Category: Low Carb Diet

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Low Carb: My great-grandmother knew

Let me begin by saying that I am not against low-fat diets! If a low-fat diet works for you long-term, fine with me, go with it. Low-fat doesn’t work for me, though, so my personal choice is to eat low-carb.

One of my few childhood memories is of sitting around a dinner table with my parents, grandparents, and us kids. My great-grandmother, whom we called “Grandma Olive”, was also there, and I was sitting near her. When the dinner rolls came around, she passed them along without taking one.

I asked her, “No bread for you, Grandma Olive?”

She replied, “Oh no, dear. I have potatoes. Can’t have two starches.”

I didn’t think about that much, until a few years ago, when I was doing some in-depth research into low-carb diets.

I discovered that low-carb was the first modern weight-loss program, formulated in the 1800s.

I discovered that low-carb was, in fact, the weight-loss program of choice, until the 1950s, when politics dictated that fat should be declared the villain.

The demonization of fat seems to make sense. I mean, we know that excess fat on our bodies and excess cholesterol in our blood leads to bad things, right? So — logically — we should not eat those things.

Problem is that the science didn’t — and doesn’t — back that up.

(NOTE: For more about this subject, including in-depth reporting and solid scientific support, please read  Good Calories, Bad Calories by renowned science writer Gary Taubes. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: If you can read the first 100 pages of that book and continue to consume sugar in quantity, you have some kind of sweet tooth!)

As it turns out, when we eat low-fat meals, we tend to eat a lot more carbs, our calorie count goes way up, and our body stores the excess intake as fat. That’s why there’s an obesity epidemic in the United States.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 1994 — the first year data is available for all 50 states —  all states had an obesity rate below 20%. In 2010, all states had an obesity rate greater than 20%! (NOTE: “Obesity” is gauged as a body mass index of at least 30. BTW, the obesity rate in 1985 was below 15% in all states that were measured.) That’s how much fatter we’ve become over the past 18 (and 27) years.

The CDC also tells us that since 1980, obesity prevalence among children and adolescents has almost tripled. That’s why we had to change the name of “adult-onset” diabetes to “Type 2” diabetes, because our high-carb diets were creating diabetics at younger and younger ages.

Yup, this is where an emphasis on low-fat eating has gotten us.

I remember when I was a low-fat advocate. I used to do silly things like buy candy on road trips, instead of protein- and fat-based meals, because I thought that was nutrition, and, hey, little or no fat! Same with sugary soft drinks. Drink up! No fat!

YIKES!

Anyway, different strokes for different folks. If you are into low-fat dieting and it works for you — remember that is key, it has to work for you — get it on! Doesn’t work for me, though, and, apparently, it didn’t work for my Grandma Olive either. She knew.

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Day 30 of my High Fat Diet and more about Yoga!

Here I am in day 30 of my high-fat diet, and I was just telling my friend yesterday how I feel that my body is undergoing some kind of positive transformation. I feel leaner and more energetic. I feel as if I am getting stronger.

It’s not as if this is a change that is overwhelmingly better than any of my previous changes, but it’s something, which is better than nothing, which is what I had before. I was stuck. That’s why I kept changing things up until I found something that felt as if it was getting me out of my fitness rut.

But it’s not only about the diet. In addition to eating high fat — 2000 to 2400 calories with targets of 70% fat, 20% protein, and 10% carbs — I had also been doing yoga, and only yoga, for 24 days (with a few days off in there).

I broke the streak on Monday with a round of Insanity Pure Cardio — and, yeah, my glutes were sore the last couple days — but I am sticking with yoga as my primary workout. I’ll do another aerobic workout on Friday, then increase aerobics to 3 times a week starting next week, in addition to my yoga.

I had not meant to be so much into yoga for so long. I meant only to use it as a transition workout after I tweaked my back, but the way I feel makes me want to stick with it for a bit longer.

You may or may not recall, depending on how often you read this blog, that I was introduced to yoga through Tony Horton’s P90X. Tony is not a yoga master — he’s just a guy who likes to stay fit and enjoys a yoga workout from time to time. Because he was my gateway to yoga, I really didn’t know much more from a practical standpoint than what he covered during his workouts.

But I knew if I wanted to advance in yoga, I’d need to find a better teacher than Tony. On Amazon, where I buy almost everything, I found Rodney Yee.

Rodney Yee has a ton of yoga DVDs, but I bought one called Ultimate Power Yoga just to check it out. That DVD has five 15- to 20-minute workouts on it, each with a different focus. And my world opened up.

Let me backtrack a bit.

When I saw yoga was part of P90X, I was intrigued, because I had always thought yoga was a good all-around fitness program, but I had never gotten around to trying it out. It was always so much easier to run or lift weights or do something else I understood better. Yoga, after all, is kinda weird for us euro-americans. You have to learn a bunch of poses. You have to stay still in those poses for what seems like a long time. There is a lot of balancing. It all seemed a bit much.

