I'm trying to really careful, adding one food at a time. It's like trying to figure out what you're allergic to....I remember when the kids were babies....they told you to add one food at a time....at least 3-4 days apart.

So I'm going back. I figure it's rare for people to be allergic to foods they really need, so by sticking with LC, natural, unprocessed foods and then adding things gradually, I can see exactly what my reactions are. And not just cravings....indigestion, arthritis, and other health issues have been affected, for the better, with LC.....so I want to be able to identify what is a problem and what isn't.

I found a bread that doesn't seem to be a problem...even tho HFCS is on the label (I missed it when I read it in the store....I need glasses). Apples, on the other hand, cause almost immediate cravings and indigestion! Berries, fine...artificial sweetener, cravings. chocolate, cravings and headache!

So far, so good!

I'm confused as to what you mean by this. Should all people go on a low carb diet regardless of their activity level and weight goals? Hell no. Very active people who aren't trying to lose weight should eat a lot of carbs without guilt. Young children should eat a good amount of unprocessed carbs. Ectomorphs can eat a moderate amount of unprocessed carbs.

I don't think low carb is for everyone. I think that if you feel great doing it - well that's the answer - it certainly reduces body fat - NO DOUBT about that. The problem I think comes from when your body starts telling you it NEEDS other things (like fruit and more vegetables) - also maybe too much meat and fat sometimes (I know if I've been stupid and gone out drinking the last thing my body wants is this)??

I have to say that I didn't feel very good doing very low carb Atkins; the problem was, I found I had to stick to near 20g carbs a day to lose anything at all. For me this was where I started to get stupid about my health - I mean, my body just didn't want to keep on doing that. So after about a year of doing that, I didn't feel very well - but I did put on A LOT of muscle.

What Atkins did do for me was break my addictions to sugar and refined things - not that I'd really been doing it so much before, but I did have bulimia which meant I was letting my blood sugar drop waaaay low, then bingeing and purging (which is a way of upping the feel good factor through bingeing on sugary and refined things along with lots of fat). When I did Atkins I felt much better for my blood sugar being stable and my bulimia for the most part disappearing as I didn't have to worry about putting on weight.

But for me, low carb has been only a start. I'm lucky not to be so overweight, and I never eat anything refined (apart from the odd beer) - but that's where right now I have to draw the line.

Having an eating disorder I need loads of tryptophan going to my brain, which means if I want to get well in the long run, I have to eat more carbohydrate to achieve this.

Oops - too long - sorry.

Loops

Maybe some are but a lot are not. A few people might say they can’t DO low carb the way a lot of people here say they can’t DO low fat or low cal. Almost anyone can DO any kind of eating plan if they have enough dedication and willpower, whether they are happy doing it, feel well doing it and whether it works for them is a different story.



Yes, I would be one of those people and have realized ever since I joined this forum and tried Atkins again. I did did do it properly, but was hungry all the time on it, I ate many more calories than necessary, somedays over 3,000 which is a LOT for someone my size and never once did I not feel hungryI lowered the calories was still hungry and did not lose an ounce in fact the second time I did 2 weeks of induction I was UP 2 pounds . I suffer from depression and it worsens on really low carb plans, add to that the fact that my ever present insomnia is worsened, AND I get hot flashes that I don’t get when not doing very low carb, I can’t take meds or vitamins properly when on it because I don’t have enough bulk in my stomach to stop the pills from making me nauseous. If I am exercising and drop my carbs below 80-100 I can’t complete the whole workout. My normal daily carb intake would be between 80-150 - I realize that for a lot of people here the range between my minimum and maximum is more than they eat in a day. But I can keep my calories under 1,000 if I choose to and not be hungry.

People have to try it for themselves and see what works for them.

Would low carb work for everyone? *ducks and covers* Yes! Regardless of body type or activity level or needing to lose/maintain/gain or whatever.

