problems, for me, with hummus are (1) it can have a lot of carbs -- relatively high compared to some other types of beans (I do sometimes have small amounts with lunch), and (2) it's so readily available here that the quality suffers -- it's actually hard to get ones that don't incorporate some mysterious "vegetable oil", which should be unnecessary (tahini and olive oil should meet all the oil requirements).
hummus i'd make myself, so no mystery ingredients. soy milk, i guess i'll have to research that.
the dinner=veggie goal is to avoid having a heavy meal late, as we tend to eat late. research has just started, so i'll admit it's not very well thought out. i just want to avoid the trap of eating nothing but beef, cheese and bacon 3x/day.
I know what you mean about late meals, though. I guess the heart of this question for me would be, what do you mean by "heavy"? For me, I don't want to go to bed feeling full or, worse, stuffed or, worse, wake up feeling full. I find it very easy to overeat things like pasta, pizza, ice cream, but very difficult to overeat low-carb meals. Whereas the popular definition of "light" vs "heavy" is probably "low-fat" vs. "high-fat". The problem is that low-fat almost always has to mean, in terms of a meal, high-carb.
I do prefer a few hours between last meal & bedtime, but even if I eat late I don't have qualms about a "rich" meal, but generally I simply won't eat a lot of it. A good before & after anecdote for me is tuna: I used to put back a few large bowls of a tuna and pasta dish I'd make all the time (tuna, pasta, olive oil, peas, garlic). Could just eat it to the cows came home. Now, if I whip up a tuna salad at night (tuna, mayo, cabbage, celery), it doesn't take much before I'm just not hungry and no longer interested in eating more. Add bread, pasta, tortillas and I'm much more likely to overeat. So anyway, I can have a high-fat, high-protein, low-carb dinner, even late, and not go to bed feeling overfull.
i'll confess i had to do some math. and then: "wow!"
ReplyDeleteif you want to blog about a typical low-carb day for you, i would read such a post.
I kept a food journal for a while. Not a bad idea. I'll pick it up again and maybe post on a typical week.
ReplyDeleteBasics are: no wheat, starch, or sugar. Don't worry about fat. Most calories on low-carb will be from fat (you get lots of protein, but a majority protein diet is pretty much impossible to tolerate).
I aim for less than 50g of carbs/day, many days less than 20g (especially after a high-carb day).
Typical breakfast is eggs. At work lunch is often green salad, olives, hard boiled eggs. Dinner a nice meat dish, green veg ok, or tuna melt or something. No bread or pasta or rice. E.g. pizza without crust or use romaine leaves for wraps instead of tortillas or bread. Nuts are generally good, and a common snack at work.
I'm going halfway on this plan: No bread (or very little -- half a flatbread sandwich at work with salad and soup ... maybe), no taters, no rice, etc. Oh, and no beer -- decided that when I got back from Chi. It's all wine now. I'm already feeling better. I'm avoiding cane sugar products, but I can't abide my morning tea without some sweetening, so I'm on honey.
ReplyDeleteI admit I'm getting tired of eggs for breakfast, though. I'm thinking herring is the next angle to work in the morning.
Will report results as they develop.
As for you, Ron, good on ya!
i am contemplating something along these lines:
ReplyDelete1. breakfast is either juicing or eggs, plus my normal spirulina intake
2. lunch is the big meal: meat, cheese, fruit, nuts, olive oil (antipasta or caprese salad would qualify here)
3. dinner is vegetarian; sometimes raw, sometimes not. or perhaps fish.
i may still do soy milk and hummus -- both have carbs, but i think are otherwise healthy pursuits.
Rick, you're my example of someone with no insulin resistance problem, who can eat ice cream 3 meals/day and never gain weight.
ReplyDeleteThe thing with breakfast: once you get off the sweet and go savory you open up a lot of possibilities. Doesn't have to be eggs, but for me I like them and they are very quick to cook.
I switched to black coffee and enjoy it much more than I thought.
There is nothing healthy about soy milk. What gives you that idea?
ReplyDeleteAlso, vegetarian != healthy. Many veggies are good for you, true, but still.
What exactly are your goals for your eating regimen? Fruit and fruit juice aren't helping anything, unless one of your goals is high LDL and small LDL particle size.
The problems, for me, with hummus are (1) it can have a lot of carbs -- relatively high compared to some other types of beans (I do sometimes have small amounts with lunch), and (2) it's so readily available here that the quality suffers -- it's actually hard to get ones that don't incorporate some mysterious "vegetable oil", which should be unnecessary (tahini and olive oil should meet all the oil requirements).
ReplyDeletehummus i'd make myself, so no mystery ingredients. soy milk, i guess i'll have to research that.
ReplyDeletethe dinner=veggie goal is to avoid having a heavy meal late, as we tend to eat late. research has just started, so i'll admit it's not very well thought out. i just want to avoid the trap of eating nothing but beef, cheese and bacon 3x/day.
"beef, cheese and bacon 3x/day"
ReplyDeletenice straw man, dr. ornish
I know what you mean about late meals, though. I guess the heart of this question for me would be, what do you mean by "heavy"? For me, I don't want to go to bed feeling full or, worse, stuffed or, worse, wake up feeling full. I find it very easy to overeat things like pasta, pizza, ice cream, but very difficult to overeat low-carb meals. Whereas the popular definition of "light" vs "heavy" is probably "low-fat" vs. "high-fat". The problem is that low-fat almost always has to mean, in terms of a meal, high-carb.
ReplyDeleteI do prefer a few hours between last meal & bedtime, but even if I eat late I don't have qualms about a "rich" meal, but generally I simply won't eat a lot of it. A good before & after anecdote for me is tuna: I used to put back a few large bowls of a tuna and pasta dish I'd make all the time (tuna, pasta, olive oil, peas, garlic). Could just eat it to the cows came home. Now, if I whip up a tuna salad at night (tuna, mayo, cabbage, celery), it doesn't take much before I'm just not hungry and no longer interested in eating more. Add bread, pasta, tortillas and I'm much more likely to overeat. So anyway, I can have a high-fat, high-protein, low-carb dinner, even late, and not go to bed feeling overfull.