Hi guys. I picked up a book the other day at Dollar Tree. It is called the "7-Day Low-Carb Rescue and Recovery Plan". It is by the Hellers, the same people who wrote Carbohydrate Addicts Diet.
I'm hoping I'll find some sort of help within it to get back to low carb. It has been a tough year for me and I have been gaining and gaining. I can't seem to bring myself back around to even WANTING to low carb diet again, yet I know I need to, the pounds keep piling on and I've had to buy bigger pants. (The old ones were splitting!).
I'm not very far into the book yet, but it talks about easing back into a low carb plan by getting more balanced with our eating. Day one consists of not reducing our normal carb intake, but ADDING in low carb protein portions with every meal or snack. This is supposed to help balance our blood sugar levels, make them less of a rollar coaster ride. Day two adds in fiber rich veggys with lunch and dinner and snacks.
I think the idea is to eventually crowd out the desire for high carb foods. Certainly sounds easier than going cold turkey back to straight protein only.
Hi Leenie, thanks for replying. It is reasonable the way it is written. Start by adding protein to every meal that you eat. Even if you are still eating higher carb, the protein will help keep your body from spiking the insulin so much that you are out of control eating.
Day two I already mentioned, adding in veggys that are low in carbs.
Day three has you balancing the amount of protein you eat with the amount of high carb foods. So if you are having a piece of bread make sure the meat or high protein food you eat with it is the same size. No sweet snacks without the protein too.
Day four has you putting off eating the higher carb foods for the end of the meal. This way you are full sooner and eat less of the higher carb foods.
Day five has you eliminate all high carb foods from your snacks and only eating them at meal times.
Day six has you eliminate the high carb foods from one of your 3 meals.
Day seven has you back to CAD where you are only allowed a balanced portion of carbs at the end of your "reward meal".
I'm not sure if CAD ever worked for me either, but I think at this point it will work better than being on Atkins for a week or two and then being totally off it all together. I've done Atkins so many times and it works so well and so quickly, but I always get bored or hungry for some of my favorite foods and so I go off, feel guilty, crash and burn.
I'm thinking a more balanced approach and some intermediary skills (like always making sure I eat protein with a meal high in carbs) might help me keep from crashing all together.
I suppose you could do a "day eight" and go Atkins without any "reward meal" if you chose always being willing to drop back to day 7 or 6 when you got to a point where you just couldn't handle it anymore?
My problem with Atkins was always my all or nothing approach. I would go strong for as much as 3 months or so, and then suddenly I just didn't WANT to anymore.
Anyway as I read more, I'll share what ever else it has to say.
Yes. I'm still on day one. Trying to let that become a habit, to only allow carbs WITH protein. I'm also trying to limit the carbs I do allow and "eat toward" my carbs, leaving them at the end of the meal.
I guess I'm doing several of the principles at once, but considering myself to be on day one. For me, it has taken me a long time to feel at all balanced. I liked Atkins when I did it right, but for the last few years I don't feel like I've done it right at all. I wouldn't say that I "felt my best" on Atkins. I loved the quick weight loss, because for me I drop weight like crazy on Atkins at first.
But I always wind up wanting something I can't have, and then trying to substitute it with artificial sweeteners or semi low carb stuff. Then I have cravings that make me reach for more artificial sweeteners or whatever.
This book indicates that even artificial sweeteners spike your insulin levels. That the body doesn't know the difference, until the insulin has been released and tries to couple with the blood sugar that isn't there. This creates more hunger because it pulls blood sugar out of the cells and stores it as fat? Something like that. I can't remember if that is exactly what the book said or not, but it indicated that artificial sweeteners do more harm in some ways than the real thing, and I think that in my case that is probably true.
If I do Atkins and stick to mostly what I should have I'm ok, when I start adding in the artificial treats, is when I start falling flat on my face with the diet. It is usually when I stop losing and when I start getting discouraged and when I start to give up. I don't like eating artificial sweeteners because they don't taste good, they don't satisfy me and I find myself reaching for more and more of them. Not good.
