I use sweeteners and eat cheese daily. I have seen a few people say they lose faster without them, or claim that they have stalled because of them, but I don't think that's the norm. Honestly, if you're still in the beginning, give it a little time to evaluate how it's going before eliminating anything else. I think most people do fine with them.

I've been wondering about the dairy question lately as well. I use HWC, cream cheese, sour cream & cheddar. I've been playing with the same couple of pounds for a bit now and I'm wondering if I should cut the dairy for awhile. But then what do I put in my coffee?? or make yummy treats?? First world problems eh?

But then what do I put in my coffee?? or make yummy treats?? First world problems eh?

I tried Almond Breeze in coffee this week. A different flavour, but OK once you get used to it.

I've been wondering about the dairy question lately as well. I use HWC, cream cheese, sour cream & cheddar. I've been playing with the same couple of pounds for a bit now and I'm wondering if I should cut the dairy for awhile. But then what do I put in my coffee?? or make yummy treats?? First world problems eh?

HWC is probably the closest you get to all fat foods like coconut oil. 1/2 cup of heavy cream has around 3-4 carbs with 40g of fat. Much higher fat and lower carbs/protein than any cheese or meat. There is no need to restrict it unless you have intolerance or don't do well with dairy. Less than 0.5g of carb compared to 5gm of fat in a tablespoon of HWC is not going to make a big difference.

:-) I like to add 1/4 cup full fat coconut milk (out of the can in the Asian food section) to my BPC or smoothies. It's delicious!!!

Yum...I don't drink coffee but this makes me almost want to!

My BFF's mom has had type II diabetes for many, many years and for a while worked as a volunteer educator for folks who were newly diagnosed with type II back in the late 80's and early 90's. She noticed that artificial sweetners would spike blood sugars on some people and not others. She was a grant writer at a major teaching hospital and had several researchers poo-poo her on this one, but she ignored them and advised people to see if their blood sugar spiked or not after they used artificial sweetners - and to try different ones, as she'd also noticed a variance in that as well.

Well, now, low and behold, there's scientific evidence that she was right!

I think she was on to something - sweetners may or may not affect your blood sugars. And different types may or may not do the same.

I did some graduate work many, many years ago (abandoned to follow mammon, lol) in behavioral studies, and it makes perfect sense to me that for some people, blood sugars will spike with artificial sweetners and for others it won't. Given certain stimuli, over and over again people's bodies learn to respond and prepare for the stimuli - that's at the very center of ALL behavioral science. Some of us have bodies that have learned sweet = inrush of sugar and carbs, so the body has adapted accordingly. Some of us have bodies that have learned sweetner = no in rush of sugar and carbs, so the body adapts accordingly. I suspect that it may depend upon whether or not your taste buds can make the differentiation between sweetner and sweet sugar and how much you've exposed your body to the different kinds of sweet and resulting calories as to whether or not your body does or does not respond to non-caloric sweetner as it does to caloric sweetner.

I'd love to see someone in the field do a strong study to test this theorem, but it took how long for researchers to follow up on what people with diabetes have known for 30 years? OTOH, maybe there's a researcher at Pennington or somewhere similar who is researching this at this very moment!

Dairy is more insulogenic than its nutrition facts would lead you to believe. I don't have the scientific article reference handy, but search the web and you'll most likely find it. Some people find that dairy doesn't interfere with their ketogenic diet, but unfortunately I'm not one of those people. I log everything (and measure everything) and it became quite clear as I was tracking my ketosis levels (using blood test strips) that dairy was impacting me. I now limit my dairy to butter and only a couple ounces of hard cheeses and the weight loss has become more consistent. Note that softer cheeses are more insulogenic than harder cheeses.