Larry-seeing those flowers from you was enough to make me register for this site. I was asking for you. Nice to "see" some of my old friends again.

Well, it's Purim today and we make hamentashen with plenty of sugar and regular jam!

I'm still not over that GI upset. Fats lead to diarhea. So I'm not sure how I'll be able to stick to LC if I can't eat fat without discomfort- I'm praying that my ability to digest fats comes back before my appetite picks up. I had some gallbladder pain today after eating fried eggs. I'd thought my gallbladder was completely healed at this point, but I guess not.

On a positive note, my weight yesterday was down 3.5 lbs from the week before- but I'm guessing some of that is illness-related dehydration. I think I avoided PMS bloating though.

Ruth-when is Passover? I thought Passover and Easter almost always occur in the same week?

PETRA !!
When Arron’s board withered up and became dormant, I thought I would never hear from you again. It is so GREAT to have you register here and post. I see you moved from Pennsylvania to Mississippi. Job change or ??? How come you wandered out of “oneder land”? Stick around here and see if we can help. The group here is small but VERY NICE. You might read this thread to see if it might help. ElleH was a regular on the old Eades board, eatprotein.com, before it was hacked and went down forever. Don’t think she ever “found” Arron’s board, so you may not know of her.
I am SO glad you did, AND since you liked the orchid, here is one JUST for you.....

Happy Easter and Passover all you PPers! I just love this time of year...new beginnings, rebirth, fresh starts, growing and changing...it's so symbolic and so encouraging, especially as the better weather comes with it. Happy Spring! Here's to good health to you all...

Yes Larry, I know Elle. She and I talked quite a bit on the old board. I saw here name on here too. I'll check out that thread.

Me and onderland........Well, yes, I got a new job, sold my house, bought a new one, one of my dogs died.........fell off the wagon but here I am again. I have been going to the new PP board but it isn't the same. I commented over there that I missed you. Randy told me I might find you here. Do you still eat sardines every day?

Love the orchids. I tried to grow one once but I'm not usually good with inside plants. I do very well with my outside garden. Getting used to the new climate here has been a challenge. A lot of my new plants didn't fare so well last year because I haven't quite learned what grows best in this soil, sun conditions etc. Full sun in MS and full sun in PA are definately not the same thing!

Happy Easter and Passover to everyone. This has always been a good time of year for me to start weight loss programs. It must be something about that whole rebirth thing.

Larry-I checked out that thread. I didn't read all 61 pages of it. So far, I'm still happy with PP in it's original format. My plan at this point is to try it as written. It I get stuck I will move from hedonist to more purist eating to see what is stalling me first before I try any more drastic measures. If I'm still having problems, I'll try something else. Sound like a reasonable plan?

So sorry about your dog. I decided after Timmy, The Timid, had to be put down because of a ruptured disk, that I just could not go through that again. So I had planned to have no more pets, until some JERK (being nice ) dumped out a cat that took up residence in my barn. Very long story short - she presented me with three kittens that I got the cat rescue people to place for me, THANK GOODNESS! There was no chance for her to get placed, so she is spayed and an outside cat, even though she was obviously raised inside. I have a DIL that is allergic to cats, plus put up with cat hair for over twenty years, so do not want to go through that again.
Yes, I am sitting here finishing up my breakfast of sardines. Here is a post about my breakfast that will give you my macroneutrent counts for it. Oh, orchids are easy, if I can do it. There are a few key things to do. ONE, be patient, the branch secretary (that got me started) gave me two orchids when I retired in Feb. 2003. One finally bloomed last year and again this year, the other still has not. TWO, repot new orchids immediately - I do not like the sphagnum moss that they are potted in from the nursery, it holds too much moisture next to the roots and makes them prone to rotting. I repot in a bark mix made especially for orchids. AND put them in clay pots not plastic. I like the shorter, fatter azalea pots, but also use the orchid pots with the slits in the sides. THREE, water once a week (or a suitable time depending upon how dry the air is, in the house where they are) by soaking the whole pot in a larger container where you can fill it so the water level is near the top of the pot. I soak mine for at least an hour and have sometimes got busy and left them in for five hours. Let them drain well when you lift them out of the soaking container. Then lightly spritz (finest mist you can get from a recycled spray cleaner - well rinsed- bottle or something similar) the leaves and exposed roots every day - I sometimes do it morning and night as I am checking on them, especially if they are growing a bloom stalk. I have to rotate the plant/pot to keep the stalk growing up straight. Otherwise it will bend excessively toward the window - light.
Yes, But PP/PPLP is really a high/higher fat plan. Someplace (should have bookmarked it!!) Dr. Mike said that they dare not say that because that would have immediately stopped to book from being published. So the brainwashing of the last thirty years has been so effective that even you have aversions to a high fat diet.