But Yoga X showed me that once I learned the poses and understood a bit about the rhythm and flow of a yoga workout (I know the yoga people call them “practices”, but I’m sticking with “workout” for now), it was really quite enjoyable, and I always felt great afterward.

So I bought Tony Horton’s two One on One yoga DVDs. I used them extensively, and it was exciting when I could finally do them both all the way through! (Yoga is not easy — it’s definitely a workout.)

As I added more and more yoga days into my program, I felt that I needed to get some new DVDs to keep from getting bored. Enter Rodney Yee.

I now have more than 20 yoga DVDs by Rodney Yee and others. I haven’t tried the workouts from others yet, because I really do enjoy Rodney’s workouts, but I’m sure I’ll give them a go sometime in the future.

So, let me see, I guess I got off on a love song to yoga, so what is the point of this post?

1) High Fat Diet – After 30 days, it really seems to be working for me. As someone whose blood-sugar continually flirts with “too high”, I suppose that makes sense. After another month or two on this diet, I’ll see about getting my blood tested and judge it from there. If I am judging solely based on how I feel, though, I give it thumbs up at the 30-day mark.

2) Yoga – I love it. Perhaps you’ll love it too. (Thus ends my song.)

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Getting to your Fitness Tipping Point

It’s the middle of February, which means you should be about 6 weeks into your 2012 fitness plan.

You are still on your fitness plan, right?

Hey, I’m not here to nag you and I’m not here to motivate you. Only you can motivate yourself, and with every plan to do something good for yourself — something good that involves discomfort or denial of pleasure, like getting fit (or more fit), quitting smoking, abandoning sugar —  it takes some getting used to.

Every plan also comes with a Tipping Point.

What’s the tipping point? It’s that place in your life when you are striving for a goal and … suddenly … you realize this is no longer a part-time thing, but an actual regular part of your life.

Sometimes the tipping point comes abruptly. That’s how it was for me and sugar. I really had nothing against sugar, although I was consuming less of it, because I was well into watching what I ate. But I would still go on the occasional donut or cupcake or half-a-okay-who-am-I-kidding-whole-German-chocolate-cake-with-coconut-pecan-frosting binge.

Then one day I just said to myself, “Wow, sugar really is poison for me,” and that was it. I stopped eating it.

Most of the time, though, the tipping point comes more gradually.

I am not sure when my gotta-get-a-workout-in tipping point occurred, but I was reminded yesterday that it had occurred. I was emailing with a friend of mine, and I was describing the particularly busy day I’d had. She asked, “Did you get your workout in?”

My answer was that I had, because at some point in my life I had prioritized my workout, so it would take a lot for me to miss it. I had passed the working-out tipping point.

I really don’t know when that happened, but I am glad it did.

We often, in our lives, respond to a lack of action with a curt, “I just don’t have time.” But the old adage is true: We all have the same amount of time, it’s just a matter of how we decide to fill it.

If it is truly more important for you to do something else in place of getting fit, then you have not reached your fitness tipping point. I only hope that you’ll get there, though, before some kind of serious health issue makes you re-examine your decisions.

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My high fat diet PLUS yoga PLUS allergies

I am in day 20 of my high fat diet, which aims for 70% fat, 20% protein, and 10% carbs.

My body seems to have adapted to the lack of carbs, so I am not feeling as run down, although I’ve been doing only yoga the past 10 days. I switched from Insanity to yoga because I tweaked my back, but I liked the yoga so much, and my back was feeling so good, that I decided to stick with yoga for a few weeks. I haven’t done that before and have been wanting to give it a shot, so now’s a good a time as any, right?

I’ve always liked yoga, and I am really thankful that  Tony Horton got me into it during P90X. It seems like a great way to stay in shape, although I do feel the need to add some cardio. I will do that once I feel my back is in really good shape. Honestly, my back hasn’t felt this great in years, so I don’t want to do anything to mess it up.

As for the high fat diet, I am again feeling like it’s a mixed bag of pluses and minuses.

First of all, I continue to struggle to stay under 2000 calories, which was not a problem on my high-protein diet. For some reason, when eating high fat, I end up in the 2200 to 2400 calorie area almost every day.

Not that there’s anything too wrong with that. I burn enough to still be able to see negative net calories on that regimen, but I’d always read that fat is far more filling and satisfying than carbs and protein, and I am just not finding that to be the case.

Also, I am feeling some of those same episodes of “hitting the wall” after a high-fat meal. I had previously attributed that phenomenon to too much carbohydrate, but now I wonder what the real cause is.

For example, as I write this, I feel somewhat sleepy. Well, I had a good 7.5 hours of sleep last night, and it’s still morning. However, about a half-hour ago I had a heavy cream latte that had about 20 grams of fat in it. So, yes, I wonder what is causing the sleepiness.

Honestly, it could be allergies. While my mountain cedar sensitivity is severely diminished during this period of no-grain eating, it’s been raining a lot here, and mold still seems to have a pretty strong negative effect on my body.

