low carb help

If you intend to cut them out forever go for it. Its hard to cut carbs & then add them back. Dont get me wrong some people do it very successfully. Losing weight & cutting carbs dont go hand in hand tho. Losing weight & eating at a deficit do . You can lose weight without cutting carbs. The way you go about it is up to you though. Good luck!

I was on low carb back in 1996 and kept at it for over a year. I lost a good deal of weight and thoroughly enjoyed eating that way. It was fun to get fatty double cheeseburgers with bacon & no bun, and eat it with a sauce of full-fat mayo and mustard! I also studied it extensively and determined that it was healthy for me and still think it's a worthwhile approach.

However, I did eventually go off the program and gained all my weight back. Why? I can't say whether the fault lies with the diet or myself. I do know that it's a real battle in a world that doesn't get it. In 1996 almost no one got it.

Fast forward to 2005 -- my wife and I decided to try losing weight again... we tried low carb again... and this time the world DID get it. It was the renaissance of low-carb and Atkins, and there were tons of products on the shelves including snacks, and even restaurant menu selections for low-carbers. Should have been paradise, and I was expecting it would be.

But it didn't work. This time the weight did not fall off like before... also I was not as consistent as I was before. Again, I don't know who or what to blame.

Low calorie is working for me so far... now I've been on MFP for 2 3/4 years. This is the longest I have kept at any diet program and hope it's gonna stick. I think its actually easier to follow than Atkins because there are fewer specific restrictions, like breaded fish and chicken.

Falling off the wagon can happen with any diet... but I think low carb is less forgiving because it really doesn't take a lot of starch & sugar to throw you out of ketosis.

I have considered going back to Atkins on a temporary basis so I can eat a pile of pork sausage and fried eggs for breakfast, then head to the burger palace for lunch. Maybe one day.

Could use everyone’s opinion on low carb..I’ve tried low carb and lost weight but seem to fall off the wagon..do you think its something a person can do long term or is it just me..thank you

Any `diet` is workable short term?

I don`t understand why it has to be low carb?

As a diabetic who properly researched diet (instead of believing what people told me) I've been eating a low-carb, high-fat ketogenic diet since my diagnosis in late December of 2010. So nearly 2-1/2 years now.

Most days I'm well under 75g of carbohydrate, often as little as 40g. And that's on a diet of anywhere from 2,200 (while dieting) to 3,500 (while mass-gaining) calories.

Anybody can do it, and if you want to you can stick to it.

The key is recipes and foods that are low-carb, but SEEM like they're not.

EDIT: I want to say here that a DIET shouldn't be something you go on/off ... it should be something you can live with for life. If you can't do low-carb for life, and have no medical need to do so, you should try something else.

However, after looking at your profile, you're 46 years old and claim to have been fat all your life ... it's very possible you could have metabolic syndrome and/or pre-diabetes and should get screened for either to determine if you do have a medical reason to stay low-carb. An HbA1c test (NOT a fasting glucose test) is the best screening tool for this.

I've chosen to eat Paleo -- for me, in terms of carbs, that means I don't eat wheat (or any source of processed sugar or sweetener), along with handful of other sources of carbs (e.g. I avoid white potato but will eat sweet potato occassionally).

This has worked very well for me and I no longer have the carb-related intense hunger/cravings that I did before. Even if I forget or don't get a chance to eat for a signficant portion of the day -- I'll feel a gradually increasing hunger rather than desperate urgency to EAT NOW.

Because avoiding wheat and sugar has smoothed my appetite I am better able to stick to my own goals and plans for what to eat and when to eat it and THAT has been the key to my success to this point.

I've been eating ketogenic for almost 2 years now and I'm doing fantastic. I got out of the risk zone for diabetes, don't suffer depresison anymore, finally did my first pull up (can do 50 now!) and can now run a ten k in 57 minutes.

Yeah, you could accomplish that with lean cuisine and spaghetti.

But I'd rather do it with bunless bacon cheeseburgers, pork rind nachos, and scotch eggs.

It's important to eat the right carbs. Like sweet potatoes and high fiber products, when u DO eat them

Yes, cancer. Apparently cancer cells have a fondness for sugars, which, of course, are carbs. Sad but true.

Protein sources are highly acidic which also support tumor growth... that's why i said it didn't make much sense...

It's not the acidity, it's gluconeogenesis, where the body converts the protein to glucose.

This is why they are placed on a ketogenic diet (which from a medical standpoint is normally well under 10% of calories from carbs, under 20% from protein and 70% or more from fat.)

The diets are usually also a slight caloric deficit, to further ensure that there isn't an excess of circulating glucose. Once a person enters ketosis, the body becomes fat-adapted and circulating glucose levels drop even in non-diabetic individuals. This is why the tumor growth is slowed.

Too much protein can cause elevations in circulating blood glucose - I'm a perfect example of that. When I eat protein in a ratio of 1g/lb of lean mass during my mass-building phase I have great glycemic control (as the protein is needed for muscle building) but if I ate that much when cutting, my glucose shoots into ranges I find unacceptable. Thus I have to eat considerably less protein when dieting than when building - excess protein raises blood glucose because of gluconeogenesis.

This would also imply that vegans ar more likely to develop cancer, which doesn't make sense at all either.