However lets look at the numbers. From PPLP, the highest protein minimum is 46 grams per meal per day, or 138 grams. Then let us allow a 50% excess, so that is 207 grams. This is 828 calories. Then if you allow 100 grams of carbohydrates, a level which is on the cusp of being too much for weight loss, since Dr. Mike blogged about the body need something like 150 grams of glucose in the blood per day to feed the red blood cells plus the few in the brain stem, kidneys, and ?forgot the other? that have no mitichondria which is necessary to metabolize fat, that is another 400 calories. Most sources use at least 1800 calories as the basic metabolic requirement. SO the remaining calories MUST be made up from fat, as that is the one remaining macro nutrient. The leaves 572 calories to come from fat, or only 64 grams of fat. BUT at that level of carbohydrates, it is a stretch to be called a PP/PPLP diet.

SO if you make carbohydrates in the 30 gram range and keep protein at the minimum, then you will need 1800 - 120 - 552 = 1128 calories, more than half of the required 1800, not low fat by any means! And if you use a more likely protein minimum of 34 grams per meal, then there is only 408 calories, not 552, leaving another 144 calories (16 grams) of fat to make up the energy lost by the reduced protein. That is then 70% fat.

PP/PPLP, even at a very hedonistic level, still needs a third of the calories from fat. But at more realistic values of carbohydrate and protein, the fat level gets to 50% easily. Most of the ladies on the High-Fatters thread are loosing quite well with high levels of fat, which I consider WELL within the PP/PPLP guide lines, so that is why I thought you should look at it and think about whether or not it might help you also.

I eat "low fat" PPLP, which means I come in at about 60% fat per day. I do not see how one can realistically eat less than that. However, if I do the high fatting thing shooting for 80% then I get incredibly sick.

The Jewish calendar varies each year- it's shorter than the Gregorian calendar, but then there's an extra month every leap year (it's a lunar calendar so adding in an extra day every 4 years won't work!)

So, every year Passover gets earlier and earlier, then it's a leap year and everything bumps up a month, then each year it's a little earlier than the year before...

This year is a leap year, so Purim (the 14th of the Jewish month of Adar) was this past Thursday night and Friday, and Passover (starts on the 14th of Nissan, one month after Adar) isn't until next month. I don't have the exact date in front of me but it's in appoxiomately 4 weeks.

Larry-I'm not adverse to the fat. In fact, today from my Fitday log I've eat 151 grams of fat and it says that is 72% of my diet. The premise of her thread is to aim for 80%. I don't aim for a particular amount of fat, it just turns out to be whatever it is. Fitday says that for the past week, I've averaged 66% fat per day. My diet would definately be considered high fat, but not what she is espousing. I joined a challenge that has a goal weight for the first day of summer and I made my goal to be 199 for summer. That's 7 lbs a month for the next 3 monts. Ambitious but not impossible.

Larry, I can't tell you how nice it is to talk to you again.

Ruth, thanks for clarifying for that. Not sure I want to do this online but I will. My last name is actually Cohen(although you could probably find out if you wanted to know). However I was not raised by my biological parents so I'm not Jewish. I have tried to learn a fair about Judaism as an adult out of curiosity about my heritage. Isn't Purim the holiday where you are supposed to get drunk?

