Hello everyone, as you can tell, I'm new here. I'm a 42 year old guy who's been an athelete of some kind for most of my adult life, much of it in the military. I've tried every kind of diet and supplement you can think of. A few years ago in the midst of the Adkins craze, I decided to give "low carb" a shot...not that I needed to lose weight, I didn't. I was in great shape. I just heard how healthy it was and read of the convincing studies and testimonies of Adkins followers. I stayed on it for about 6 months, religiously. I had always been following an extremely low fat diet, and that worked for me. So now I was enjoying all of these foods that were so strange to me, things I hadn't eaten since I was a kid...nuts, cheese, beef, oils of all sorts, sausage, ham, bacon.....and it seemed so awesome! I was amazed at how much chow I could slam and not seem to gain an ounce. That's how it was at first. I think years of fat deprivation caused my body to lose the enzyme to digest fat and it went right through me. Then, the weight started creeping up...I felt totally drained. My workouts had lost their vigor. I overheated easily....but I stuck it out, patiently waiting for my body to adjust, but it never did. So I ditched the diet and went back to strick low fat....I ate lots of the whole grain stuff again, potatoes, European hearth breads and such....the strength and stamina came back and I started to get leaner again. I don't know why I couldn't make low carb work for me....I really wanted it to. I read through all of the posts here and lots of folks preach the virtues of Low Carb....and with good reason, it worked, they lost weight, and feel much better! But I have to ask myself.....do these people bash "Carbs" base on their former eating habits? Do they lump all carbs into one evil category? I submit that most of these people were not eating a "Low Fat" diet before they started Adkins....they probably ate a diet loaded with simple sugars AND fat.....the double curse. So, they went on a diet where they dropped the carbs (which was mostly white bread, candy, sweets, buttered potatoes) and kept the fat. They won half the battle and naturally lost weight. But does that make "Low Carb" truly good for you. My idea of a "Low Fat, High Carb" diet is almost Pritikan or Ornish in some ways. The carbs I eat are not what most folks eat. When I eat whole grain, I don't mean some fake wheat bread you buy in a sliced load at Safeway. One of the staples of my diet is actually cooked whole grains....wheat berries, pearl barley, hulled barley, wild rice, Kamut, oat groats, and rye berries. These are cooked as you would rice and then I make a "Pilaf" of sorts combining these with various legumes and spices. I eat a ton of vegies, just like the Adkins folks, only no butter or cheese. My protein? You all seem like educated people regarding the horrors of supermaket meat and get the grass fed stuff when you can. This would be difficult for me to get and have time to prepare. So I do without meat altogether, I'm used to it. I use what I like to call "clean Protein" I use a combination of about a dozen different brands of Protein supplement powders....Isolated milk protein, egg protein, whey protein, soy protein,.....all of them nearly void of all fat. I like to make a shake of sorts and mix them with bran cereal. When it comes to bread (I used to be an artisan baker) I only eat breads naturally leavened with a sourdough starter, a completely different animal than the crap you buy at Safeway. I can stay lean year round eating like this. When I drop bread for a while, I get even more lean. Right now, I can see every vein in my stomach....I'm so lean I can't pinch anything....not bad for a 42 year old. Every day I throw on an 80 pound backpack and walk for 6 miles...on alternate days I lift weights. My point here is that all carbs are not "evil". You can't eat the typical American diet loaded with SUGAR AND FAT and say "it was the carbs"....not true in most cases. With adequate carbs in the diet, fat will most likely become just that....extra bodyfat. Before you thrash me, let me state this: I believe low carb, higher fat is the right prescription for some people. Some people cannot tolerate gluten or wheat products. Some people have Celiacs disease. Some people have an overactive insulin response to carbohydrates of any kind. But, by the same token, one can't say that Adkins is the cure, "the diet" that all should adhere to. Many people lose weight with this approach only because their prior eating habits were so terrible, and have never given a "real" low fat complex carbohydrate diet a chance....food to yucky, bland, or whatever. If someone can tell me why low carb is good for me too, I'm all ears. I came to this site because I was considering low carb again. I want to believe in it. In theory, it seems very sound. For thousands of years before agriculture came along, man was primarily a meat eater...seams to be what our bodies were designed to eat. Has some kind of adaptation occured since then that makes a diet high in meat and fat not work for some people.....I just don't know.

I guess one size doesn't fit all.

