My Modified LC plan

BlueBrooke wrote:
If you are as knowledgeable as you say about LC plans, then you sure
hide it well. It has nothing to do with your desserts. It has to do
with the misinformation you state as fact.

Which misinformation? I've advocated LC eating and a move away from processed
foods, just like Atkins and Agatston have.

The archive of this group is full of posts that have great information
about handling and eliminating cravings, dealing with and preparing
for social functions and what to order at restaurants, dispelling the
myths about low-carb plans -- such as calories don't count, LCers live
on bacon and butter, and you need to take out a bank loan every week
to pay for the groceries -- and recipes (Yes! Even desserts!) that
are not only low-carb, but are also economical and quite tasty.

You don't get it! There are some people for whom no amount of substitution will
satisfy their desire to have carbs--even sometimes. You are a zealot. Look, I
don't need to read volumes of posts about what to order in restaurants or how
to prepare sugar free desserts. Most of it is common sense. If a restaurant has
some LC offerings that I actually want to eat and that will satisfy my hunger,
I order them. If they don't I make due with available options. You and others
seem to think that people would make better low-carbers if they only had more
information on how to buy meat when it's on sale or how to politely refuse that
slice of wedding cake. Most people don't go off plan because of a dearth of
data; they go off because they can't stand eating low-carb anymore and want
their beloved foods back. Part of this stems from people doing the strictest
phases of LC plans for longer than their creators originally intended. There's
a reason why Atkins induction and South Beach's phase 1 are only supposed to
last two weeks. Agatston address the issue of boredom quite directly.

This is a support group. A pat on the back and a "We know you can't
help it" isn't support. Enabling is not support. Telling someone
it's okay is only setting them up for failure -- a great way to insure
that they'll be back in a year, twenty pounds heavier and starting all
over again.


There you go with the AA support model for low-carb eating. In that model,
nearly all carbs are bad. When people eat them because they want or feel they
need them, they need tough love, reaffirmed commitment and panicked forboadings
of their short lived future in order to get them back on plan. How well does
this work for most people? Most people fall off plan when the disconnect
between their plan and their acculturated sense of eating reaches a feverish
pitch of contestation. As I've said earlier, strict low-carb eating is not
natural to most agricultural societies. Most people eat rich or fatty foods
with carbs in order to stretch them and minimize their effects. I'm not going
to eat my curries with mashed cauliflower or cabbage, no matter what any of you
say. Because I want my brown basmati rice with curries, I don't eat Indian food
every day. I'd rather have the real thing on occasion than an ersatz substitute
pumped up with motivational jargon about how good it's supposed to be. You
dislike me because I'm not a zealot, because I'm telling people that they can
learn to reintegrate carbs moderately without regaining weight or being
humiliated into confirmity by low-carb nutcases. That's not a pat on the back.
I've told many diabetic friends that the typical cereal, toast and orange juice
breakfast is killing them. I haven't had a breakfast like that in years. I've
advised people to do little things like cut out those baked potatoes, eat
sweets once a week or try sandwich fillings without bread. I've advised sugar
free desserts for people who have to have sweets every day, but whose bodies
can't handle them. I oughta know; my body can't handle sugar on a regular
basis. By the time the dessert tornado had run its course, I felt miserable,
bloated and in minor physical pain. And yet, I know I'm going to wrap my lips
around a luscious dessert sometime within the next month or so, probably only
once for that week or month, without suffering any ill effects or stalling my
weight loss. I am not an alcoholic or a carbaholic! I can eat carbs in
moderation without being branded as a traitor to the cause. So can millions of
others like me.

Orlando

BlueBrooke wrote:
The archive of this group is full of posts that have great information
about handling and eliminating cravings, dealing with and preparing
for social functions and what to order at restaurants, dispelling the
myths about low-carb plans -- such as calories don't count, LCers live
on bacon and butter, and you need to take out a bank loan every week
to pay for the groceries -- and recipes (Yes! Even desserts!) that
are not only low-carb, but are also economical and quite tasty.

Are you such a zealot that you can't conceive of people actually loving carbs
and wanting them back in some form?

This is a support group. A pat on the back and a "We know you can't
help it" isn't support. Enabling is not support. Telling someone
it's okay is only setting them up for failure -- a great way to insure
that they'll be back in a year, twenty pounds heavier and starting all
over again.

