Quote:
Originally Posted by breakonthrough
I could be totally wrong on this, but could it be possible that these beneficial changes happened as a result of moving to a more natural ( ie somewhat organic) diet, rather than a low carb diet? I say that because it would seem a low carb diet is naturally more organic than a high carb one, given that you may be eating more protein, fruits and vegetables rather than processed carbs that have a lot of mysterious ingredients added.
Nope, it's not a possibility, because when I switched to low-carb it was not from a highly processed diet. While many people eating high-carb do eat a highly processed diet, I wasn't.
When I switched to low-carb, I didn't start eating more fruits and vegetables and lean proteins than before. I'd already been eating pretty much the same amounts of fruits, vegetables, and lean proteins as I do now. The only change has been eliminating the grain-foods I ate and cutting back on the fruit and starchy veggies. Most of my grain foods were whole grain foods (at least for the past several decades). I did eat some white bread, rice and pasta, but more than half of my grain foods were from whole-grain sources.
It's been several decades since processed carbs made up a large part of my diet. In fact, except for my college and graduate school days (when I could only afford ramen noodles) I've always eaten mostly unprocessed foods. I did eat more hidden sugars (such as sauces in stir fry sauces, etc).
Not only that, but I've experimented carefully to find which foods trigger the problems.
When I first started low-carb, I began wondering which carbs were causing me problems, was it ALL carbs, or one carb in particular (such as perhaps a wheat or gluten allergy or insensitivity). So I started experimenting to find which foods triggered reactions, what types of reaction, and how severe a reaction.
What I discovered was that wheat triggers the most severe reactions with the smallest amounts ingested. Sugar will also trigger the symptoms, but it takes more sugar than wheat. Even natural sugar can trigger symptoms, but it take a whole lot more fruit than table sugar to illicit a reaction.
I have, however, stalled my weight loss on fruit quite frequently (and still often do, because despite knowing better I'm often tempted into thinking "it's just fruit, it can't hurt), but for fruit to trigger the more serious health symptoms, it has to be quite a lot of fruit.
I've had a lot of people in my life accuse me of lying about what I eat, because they thought people couldn't be morbidly obese if they ate healthfully. To them I had to be secretly eating mounds of junk food and candy.
Nope. Wish it were so, because I'd find it a lot easier to give up junk than to adjust an already (seemingly) healthy diet.
There were a lot of foods I had to give up, or drastically limit, but most were foods generally considered very healthy.
Fruit has been the hardest to limit, because I still tend to have difficulty wrapping my head around the fact that just because it's healthy, doesn't mean it's healthy in the quantities I was eating it.