Most low-carbers, when they say "carbs" are really referring to refined sugars and starches, which Atkins and other plans pretty universally avoid.

Atkins is pretty strict the first two weeks, but is more based on low-carb veggies, low-glycemic fruits and in the last stages, whole grains. The amount of fats decrease as the carb level is brought up, but wouldn't be remotely considered "low fat" like Pritikin.

Frankly, most people I know CAN lose on the carby low-fat diet... if they don't mind blood sugar crashes and always feeling hungry.

I'd read your posting but the lack of paragraphs really make it difficult.

I don't know about "Adkins," but people doing Atkins eat a fair amount of carbs in the form of veggies, etc. I certainly don't think all carbs are evil.

You got me Qmass, I was in a hurry and made some horrible spelling errors....When I said all carbs are not evil, I meant grains of all sorts are not bad either....eaten in the right form.

A lot of people here have tried low fat dieting. You should read around more and you will see them. They end up quitting because it makes them hungry. I tried low fat, with "healthy carbs" (I don't think there is such a thing, but that's just me), and lasted a few months before the constant hunger wore me down. So have many people here. And it wasn't the 15% of fat I was eating that was making me hungry. Not everyone can eat a low fat diet and actually stick with it -- our bodies flat out aren't geared to it. I'm happy you can do your low fat diet and it works for you. But I'm even happier than I can do my low carb diet, and it works for me.

Thanks for submitting your personal assumption, but you are baseless and wrong. I've been posting on this site since early 2003, and I counter-submit to you that you need to give people more credit for not being idiots.
The people on this forum are not as dumb as you seem to think. Many people here have studied stacks of diet books and spent time on all kinds of diets, including low-fat, macrobiotic, food pyramid, what have you. And no, we aren't so stupid that we didn't follow it right and ate sugar all day, and then were pants-wettingly surprised when the weight didn't come off.

If you do fine with grains and protein powders, bully for you. Go on and be happy and stop assuming that what works for you should work for everyone, if only they would wise up. You seem to understand that other people have different dietary needs from yours, so let that soak in. Yes, it's really that simple.

I'm not sure why you need to imply that we are somehow morons who just Did It All Wrong when we tried to eat low-fat. Again, give people some credit.

I wasn't trying to "get you," Rocky. I just noticed that, in a very long and carefully written post, the only thing you misspelled was "Atkins," and you misspelled it every time you wrote it! That made me wonder whether you have carefully read Atkins' book and whether you understand his diet.

I also don't understand why you list "Adkins" as your plan in your stats, since it is not the plan that you follow.

But in any case, it sounds like you follow a healthy plan that agrees with you. I won't argue with that!

I'm curious, Rocky...since you didn't need to lose weight, did you follow the maintainence plan of Atkins or did you attempt to follow it at 20 grams of carb per day (induction levels)?
For someone who is male and active as you seem to be, I would think that you would do fine between 90 and 125 grams of carb per day as long as you are careful about the sources of those carbs.
Also, it seems that you misunderstood the maintainence phase of Atkins (which is what you should have been on if you weren't) in that it's not supposed to be an 'all the fatty meat you can eat' plan. Dr. Atkins explained that as your carb intake increases, your fat intake should decrease; not that it's ever a low fat plan but you seem to have gone a little overboard in that respect from your description. Maintainence is adequate protein from a variety of sources, moderate fat, moderate carbs (as the individual can tolerate). BTW...you didn't mention any veggies in your Atkins trial. You were eating them, right?



Nope...ADA diet for 9 years prior to low carb (which is very low fat in case you didn't know).

Rocky1,
I appreciate your rational and objective position. Most people in your situation would be completely biased against LC, not only because low fat worked so well for you, but because LC did not. You still seem very open minded which is commendable.

With that said, some of us have glucose intolerance, and we do not metabolize carbohydrates well. It does not matter if it is a simple sugar or if it is a starch (many sugars branched together), what matters most for us is how much we are eating. Low fat will not help; if anything it would make the problem worse, because fat tends to slow gastric emptying (reducing glycemic load), and a low fat diet tends to be a higher carbohydrate one.

I do not think the low fat diet could ever work for me.

