Misinformation about carb counts

[musicmaker]

Hello everybody,

I wasn't sure what to title this, but after being really successful the past few weeks, I went to my chiropodist who said she was doing a low carb diet. We started discussing what we eat and I soon realised that she was totally misinformed. She said she is using Fitday, but she must be using it wrong because she seems to think that two celery sticks have 5 grams of carbs and she said pork was really high in carbs! Then she said she had made a wonderful beetroot and carrot salad for her dinner tonight that was low in carbs and wanted to give me the recipe (it also has raisins in). I don't like beetroot anyway, but that is beside the point. I said that I would drop off one of my cookbooks for her to have a look at and she thought that was great. It fortunately has a good basic carb counter list in the back of it. At least she is on the way forward with the idea of doing it, i.e. no sugar, bread, pasta, etc., but I am going to try to help her, although I am a newbie myself. I don't want her thinking it doesn't work because she doesn't realise she is eating the wrong things. Do you think I should just keep my mouth shut? Or go ahead and let her have the cookbook with the carb counter.

I hope everybody is having a wonderful day. It is a glorious day today so after dinner I am talking hubby into going for a walk down by the beach.

All the best!

[Sissy1958]

Wow! Kinda between a rock and a hard place but I know that I would want to know if I were doing something wrong. I think that letting her have the cookbook with the carb counter (as long as she reads it) may get her to think. However, some people do not realize that low carb is what we know as Atkins. I think that with so much information (and sometimes false- :rolleyes: :confused: on the internet it may seem to some that low carb can be between 50-100 carbs per day and can be anything as long as it stays under that. Maybe a question to ask is what low carb diet are you on and take it from there to describe that you are on Atkins and what that is about. just mho...

Hope you talked hubby into going for a walk on the beach....sounds wonderful :)

[Meme#1]

I think that there are a lot of people who want to do low carb but haven't done their homework.
Before I started I reread Adkins front to back and continue to read it all of the time to remind myself of carb counts and what and why I am eating certain things.
I think having a list of what to eat is just as important as what Not to eat.

If she thinks pork is high carb but she is eating carrots and raisins.....then she is definitely missing all of the basic low-carb information to ever be successful.

She needs the basics. A copy of carb counts might help her see what is low carb and what is high sugar/carbs...natural or not.
It doesn't sound like she is ready for a cook book until she understands the basics first.

[honeypie]

Maybe she's using MyFitnessPal or whichever one it is where people put in their own carb counts and a lot of it is wrong? Then something like pork would show up with carbs in it if someone had a sugary marinated recipe, and salad with raisins or whatever else could be COMPLETELY off, if someone was counting net carbs for themselves but decided to enter their net as the total values, etc.

The MyPlan tool on this site is excellent, and uses figures from the USDA database.

But it definitely doesn't sound like she's ever read a book on LC - ANY book... I think it's great that you offered to share your book, and that she was open to it.

Maybe you need to also specifically point out the carb counter in it to her, so she doesn't just take it from you to be polite, and then shelve it for two weeks.

[Just Jo]

Hey musicmaker! Thanks for sharing your quest to educate your doc on LC WOE!

You know maybe she is doing low carb if you think about what "regular" people eat in terms of carb-age a day (anywhere around 250-350 grams and up). If you cut that in 1/2 its still a lot of carbs for those of us that are carb addicts...but it is LOWER carbs, eh?

Did she say which LC WOE program/plan she was following??

Just something to think about! :D

[cotonpal]

She seems to lack a basic understanding about the differences between carbs and protein. This seems to me to be essential, along with an understanding of fats, if you are going to succeed on a low carb diet, whatever plan is being followed. Maybe direct her to the diet doctor site.

Jean

[musicmaker]

Thank you everybody for your comments. JustJo, she hasn't read a book because I asked, hence why I offered to loan her one of mine. She is just using FitDay to track her carbs. Then she said celery was high in carbs as was pork. I think she is a bit mixed up and needs information. This afternoon she posted on Facebook that she doesn't understand why she is still gaining weight.

On another note, I was really excited when I popped to Asda to get something for dinner this afternoon. They had beautiful 21 day aged rib eye steaks on sale 2 for £7 (think relative don't translate to dollars). So we are having rib eyes, roasted asparagus, salad and baked potato for my thin husband.

[kirkor]

It's coming from a desire for helping, so hopefully it's received well.

[Kinura]

It's very possible your chiropodist really doesn't understand about the three macronutrients and what foods fit into each category. So it might take her a while to figure it all out.

It's interesting -- but purely coincidental -- that she considers pork to be high-carb. When the doctor set up a low carb diet for William Banting in England back in the 1800s, he disallowed pork because at that time, pork was considered starchy.

While beetroot and carrots are not allowed on Atkins and some other programs, when eaten in controlled quantities, they can fit in. A half cup of cooked beets is about 8 carbs, and of carrots, 6 carbs. The raisins, on the other hand, might be problematic.