Ok, my own conclusion is, that if you want something high carb, why not just drink a portein shake before and it will even out. Anyone know anything about that? The zone diet is all about evening it out, so I figured that might work.
I follow what she is saying, as the Zone used to be my diet of choice before BFL. In the Zone, if you want something high carb, you can have it just as long as you eat enough protein with it to balance out of the meal. So, you could theoretically have a Snickers bar if you had a bunch of turkey breast to balance it out, although you were supposed to be monitoring fat intake as well.
I used to do something like that when I was first getting used to BFL - my carb choices weren't always the cleanest or most authorized, but I always balanced them out with equal grams of protein. However, with time, I've switched the type of carbs to those which are lower GI and less processed. So, I guess I"m saying you can do that, but should work towards more complex carbohydrates over time.
Cindy
I've never done the Zone, but as far as Body for Life is concerned, I would HIGHLY recommend sticking to the carb list in the book as closely as possible for the best results.
The thing about 'balancing out' in different diet plans (i.e. WW Points, that sort of thing) is that they are mostly marketed/hailed as "freedom of choice" i.e. no food is off limits as long as you stay within your points or grams of carbs or whatever. For some reason, the following passage from Fat of the Land seems to sound perfect here:
Quote:
Variety is the Spice of Overeating
When it comes to the question of why people are fat, you'll see books blaming practically everything under the sun. But there's one culprit you'll never see labeled as such in any diet book. In fact, the recipes in most diet books (and most diet books fill their pages with recipes) actually contribute to this problem. It's called variety.
Yes, a certain amount of variety is both good and necessary to get all the vitamins and minerals you need. But variety has also clearly contributed to the American obesity problem.
I first realized the importance of variety in obesity from observing my rabbits. Rabbits eat an enormous amount of food by human standards - yes, even Americans - and compared to cats and dogs, as well. In essence, they're furry little poop machines, so efficient at consuming massive quantities that they sometimes eat and defecate at the same time. Yet if I fill the food tray high enough with their pellets, even they will be sated. That is, until I give them a treat - a piece of lettuce, an apple core, and, yes, carrots. (They are wholly insenstive to the fact they're perpetuating a stereotype.) Suddenly these previously sated creatures are ravenous.
Variety sparks appetite, and not just for rabbits. Rats increase their eating when offered tasty high-fat or high-carbohydrate foods. University of Pennsylvania researcher Barbara Rolls has demonstrated that variety caused rats offered chow plus three different cafeteria foods to gain more weight than those offered only one cafeteria food plus chow.
Rabbits and rats, but humans? You bet. "During the course of a meal the pleasantness of those foods not eaten remains relatively unchanged," observes Rolls. "We have called this form of satiety 'sensory specific satiety'." The result is that "more is eaten of a varied meal than a monotonous one."
Americans today are bombarded with a vast number of different food choices. Rockefeller University obesity researcher Jules Hirsch, M.D., estimates that there are about 50,000 foodstuffs available to Americans today [1997], compared with just 500 a century ago. Supermarkets now carry 12 times as many different products as they did in 1961, an average of 30,000 items in a single store. But even that doesn't tell the whole story. As a middle-class American I can afford virtually every one of those 50,000 foodstuffs, even if I couldn't afford much of some of them. Yet a century ago a family might actually eat fewer than a dozen foods on a regular basis. Until the great famine beginning in 1846, many Irish subsisted almost entirely on just potatoes and buttermilk with an occasional turnip. And surely you haven't forgotten that rhyme you learned as a child: "Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold,/Pease porridge in the pot, nine days old."
Try eating pease (pea) porridge, hot or cold, for nine straight days and see how much weight you'll lose. In fact, this is the key to those bizzare diets that emphasized just jelly beans or grapefruit or popcorn.
If you're watching your weight, try to watch your variety. Discard the diet books that offer you a different menu for every day of the month. Pick a small number of foods with low calorie density (that give you the full spectrum of vitamins and minerals you need) and primarily stick with them Save extraordinary items for extraordinary occasions, such as eating out. And console yourself that if nothing else, at least you aren't eating pease porridge for the ninth day in a row.
