Low Carb???/

Hi,

I am so confused.  Is low carb the way to go??  I have every book you can imagine.  I guess I am looking for a magic bullet  I know there isn't one. 

What are some of rthe most popular things that everyone eats???  I like the idea of eating chicken wings.

Help

Donna

  Hi Donna,
Welcome to our group.  We're fairly new so you're here right at the beginning!

I am 11 months out from surgery and haven't lose weight in awhile so i decided to come back to what I've done so many times over the years.... Low Carb.  What I like about it is that after a few days of detoxing from flour and the little bit of sugar that I had over the holidays, it gets easier every day.  The cravings are gone if I eat enough wholesome food.

Popular things for me to eat are meat and cheese with a little bit of veggies.  I try to have one protein pudding a day to up my protein levels.

What do you like to eat?  How can you visualize low carb working for you?  Do you think you would enjoy it?  How is your weight?  Are you maintaining or trying to shed some weight?  I'm doing this to help me get to goal.

Again, welcome!

Thanks Lee,

That is just what I want to hear.  Protein and veggies.  What about Ricotta, low carb Russell Stover or Adkin snacks???  Or do you stay away all together?

Again thanks so much for caring.

Donna

Low carb is not for every one but it is for me.  Limiting carbs and managing fats improves my results.  Its no magic bullet.  It takes discipline as all diet programs do.  Including our given pre op diets or "lifestyle change" if we prefer. 

What you're giving up is more of an issue than what you can eat.  Are you ok without sugar, flour, and pretty much all white carbs?  You'll also be giving up most whole grains. 

You will be eating foods low in carbohydrate of all types.  Vegetables and dairy will supply the bulk of your carbs.  How many carbs you consume will depend on your program.  Think meats,  seafood, poultry, dairy, eggs, low carb products, and selected sugar free products.

Chicken wings can certainly be included.  Just omit the carbs in cooking if you would normally bread or flour them. 

Thanks for the response,

I just wanted to get some feedback.  I guess if you did not believe in low carb you wouldn't belong to this group.I do lose better with low carb.

Now, is it OK to use low fat mayo, salad dressing??  I am a lazy cook.  How about frozen dinners.  Are their any low carb ones out there?

This is  what I put on the chicken wings.  Walden Farms BBQ Sauce.  No calories, nocarbs, no nothing.

Thanks for caring.

Donna

Donna, it is impossible to know in advance whether a low-carb way of eating will be good for you, but it is probably very similar to the way your doctor wanted you to eat in the early days after your surgery.

There are two good ways to start here:

1.  The first is to peek at the CARb (carb accountability) threads, to see what people really are eating, in a day.  We post the good, the bad, and the ugly there -- It will give you a very good on-the-ground point of view of how we eat, and what it's like when we fall off-the-wagon.

2.  Take a look at the Starting Point: Links to Atkins and Low-Carb
Information thread -- It has several good links to help you  look in some useful places.

(Not sure you can build a whole healthy way of eating around chicken wings, but I seem to have built mine around eggs and hollandaise -- so who knows!)

Lisa

Thanks so much,

I do lose better on low carb.  I just wanted some feedback.  What do you think about low fat dressings and mayo?  I found a site that has all kind od low carb products.  What do you think of low carb bagels??  Thought I would ask.

Thanks for caring.

Donna 

The Atkins plan is avaiable online at www.atkins.com

Here is the Atkins Acceptable Foods List:  http://atkins.com/Files/AcceptableFoodsPhase1_0818.pdf


Hope this helps!

Thank you for posting this because I've been thinking about doing this plan.

Hi Donna,

I think you're asking great questions which means that you're trying to figure out how to make this work for "you".  That's great because we all know that if a plan doesn't fit, we won't do it.

The thing about low fat items is that they generally add sugar and other fillers to make up in taste what we lose from the fat.  I mean salad dressings and mayo here.  If I want salad dressing I go for Blue Cheese.  I do eat Hellman's Lite Mayo, only because I can't stand the full mayo taste.

Now about those products, if you look at the label on an Atkins bar, you'll see that there are lots of carbs.  Some people subtract sugar alchohol and fiber.  I just count the full carbs because I have a very tricky mind and can then start changing the carbs on everything that I'd like to eat.  If it's a carb, I call it a carb regardless of where it came from.  It's my way of keeping me honest.  I'm one that always thought that if I ate in the closet, it didn't count and if the cookie was broken it didn't count and if at the end of the day I had too many calories, I just altered them.  Then years in OA and WLS allowed me to come out of the closet, count the cookie and accept that the calorie counts in myfitnesspal .com, or on the label are probably very accurate.

For me, the cravings for flour and sugar leave almost immediately.  I love how I feel in the morning when I wake up.  I love how my tummy feels when I'm on the Pilates mat.  I love that I can connect more easily to my body and what it's experiencing when I'm not processing flour and fruit sugars.  Do I miss them?  Well, when I see everyone sitting around slurping on a mango or a burrito, I might have some longing for those things, but the reality is that I love how my body feels when I'm burning fat and protein for energy.  I love that I can walk faster and swing my arms more freely when I'm walking.  I love the spark in my step.

So we each get to chose whether we want the products in our food plan.  I'd say experiment.  You're worth a week of detox.  Once you get all those carbs out of your system (which I hear takes 7 days to detox food) you may not want to go back.  Seeing the scale move is a mighty prompter for doing something different.

Do come to our daily CAR.  I like seeing what everyone is eating.  I like when people put down the calories etc because it's a good monitor for me, particularly when it's others who are still in the losing stage. 

I like that you're jumping right in.  I'm glad you're here!  :)