I tested my glucose tolerance recently. For two days I ate a moderate fat, higher carb diet. I ate "good carbs", no added sugars. I was feeling hypoglycemic the entire time. Does this sound like a bad breakfast? 1 ounce serving of bran flakes, half a cup of milk, and a small banana. Sounds healthy, but within 2-3 hours I was shaking, sweating, and felt as if I might pass out.
On the third day I challenged myself with 50 grams of dextrose. 1 hr after eating my blood sugar went all the way up to 148, and 2.5 hrs later it went all the way down to 41.

Not only has LC allowed me to straighten out my blood sugar and lose weight, but my health has improved in numerous ways.

My heart health and glucose tolerance seems to be ever improving... even though my weight and diet are not changing much at all. ( Click here to see my cholesterol & blood sugar stats over the course of 2.5 years). My HDL keeps going up and up, my triglycerides down, and my A1C lower.

Also, my emotional state & energy is a million times better when I'm well fed (by eating enough & reducing carbs). When in a low-energy state (from under eating to lose weight, or carbohydrate) I become almost bi-polar... I alternate between feeling absolutely horribly miserable and occasionally "okay". On rare occasions I can feel hyper/excited but this is almost always followed by the worst depression ever (I've actually come to "dread" this kind of false happiness since I know what will come after it). I need to sleep for hours and am never quite rested. I just feel tired and miserable all the time. On the other hand, when eating well I feel fantastic. My moods tend to alternate between "okay" and "happy" . I don't get down like I do otherwise. I need very little sleep and can go on just a couple of hours (although it does catch up to me eventually on average I need 7 hrs to feel well rested)

Also, I had PCOS. When I really mess up my blood sugar (for example, eating out and making poor choices), symptoms start to come back. I almost invariably get a couple of blemishes ... the first symptom. BTW, going on Atkins the acne I've had since 9 or 10 years old went away completely within days. The other PCOS symptoms followed (hair growth, dark patches , etc).

So, if you have the kind of metabolic issues I have, it's likely that you would not feel very good on a high carb low fat diet. While I will admit prior to LC I was eating a bad diet, even when I eat "healthy carbs" like oatmeal (and I mean the unsweetened irish cut ones that you have to boil forever), and whole grain cereals (loaded with fiber, sugar free) and fruit symptoms come back. I believe I am glucose intolerant, my body makes too much insulin to use dietary sugar (carbohydrate), which causes imbalances in my body and various symptoms of sickness. Lots of people are like that, and cannot tolerate the low fat diet.



Now that just explains why some people feel better reducing carbs rather than reducing fats. What I don't understand is why you began to deteriorate in health following a low carb diet. That doesn't make sense to me, I would think all healthy individuals, glucose intolerant or not, should be able to feel fine on a LC diet. I don't think it's possible for healthy people to have poor fat metabolisms, since fat/meat is our "default" foods (agriculture is relatively new to the human race). Perhaps it's possible, though, some people don't metabolize fat well? Could you please describe your typical day when you were LCing?

Rocky1
You say when you stop eating bread you get even more lean... that's a clue, at least it means your body works the way I understand bodies to work (that carbohydrate makes insulin rise, which makes your body store more fat, even if your body isn't very sensitive like mine and others are).

I still don't understand why you felt fine at first and lost weight, but then you began to deteriorate. I hope you don't find this offensive, but the unconventional nature of your present diet warrants investigation into how you were eating when you tried to LC. Were you doing anything strange or extreme... like your own version of LC or were you strictly following a common plan?
Were you exercising very hard eating almost no carbs and not enough food? Sometimes that can be counter-productive because the body starts making a lot of sugar from its muscles to compensate for the exercise load. This would result in lethargy and increasing body fat percentage. You say you are a vegetarian... were you eating enough protein? Because exercising intensely on strict LC, without adequate protein, could cause such a state.

True, I could I'm sure.
I would have to eat much less food, almost never feel satisfied, and I would look a lot worse.
I'm discovering when I'm really disciplined about my eating (meaning to keep low carb) eating more usually just makes me more lean. Not so otherwise. In my entire history the only times I've gained fat have correlated with unstable blood sugar. I can't think of a time where just laying into a chicken or turkey or beef roast has resulted in my body feeling "flabbier" later. Leaner, yes.

Rocky,

You sound like one of those people who has been able to stay on low-fat diet for a reasonable amount of time.

I've never been able to do that, and thus - with lower carb eating, I've been able to sustain an overall healthier eating plan for much longer than when I'd try low-fat for a week or two, and then feel too deprived only to gain the weight again. This happened to me several times.