Most of the people who answered before in this topic and said "it's not for everyone" are considering induction level carbs. This is the same mistake the media is making when they present the LC WOL and we bash them to no end for it. Why, then, are we making the same mistake here? Maintenance level of carbs is great for everybody health-wise and I have yet to see any contradictory evidence. Meat, natural fats, veggies, fruit and the occasional whole grain for those who can get away with it without nasty consequences (raised BS, digestive effects, etc.) -- why wouldn't these work for EVERYONE?

Or, maybe I'm not getting the original post. Maybe the question was "would LC work for everyone in order to lose weight?" not "work for everyone in order to achieve best health". I'm venturing a guess here: it would work, at premaintenance levels, provided one is patient enough. For a lot of people it's enough to just replace sugared drinks with plain water to see a drop on the scale so premaintenance would definitely work for weight loss! Unfortunately a lot of people want to lose 25+ pounds in the first week and eating premaintenance would not provide that quick fix. However, in the long run it would work.

DietSka, no need to duck and cover. I asked for clarification of what "low carb" is for a very specific reason.

From the information I've gleaned from various books (particulary "The Ketogenic Diet"), LC is considered to be under 100 grams of carbohydrate/day. Basically, that's the amount that is required for the brain. Anything under that amount initially requires conversion to ketones. SO, my understanding is that >100 grams is MODERATE carb, not low carb. Then factor in athletes who require carbs for high intensity exercise like weight lifting and you're talking even more. Then those who require carbs for a host of other legitimate reasons.

In our zest, we forget that it's not JUST low carb and high carb. There is a vast territory in between which consists of moderate, healthy carbs. 100 carbs is really not a lot compared to today's standard diet, especially for maintenance. Many (notice I'm not saying "ALL") DON'T have to be in ketosis to be healthy or lose weight.

Wanda

I think low-carb is a wonderful way of eating, however, we all have different metabolism and problems, so I don't think it is necessarily good for everyone. Just my opinion.

The following link takes to a page that explains different errors of metabolisms. These people have to eat different than we do, so it is safe to say that people metabolize food in different ways, so low-carb is not necessarily good for everyone.

http://web.indstate.edu/thcme/mwking/inborn.html

i don't quite understand what people mean by "they can't do" low carb/low calorie.... I mean is it a will power matter, or an overwhelming physical problem with it, or a level of discomfort. I query what they mean because when I say "i can't do low calorie" i mean i can follow the diet but get tired of not eating anything tasty, losing miniscule amounts of weight and being irritable cause my belly is rumbling. then i go off the diet. i am six days into atkins and eating tasty things, losing weight and while my energy level has increased (to an almost manic level) i am not irritable/cranky.

on the whole 'will it work for everyone', hell no. nothing works for everyone and anyone that claims such hooey deserves what they get. dr. atkins never claimed that his diet would work for all. Just on reading the book it seems that the vast majority of his patients were people with significant weight problems (such as my self) and insulin resistance (which runs along with obesity in my family). nothing made me crazier than being on a 'balanced' diet of 1200 calories, working out 2 hours a day and being told by my trainer and nutritionist - "you really should be losing weight, i don't understand why your not".

be happy - its friday.

ok well, MY opinion on low carb (< 100 g/day) is not necessarily that, "Everyone should eat this way," but that, everyone COULD eat this way and be healthy, functioning people. now when people bring up athletes, well...i take that to be an extreme case. just like I am and extreme case. for me, 100 carbs, although still low, would make me gain weight. heck 30 carbs makes me gain weight!!! BUT, this is b/c of something i chose to do at some point in my life (overindulge in high carb and high fat foods) and weighed 300+ pounds. athletes CHOOSE to put high demands on their bodies and so they have different needs but i dont consider them the norm, as i dont consider myself the norm.

i see it like this, if everyone was born healthy with no disease or disorder and was raised on a similar HEALTHY, whole food, unrefined, lower carb diet, and didnt put any uneeded stress on their body (either by gaining a lot of weight or over excercising, etc)...everyone could "do low carb."


oh and all that said, technically you could eat more than a 100 carbs a day and still be on atkins' plan, thus "low carbing." maintenance is a very individual thing.