Yup, Purim is the one where your'e supposed to "drink so much you can't tell the difference between "cursed be Haman" and "blessed be Mordechia'" but this year I actually didn't have any alcohol on Purim. Purim day was Friday and everything was rushed so i could get ready for Shabbat, and Thursday night there just wasn't too much served besides hamentashen and soda. They did have liquor there, next to the soda, but there wasnt' any wine so I didn't have any.

Had there been any diet coke I might have had some with rum in it, but the only beverages were sugary soda and tap water; I had a few sips of soda and drank filtered water at home.

Hey all, I'm not new to low carb, but have just started looking into PP after reading Dr. Eades blogs the last little bit. I am interested in looking into the program further. I don't do low carb for weight loss but rather to deal with chronic disease, I am also a competitive runner so I always struggle with finding a happy medium.

Right now I tend to stay between 10-30 grams carbs depending on the day. I just ordered my book but just have a few questions before I get it,

a) how do you figure out your protein min
b) is there a protein max, how is that determined
c) I believe you start with 30 grams carbs? correct? how is carb level determined
d) what is all this purist, hedonist lingo about

Sorry for the questions I tried to do a search but didn't really come up with anything productive

Thanks
Laura

Which book did you get?

In the original book-Protein Power, they give you a formula for figuring out your lean body mass and % body fat. You can then figure out what your protein minimum is based on your lean body mass and your activity level. They spell it all out. If you got Protein Power Lifeplan, they did the math for you and give you a table where you can just find out how much protein you need per meal based on your height and weight. There is no protein maximum.

The recommend less than 40 grams of net carbs (what they call effective carb content or ECC) for weight loss. They then give guidelines for transition and maintenance. The purist, hedonist, dilletante lingo comes from the Protein Power Lifeplan (PPLP) book where they talk about how strict you want to be in following the plan. A purist approach is basically paleo (no dairy, no grains, organic, etc.). Hedonist is anything goes as long as you meet the goals of the diet (protein minimum, <40ECC), and dilletante is in between-typically no grains, organic as much as possible, avoiding low carb convenience foods, no artificial sweeteners except stevia, etc. The more strict you want to be, the more you are likely to gain from the diet in terms of health benefits but any of these will likely work for weight loss.

If I left anything out-please add. Hope that gives you a quick overview.

Hi Laura!

Glad you're checking out PP and that you have the book ordered. Let me see if I can offer some quick assistance so you can get moving in the right direction...

a) In PP there is a way to calculate (don't ask me off the top of my head!) and PPLP has a chart. Because you don't have sufficient stats listed I can't tell you for sure what yours would be according to the chart; however deductive reasoning would suggest you are probably in the low 100s for weight and would therefore need about 27g/meal. Any use of muscle and activity would definitely warrant that minimum if not a good bit more.
b) Others might be able to answer this better, because I honestly don't know the official answer...or if I read it, I forgot it. I think it's probably a pretty personal thing because everyone has their own levels, just like with carbs. My rule of thumb is probably not more than double and generally, not more than 50% more of my minimum. Obviously if I'm weight training the range and flexibility changes.
c) There are different levels of PP you decide...Intervention (first starting out) Transition and Maintenance. Intervention is <40 (7-10 per meal), Transition <60 and maintenance <80, 100, and 120 respectively over the course of three weeks (in a way like climbing the Atkins ladder). These are EFFECTIVE carbs (minus fiber) and the level you decide is really up to you and what you're trying to accomplish. Since you're already well within intervention levels, I'd suggest staying where you are comfortable and making sure you have sufficient PROTEIN which is the key. From there you can adjust accordingly.
d) I'm not sure which book you bought, but PPLP describes these. Simply put they are categories that suggest by their descriptive names how you approach the PPLP guidelines...I am, for example, a hedonist because I choose to have grains and other such foods that, by all PP accounts, are really best left alone. This feeds in beautifully to my fave thing about PP(LP) which is that you benefit on a sliding scale...if you follow the approach 70% you'll benefit that much. It's not an all or nothing thing and that is wonderful for motivating me when I get off course.

HTH - welcome and good luck!