At first, when I started low-carbing - I ate lots of the higher "bad" fat items, and there were times when I ate hollandaise sauce and lots of butter on things etc.

Funny thing is...I've been able to transition to eating a lot more of the healthier fats. I've discovered olive oil, flax, nuts and avocados.

So..in short, I've eliminated trans fats, many saturated fats and sugar. I've increased my vegetable intake (which replaced refined carbs), and *increased* my fat intake (albeit, the "good" kind).

So yeah, I really do think low-carbing is a very healthy way of eating in general, regardless of whether someone wants to lose weight.

I don't think eliminating or reducing fat is the answer at all. It's a matter of balance, and choosing the healthier fats more often than not.

Interestingly, my doctor was somewhat horrified to learn that I've been on a low-carb eating plan for more than eight months. That is, until she learned that it *really* isn't about steak and eggs all the time. When she found out that I eat things like salmon and spinach more often than not, she was pretty impressed. She was even more impressed with my total cholesterol, which turned out to be 144.

I kind of think of bread and starches as a waste. Why eat that, when I could have a piece of grilled salmon and a bunch of steamed brocoli? If I'm going to eat less in order to lose some weight, I'd rather eat things that have far more nutritional value than a measly slice of so-called "whole grain bread".

I mean..if I was going to be trapped on an island, alone...would I rather eat fish, vegetables, nuts and berries or a bunch of bread, pasta and low-fat spaghetti sauce? The answer is a pretty easy choice for me.

Which foods are the most nutritious AND taste good? That's what it comes down to for me.

I'm very curious Rocky -- if you are in great shape, why have you tried EVERY kind of diet and supplement out there? In other words, if nothing is broken, what are you trying to fix?



This is not a part of Atkins. At least, not as I understand it. This way of eating is not a license to gorge yourself on rich foods at every opportunity. The way I interpret Atkins writings is that you eat until satisfied and you are not to force yourself to go hungry. The rich foods are usually considered more "satisfying" so it becomes possible to eat less and not feel like you're starving.



This is not something I for which I have a ready answer. If you continued to eat TOO low carb and in massive amounts, I would imagine that would affect your energy levels and your ability to stay lean. But, that's just an initial thought.




I don't either. Particularly if you read the Atkins book cover to cover and followed his plan. I also think you'll find that most folks posting here consider low carb eating a way of life -- something they'll follow for the REST of their lives. It is not an experiment to most -- it is the only way they have found to allow them to reclaim good health, improve quality of life, and extend their years on earth (hopefully).



Most people seriously following a low carb eating plan are EXTRAORDINARILY aware of the various types of carbohydrates as well as their benefits and drawbacks. Sure, some treat it like an experiment and do not have a true understanding of it -- but I can assure you, if you are looking to talk to those folks, you are at the wrong forum. I, like others posting before me have mentioned, followed a low fat diet (a true low fat diet, mind you) before trying low carb and it just did not work for me, but I'll leave the gory details of why for another time. Low carb is the ONLY way of eating that is good for ME. Note the emphasis here. I am talking about myself -- that does not mean this way of eating will automatically be good for YOU.





At the risk of sounding redundant -- what are you trying to fix? From what you have written, I am wondering how you even found this site and why you decided to become a member. Seriously. I am not being sarcastic. I really do not understand your motivation unless you are just looking for more information about low carb for whatever reason.




Okey-dokey. I really don't think you'll find a single soul here against ALL CARBS.



Bingo!! (This is where I personally fit in )



Who is saying this to you? Someone here? In your "real" life? What are you trying to get at specifically?



WHY??? Do you have horrible cholesteral, elevated to the moon triglycerides, do you have low-fat induced sunken-in cheeks, does your face look too haggard, do you have a hard body and a wrinkly face, heart palpitations, diarrhea, bloating??? Anything wrong with you at all? (healthwise) What I'm saying is that NO ONE BUT YOU can say if low carb is good for you or not. Eating can be a very individual thing and your experience may not match someone elses. Chances are it won't. If you really want the answers, you have to find them yourself. With research, with personal knowledge, etc.

My opinion is that the type of diet that suits you is genetic. They found the gene for type 2 diabetes and found the gene for insulin resistance in asians this year. If you don't got the bad gene I don't think you have to worry about it.

Me if I eat 50 carbs and I'll probably end up at 300 that day.