The other thing I've never liked about Atkins is that I think I get too dehydrated on it. I have a hard time drinking enough water, and I don't like the constipation that comes along with it. Plus I have really extreme reactions when I've been on it strictly for awhile and then I suddenly succumb and give in and eat carbs. It throws my body into a sort of shock.
It is also just too hard to be in sync with the rest of the world on strict Atkins. You go to a party or something they do at work, and next thing you know you are either feeling sorry for yourself or you have nothing to eat, and you are hungry, while trying to stay on plan and still socialize with people.
I like the idea of having the goal to be not ketosis, but something close. They call it "spending" mode. So that you aren't constantly storing up carbs as fat, but aren't totally denying all carbs either.
The book talks about the "frequency factor" saying that what most low carb diet books miss is that how often in a day you eat high carb is at least as important as how many you eat. Said that the less often you spike your insulin levels the better you stay in control, the less insulin you release, the more time of the day you are in "spending mode". True, on Atkins you are in spending mode or ketosis all the time, until you blow it. But for me, once I blow it, I have a hard time getting myself back to that all or nothing mindset. Or maybe I stay in the "nothing" part way too long.
With Atkins I feel like either a total success or a total loser. It is that which I rebel against. I love it when I feel virtuous, like I've done it all perfectly and am dropping weight like crazy and nothing is going to stop me now! But I hate that feeling I get when I give in to something I want and start eating carbs again. I cannot convince myself that I'll never again want a brownie or a piece of real chocolate or real ice cream. I don't see the point of eating the unreal (fake sweetener) kind that doesn't satisfy me and makes me lose out on the benefits of my diet anyway, and I'm tired of yo yo ing back and forth between really loving myself and really hating myself.
I may go back to Atkins. Particularly if I wean myself off carbs enough, but if I do, I hope I can do it in a way that is more balanced than I've done in the past. I like the idea that I can have something I want every day, assuming I keep the rest of the day reasonably clean of excess carbs.
One thing I really do like about their method, however, is how they teach you to weigh yourself. They say weigh every day and record the numbers. At the end of the week, average them. Add the numbers together and divide by the number of times you weighed. This gives your your average weight for that week. Do the same thing week after week and you'll have a clearer idea of whether you are losing or not.
I think I'm losing a bit, but my weight fluxuates a lot so I may not be. I'll know at the end of next week when I see if my average is lower than it was this week.
Are you happy doing it this way? what I mean is are you satisified, because thats one of the most important things in wl/dieting.
GOOD LUCK !!!! I really hope this works for you, I know how hard you have struggled (well all of us) but you know what I mean. Its encouraging when I hear of people finding thier "click."
I'm hoping I have found what I need. I'm not yet convinced of it. I like the ideas of "easing" back into low carb. But I am worried about my ability to do that well enough. Time will tell if it is what I've been looking for or not. It feels like it now, but the proof will be how I manage to act and the weight I manage to shed.
One thing the book talked about that scared me a lot though was about "glutamates". I hadn't really given much thought to them before, but one example of glutamates is "monosodium glutamate". They said that if a lab wants obese rats for a study, they order rats who have become obese by having been given MSG in their feed.
It said that glutamates are excito-toxins. That they kill cells by over exciting them. It said that glutamates are being added to a lot of our foods in various hidden ways. They have no taste, but they make otherwise low quality food taste better. It said that they can become addicting, and that they occur in food under a lot of different "labels" including something as innocent seeming as "natural flavors" or "broth" or "pectin" or "soy sauce" or "soy protein" or "whey protein".
The book gave a long list of ways that glutamates are being listed in food ingredients, but it also said that they can spike insulin levels, and they can be the sort of thing that you start craving over and over.
When I went looking for information on glutamates, I found that they think they may be partly responsible for Alzheimer's. Glutamates occur naturally in some foods as "bound" glutamates, but they also occur as "free" glutamates. I honestly don't know the difference, but I got the idea that the "free" ones are the dangerous kind. Certain foods such as soy sauce contain a LOT of the free ones.