Aside from all that, I feel great. My energy level is fine, my strength is great, and I haven’t had any problem sticking to the diet. When I go out to eat, I usually have a salad with some protein in it, which is usually what I had to eat when I dined out before anyway.

Today’s Super Bowl party at a friend’s house may prove challenging — not sure what to expect for food there — but I can always eat nothing, and maybe that will keep me under 2000 calories for at least one day.

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I’m giving high-fat eating a shot

I started a high fat diet on Tuesday.

High fat, of course, implies low-carb, and I’ve always been intrigued by the low carb lifestyle. It’s a lifestyle, not a diet, because once you go low carb, you gotta stay low carb.

Well, to be fair, low-carb is not necessarily a lifestyle, per se. There are plenty of people who cycle low-carbs with high carbs or do intermittent keto runs, like my friend Rob Gioia. But my body does not respond well to that.

Let me explain why high-fat / low-carb is a lifestyle for me.

The primary benefit of low carb living, if you are trying to lose fat, is that it puts your body into a state of ketosis, which depletes your body’s stored glycogen and forces it to burn fat for fuel.

To get to ketosis, you need to consume 50 grams or less of carbohydrate per day. That’s do-able, but the body takes a good 2 weeks to get accustomed to this new way of eating (which is really just an old way of eating, but you can read the book for the specifics).

All that is fine, but the problem, and the reason low-carb is a lifestyle, is that if, after you are into ketosis, you splurge on carbs just one time, you pretty much reset the clock on the glycogen stores, and it’s a week or two before your body is burning fat again.

Okay, well, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

So this new way of eating was brought on by a well-researched book, The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living.

I’ve read Protein Power, which is the definitive book concerning the power of low-carb living and science behind it.

I’ve also read Good Calories Bad Calories, which is the definitive book concerning the politics behind the U.S. goverment’s push for low-fat regimens.

Both of those books are well-researched and include a lot of impressive data. So when one of the authors of Protein Power, Dr. Michael Eades, said that the recently published The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living was the book he wished he’d written, well, of course, I had to buy it.

The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living is a quick read compared to those other two, and provides a lot of the science you might want to know about the low-carb lifestyle.

I’ll stop there, because this is not a book review. Read the book.

I’m in day 4 of a high-fat diet because of that book. I also happen to be in week 3 of my Insanity with weekends off program.

According to the authors, it’s not a good idea to engage in high-level fitness activities while transitioning to the high-fat lifestyle, but I ain’t stoppin’ and everything seems to be fine so far. I guess I’m fit enough that Insanity is not that much of a stretch for my body.

Plus, I learned 2 things from that book that I had not picked up from other low-carb books, and those 2 things might be helping me out. Maybe the info was there in the other books, but I missed it.

  1. You gotta add salt. Low-carb diets cause salt to pass out of your body rather quickly, so you must be sure to consume salt. Low salt puts you at risk for all kinds of things, like soreness, fatigue, um, death. You know, bad things. Read the book Salt for more on that.
  2. You gotta add fat. Lots of fat. That’s why I call this a high-fat diet, rather than a low-carb diet. I’m in the 70%-of-my-calories-from-fat range.

When I read concept #1, about the salt, that made a lot of sense to me. If you buy into the paleo theory, which claims that our bodies have not evolved to the point where we can healthily consume all these grains/carbs that we eat, because they are relatively recent additions to our diet — and I do buy into that way of thinking — then the salt thing makes sense.

Doctors tell us not to eat a lot of salt — it’s bad for us. But … but … we like salt. Seems to me that fits with paleo theory. Our ancient ancestors, who survived mostly on fat and protein, needed a lot more salt on their paleo / low-carb diets, than modern humans do on their high-carb diets.

So from paleo days it is natural for us to like salt, but on our modern high-carb diet, salt causes health problems.

So, that clicked with me. Paleo diet = low carb = more salt.

As for #2 above, combining low-carb with high-fat, as opposed to high-protein, eating, wow, that is a no-brainer. I feel like an idiot for not seeing it before, but I am a product of my society. I’ve been told for so long that fat is bad, it’s hard to wrap my mind around the fact that it is not.

Yeah, if you’re going to cut carbs, you have to get energy from somewhere, and fat is the way to go, because the body does not efficiently turn protein into fuel.

So, to the point: I’m in day 4 of a high-fat diet, which is 2000 calories a day, with 70% of calories from fat, 10% from carbs, and 20% from protein. And I feel great!

This lifestyle is not for everyone. My fasting blood-sugar hovers right around 110 (which is the cusp of normal/high), so I’ve always gravitated toward low-carb. I have noticed that I get that “sugar coma” feeling even after consuming only 20 carbs at a meal, and … I really don’t like that feeling, even though it passes fairly quickly.

So I thought I’d give this high-fat thing a try for at least 3 months. So far, so good, but it’s early. I’ll keep you posted.