I voted number one. Having insulin problems is the human condition. People are making a mistake if they think that if one's weight is under control then there's no insulin problem. My father-in-law was skinny as a rail, yet he had type 2 diabetes and other complications of insulin resistance.

LilaCotton reported that her father's metabolism started to slow in his mid-thirties after many years of his high sugar breakfast. There's nothing normal about one's metabolism slowing down; it was the insulin resistance caused by his diet catching up with him. Not everyone with insulin resistance develops obesity.

In evolutionary terms, when something is important, the species develops multiple ways to address the issue. The human species has multiple hormones that will raise blood sugar, but only one hormone, insulin, that will lower blood sugar. That's because throughout the development of the human species, lowering blood sugar was never important because carbohydrates were never a large part of the human diet.

The human organism is not prepared to digest large amounts of carbohydrates. That's why the major causes of death are the disorders of insulin resistance.

I'm usually late to the party! Oh well

I picked the insulin one, however, I'm not sure I would agree that is MOST people.
This WOE is perfectly designed to combat the insulin resistance/hyperinsulinism defect, and all its subsequent clinical fallout.
If I understand correctly the epidemiological stuff I've read, then it seems the range in the population for that may be something between 10 to perhaps 25%? And very possibly as population cohorts age, this trends toward that higher number as aging has its own impact on all our systems, including hormone regulation.

As someone mentioned, the insulin resistance problem is not necessarily identified purely by weight, as there are definitely some normal weight, or even thin, Type 2 diabetics around.


I'd like to see the day come where serum fasting insulin is a regular screening item, and checked on even in childhood. I'm sure that I probably had this quite early on (i was a fat kid right from the start!) and I would think that if they screened all the children now (especially those who are already getting obese as young'uns), they could quickly spot the kids who are insulin resistant,and get them started on restricted carb eating pattern now, rather than let them suffer through the years and be subject to diseases of middle age which may well be highly controllable, if not completely avoidable as one ages, not to mention the pain and ostracism of being overweight which those of us who were always fat kids know well.

I think there is also merit in some comments about 'relative' intake of carbs. Some people simply seem to feel and do better with more carbs than we insulin resistance types can tolerate.

That 25% figure for insulin resistance in the general population comes from the Reaven study. There are serious questions about his methodology. He studied glucose tolerance and insulin levels in young men. He divided his results into quartiles and identified the highest quartile as insulin resistant, hence 25%. However, he missed the point that only the lowest quartile showed a normal insulin reaction. So, in actuality, 75% of the study group showed some degree of insulin resistance, and this was in young men. Had he studied an older population, the results probably would have been higher than 75%. The Eades discuss this issue in PPLP.

Someone like Lance Armstrong would not be able to survive with out his massive intake of carbs every day. Low Carbing is meant to be a way of losing the excess energy that we more sedentary people tend to store in the form of fat. I work with a cople of young ladies who bike over 20 kms to work and home again plus bike 60 to 100 km on the weekends. They can sit doen and consume a lot of pasta and not gain the weight. I however am lucky if I walk 5 km a day and definitely don't need to eat the amount of carbs they do. Everything in moderation but eat to supply your body with what it needs, not what we crave.

Maybe they don't gain weight, but they're opening themselves up to heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and a host of other disorders associated with insulin resistance.

Cultures like the Inuit Indians, Aborigines, Native Americans etc have never depended on carbs to give them energy. As-a-matter-of-fact they look to protein sources to give their bodies the energy needed for their hunting marathons. Beef jerky originated with Native Americans who used it as a source of energy. American settlers soon became hip to the idea which is why we have it in the stores, today. Now that the Native Americans have been forced to consume a diet high in carbs there has been an increased incidents of diabetes, coronary disease/high blood pressure/obesity. This doesn't need brain surgery. Primitive cultures should be looked upon as dietary canaries. When a miner saw that his canary died in the shaft that alerted him to the fact that there was bad air in the mine. Likewise, the experience of Native Americans should tell us that there is something bad about high carb diets. After doing all of the research into low carb diets, no one can tell me that a high carb diet is the diet of champions.