Ilene, I agree with you -- much food for thought here. I've never looked at "variety" from that perspective, and while part of me quails at the thought of not dipping into the wonderful world of flavors that are out there, another part of me has to acknowledge that my "workaday lunch" of broiled chicken breast, half a cup of brown rice, and some kind of veggie (today, it's leftover spinach) will see me through an entire afternoon, and will not set off weird cravings. And I can easily eat this 3 days out of 5. It's all veddy veddy interesting.
I guess that's why at Christmas time we all go a little with all that food and "variety".... go figure, it's like Plan "B", why didn't I think of that...
I have the perfect solution. I know exactly how to eliminate the variety at the holidays: a steady diet of pumpkin pie, my mother-in-law's to-die-for cranberry relish, and eggnog.
Not.
PS: Did you know that there is actually a site called Smiley Central! Totally kwel. Tee hee hee
Speaking of which, I'm trying to figure how I'm going to handle Christmas this year. For me, the holiday has always been all about baking - baking for coworkers, baking for my family, baking for me. So, what do I do this year? I don't really want to mess with this tradition, as it's a big thing to me.
Cindy
Cindy -- I'm sure you won't like this suggestion, but I have stopped baking all together because as I previously said I eat the dough before I even put it in the oven... soooo having said this I have stopped baking in the last few years...... this is what I do now.... Sorry
How big of an issue is it for you? Do you nibble the dough like Ilene, or do you face the problem I did: once baked, those Christmas cookies called and cooed my name until I couldn't resist. If you really can't give up the baking, could you bake and freeze? Could you bake half of what you used to bake, and find another way to celebrate the holidays for the others? Could you print out your recipes on pretty cards and give them, along with the ingredients, to friends? Oh, here's a thought: could you have a giant cookie party, to which you invite people and at which you bake up a storm and then send all the goodies home with the guests?
I'm always looking for ways to hang on to traditions but to successfully take care of myself. I love to cook, and have cooked all my life, and there was a time when I swore I would not curtail my cooking just because of my weight. I'm afraid that approach didn't work. I HAD to change my cooking when I changed my life.
Good luck. I'll keep thinking. Surely we can come up with the perfect solution!
Ah, the Christmas baking tradition runs heavy here too. I am a dough eater, and eat more than my share, even frozen. One of my bad old habits was to buy a roll of choc chip cookie dough and eat the whole thing in one evening.
This year I am going to make my low-carb, low-fat zuchinni bread in mini-loaves, centered with fresh fruit in a nice basket. The only person I can really expect to be disappointed that I didn't bake the usual cookies will be my son because it's been a tradition since he was in the womb.
In keeping with the topic, I usually adjust (up) my protein intake for the last 2 meals of the day if I am higher in carbs than where I should be. But I try hard to keep every meal Protein with one low-gly carb, similar to South Beach, especially the day afer I lift. It is also the day afer I lift that I use PP.
No, not a John Grisham novel, but me. I was known as the pastry Queen of the family/neighborhood. Used to baked literally a hundred dozen cookies each season, endless pies, cakes, etc. Even did wedding catering. I now bake 2 pumpkin pies at Thanksgiving, my dh's favorite birthday cake, and the rest of my baking is confined to protein brownies or pumpkin bars. Too bad, but it's my choice. I take handmade dried flower arrangements as hostess gifts instead, or scented candles. My wall of cookbooks is getting dusty, and I've put my 25 different springform and bundt pans in the basement. I have too much of a tendancy to keep "evening up" the pie, cake, or cookie plate.
Protein Drinks/High Carb Meals
?I'm not sure what you mean...
with all that food and "variety".... 
go figure, it's like Plan "B", why didn't I think of that...
... this is what I do now.... Sorry 
during the holidays, visit and have fun instead... OR drink yourself into a stupor 