I also saw an article today on Yahoo news that said that Alzheimer's is on the rise. That it is much higher in Asia even now than in the rest of the world and is expected to grow to many many more cases. It makes me wonder if the glutamates may be responsible since Asians use more MSG and soy sauce in their foods than most other people do.
One article I found indicated that there are two kinds of soy sauce, the naturally fermented kind which takes longer to make, and the cheap kind that they make by adding hydrocloric acid to.
It makes me wonder when I see things like this if the reason a lot of us have trouble staying on diets like Atkins is that we start allowing too many processed or canned foods containing additives into our system. I remember when I first did Atkins I used a lot of natural foods, and it was pretty easy to do. I'm wondering if our processed foods have become filled more and more with additives making things much harder than they used to be.
Hi Sherry, Thanks for the info, Thats very interesting. I do try to avoid any prossesed food and any thing with MSG, I didnt realize there where other forms of glutamates. I think they need to make better labeling laws so they cant hide these additives. I hope your plan works good for you. I personaly dont think you need to go extreme low carb, any plan that adds protein and limits simple carbs is going to be healthier. Good luck to you.
I agree... the more natural the better. Those additives that I can't even say scare me to, but when you walk into a store it seems like EVERYTHING has something in it to scare the crap out of yah. I read some articles a few years ago about MSG and after seeing a friend of mine get really sick after eating food with that in it... I refuse to buy a product with that in it.. I forget who said it...which diet person... but if you can't pronounce it, don't eat it LOL...ain't that the truth.
yes but what was really scary is that the book said that "glutamates" are being hidden into foods you can pronounce and would consider benign. Things like "broth" or "boullion" or soy sauce.
Or "natural flavors". They said "cyanide and dirt are natural too, but would you want them in your food?" Hmmm.
Plus they said for for some of us these additives are addictive and they make us crave more and more, even though they may be doing serious damage to our diets if nothing else.
They said that rats who are ordered for testing that are obese, are obese because they've been fed MSG.... gives you something to think about when you consider all the things we might be putting in our mouths without knowing it.
That's what makes the frozen chicken I buy so good. It's soaked in hydrolized soy protien. I didn't realize what that meant untill I read the link you posted.
That sucks, I though it was healthy .
Isn't it creepy what they can add to our food and never tell us?
Here's some what I wrote to another site containing some quotes from the book:
Then it talks about "glutamate" and says that this is something that is added to a lot of our foods and that it too triggers insulin release. Says it is added to most water packed tunas, that they disguise what has glutamate in it and what does not, but some of the ways it is listed on our ingredient lables are:
"Anything enzyme modified
Anything fermented
Anything protein fortified
Anthing ultra pastuerized
Autolyzed yeast
Barley malt
Broth
Boullion
Calcium caseinate
Carrageen
Flavoring
Gelatin
Hydrolyzed oat flour
Hydrolyzed vegetable protein
Hydrolyzed plant protein
Hydrolyzed soy protein
Malt extract
Maltodextrin
Natural flavors (flavoring)
Pectin
Plant protein extract
Potassium glutamate
Sodium caseinate
Soy Protein
Soy sauce
Stock
Textured protein
Whey protein
Yeast extract
Yeast food.
This says too that a little "monosodium glutamate" on the tongue of animals will cause them to release "high levels of insulin within three minutes".
The book also says: Glutamates are categorized as excitotoxins, that is they cause the injury or death of cells by stimulation.
And: "Did you know that scientists who want obese lab animals for experimentation call the supply house and ask for MSG fattened rats? The rats become obese simply by eating monosodium glutamate in their feed!"
This article is about Alzheimer's, it makes me wonder why it is rising in Asia so much. I'm wondering if it might be the glutamates.
The book I'm reading also says "In laboratory animals they [glutamates] break down the muscle fiber and cause brain damage."
It also said that it is in a lot of water packed tuna, that unless the can says "tuna, water" and nothing else it probably has free glutamates added.
Also "Of most importance to low carb dieters is the discovery that glutamates added to foods can cause the body to release insulin".
No wonder we in America have so much trouble controlling our weight. They sabotage us every way we turn. Particularly those of us who are extra sensitive to carbohydrates.
Book
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