Actually, vegans are more likely to have colo-rectal cancer than those eating a regular diet. But lower cancer rates overall. (You can check multiple studies with the same conclusion, the most recent is the OXFORD-EPIC study).

Reduced cancer rates, however, are NOT solely linked to diet. Most vegans also live a very healthy lifestyle and eliminate several other cancer risk factors.

To show it's not just the vegan diet and their lack of meat, one needs only look to studies on cancer rates between 7th day Adventists (vegans) and Mormons, who live a very similar lifestyle but also eat meat. Neither religion believes in smoking or drinking, and studies show both religions have the lowest cancer rates in the western world. HOWEVER unlike the 7th-day Adventists, the Mormons eat meat. AND the Mormons have lower overall cancer rates than 7th day Adventists as well as substantially less colo-rectal cancer than the 7th-Day Adventists.

There's been two studies done that I know of comparing the 7th Day Adventist diet (which is the largest study of vegan dieters collected) with the Mormon dieters. Both reached the same conclusions.

Could use everyone’s opinion on low carb..I’ve tried low carb and lost weight but seem to fall off the wagon..do you think its something a person can do long term or is it just me..thank you

Low carb.
1. Stay within your calorie goals.
2. Stay within your carb goals.

low calories
1. stay within your calorie goals

which do you think is least likely to fail??

keep it simple.

Why are we not friends yet?!?! Great post!

are you familiar with the link between red meat and colon cancer?
http://www.health.harvard.edu/fhg/updates/Red-meat-and-colon-cancer.shtml

Very, I've studied them extensively. Although I'll be the first to admit we cannot discount them entirely, there are problems with the studies to some extent - those being that they almost universally include processed meats with red meat (not all, but over 90% of them do) and they have yet to properly study free-range/grass-fed red meat eaters compared to those eating regular red meat. That and the article you linked to was about a study on very high red-meat intake.

I'm sure you'll agree there's a big difference in quality of meat from a factory-farmed/grain-fed/hormone-injected bovine than from one that's free-range and all-natural. It bears testing but unfortunately the statistical sample group is too small (and too difficult to recruit, I think) to accurately test.

They're also all observational/epidemiological studies, which cannot show causation - only correlation. But again, they're worth paying attention to.

I do enjoy the Mormon/7th-Day Adventist studies that show meat does not affect cancer levels in the Mormon population, however. Doing some more reading they apparently believe in eating meat in moderation.

As such my own personal belief (and that's all it can be at this point) is that unprocessed red-meat is fine to eat in moderate amounts, as is fowl and fish. But all meats/fowl/fish are far healthiest if we avoid factory-farmed/processed varieties.

... and that being said I think it's important we stop hijacking this nice man's thread I'm happy to continue a polite discussion via messages though...

Since people tend to get sensitive about this topic...this is just MY experience.

I was on the atkins diet for two years straight during my developmental years, this is NOT how the diet is supposed to go (but was set up by my doctor!). Unfortunately It cause me to have a lot of insulin issues once I was taken off of it. I also did not research (I was a kid) that you have to watch your sat fat and trans fat levels or guess what? The pancreas will go and you'll have heart issues.

So I would not say to not go low carb, I would say research the heck out of it before hand. After losing 150 pounds with diabetes and PCOS, my doctor has stated that she would still not be comfortable with me living no-carb. Instead I have switched to eliminating white carbs. I aim for 160 a day, try to keep them whole grain (Been failing lately, I can admit that) and combine them with protein to slow the release of sugar into the blood.

If you do not have a problem with insulin, you do not NEED to live no carb. I don't see why you would want to. Tumors may feed on glucose, but it's also been 'proven' that meat causes the same cancers, and has a lot of evidence showing that red meat effects your heart health.

The real winner for the average person is finding the proper balance. You can't allow yourself to be scared by every study because guess what? The sun causes cancer.
http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/

Anything that can change the life cycle of a cell can cause cancer.
"What is a carcinogen?

Cancer is caused by changes in a cell's DNA – its genetic "blueprint." Some of these changes may be inherited from our parents, while others may be caused by outside exposures, which are often referred to as environmental factors. Environmental factors can include a wide range of exposures, such as:

Lifestyle factors (nutrition, tobacco use, physical activity, etc.)
Naturally occurring exposures (ultraviolet light, radon gas, infectious agents, etc.)
Medical treatments (chemotherapy, radiation, immune system-suppressing drugs, etc.)
Workplace exposures
Household exposures
Pollution
" From the cancer.org.

If you are still curious about a no carb lifestyle, contact your doctor.
Listening to stories from people is not the same as tailoring your diet to your body.

</end my opinoin>

This!

I've chosen to eat Paleo -- for me, in terms of carbs, that means I don't eat wheat (or any source of processed sugar or sweetener), along with handful of other sources of carbs (e.g. I avoid white potato but will eat sweet potato occassionally).

This has worked very well for me and I no longer have the carb-related intense hunger/cravings that I did before. Even if I forget or don't get a chance to eat for a signficant portion of the day -- I'll feel a gradually increasing hunger rather than desperate urgency to EAT NOW.

Because avoiding wheat and sugar has smoothed my appetite I am better able to stick to my own goals and plans for what to eat and when to eat it and THAT has been the key to my success to this point.

I am glad I do it, now I can regulate them in my diet and use them for a purpose (beast out). They are the best.