Sometimes, the best support is understanding people where they're at and
helping them to see a bigger picture than their short-term desires. Bottom
line, people are going to eat whatever they want, regardless of how severely
you or anyone else browbeats them. Rather than put them down, isn't it better
to help them think more clearly about why they eat what they do, what it does
to their bodies and what alternatives could possibly satisfy them while being
kinder to their bodies?

Orlando

BlueBrooke wrote:
Is this part of that "eating carbs for pleasure" thing you were
advocating? I can see now why it's not possible to have a meeting of
the minds here -- my definition of "pleasure" seems to be quite
different from the one you're using.

You surely cannot be this dense. The pleasure of those desserts was mitigated
by the ill effects from frequency and quantity. Had I eaten any of them in
smaller quantities and with less frequency, my pleasure would have been
unmitigated and complete.

You continually contradict yourself -- are you just making this up as
you go along?

Not at all. I think through my points before posting.

You misrepresent what a low-carb WOL actually *is* and
are defensive when you're called on it.

What have I misrepresented about Atkins or South Beach? Both plans begin with
proteins and low-carb vegetables such as those common found in salads,
stirfries and sautees. Both advocate complete abstinence from refined sugar and
flour of all types except soy and nut. South beach allows for beans during its
first phase, while Atkins does not. South Beach eventually reintegrates whole
wheat flour, brown rice and a higher quantity of fruit than the Atkins Ongoing
Weight Loss phase does. Both plans encourage the consumption of protein and
low-carb vegetables until hunger is satiated, usually in patterns of three
meals plus two snacks. Now, tell me again, what have I misunderstood or
misrepresented?

I've lost over 80 pounds in the last year and a half -- and yeah, I
think that's pretty awesome. I'm enjoying it immensely -- being able
to actually look in a mirror and starting to like what I see. The
compliments don't hurt, either. Frankly, I'm lookin' pretty hot for
an old lady.

I've lost enough weight for my blood chemistry to turn from very negative to
very encouraging, which was my main goal. Being totally blind from birth and in
a relationship, I neither look in mirrors nor care whether or not people think
I'm hot. I will continue losing weight, but not if eating becomes odious
drudgery.

But I'm the furthest thing from a low-carb "zealot" that
you're likely to find. If I'm zealous about anything, it is personal
responsibility -- something that doesn't seem to interest you.

Personal responsibility should not be confused with selfishness. I may make
choices based on how my choices might affect other people, while still taking
responsibility for the choices themselves.

I go on "vacation" occasionally myself. It's a choice. It isn't
giving in to ancient primal desires, or the inability to interact in a
social setting without eating what everyone else is eating -- it's a
choice *I* make and *I* take responsibility for without trying to come
up with a long list of excuses.

I never claimed that my choices were other people's fault or senseless
reactions to social pressure. There are times when I want to eat what other
people are eating in order to commune with them through food. If you think
that's an excuse or a lack of personal responsibility, we have a fundamental
difference of opinion. The desire for inclusion and culinary communion is a
perfectly valid reason to choose to eat carbs in social settings. You may not
agree with my choice, but I consider it valid.

Why not just say, "I wanted that dessert." Why throw in "I was being
polite to my in-laws?"

Is your mind so incapable of subtlety that you can't accept both motivations
operating simultaneously? Yes, I wanted those desserts. But, if my in-laws
hadn't visited, my fiancee would not have made them. So, part of my choice was
influenced by not wanting to offend them, while another part of that choice was
influenced by availability. Had the desserts not been prepared and offered to
me in my own home, I would not have had a choice to make.

Why not just say, "I wanted to eat beans and
rice." Why preface that with "They ate all the chicken before I got
there?"

As it happened, we got severely lost on the way to the gig and arrived minutes
before our start time. As it happens, all but three pieces of chicken had
already been eaten. I ate one leg and saved the other two for my flautist
friend who had done all the driving and who was playing with me that night.
There was literally nothing else to eat and I knew I wouldn't be leaving there
until after two in the morning. I had left my house at 4:30 and hadn't eaten
until 10:00 when we arrived with minutes to spare. So, as it happens, I either
ate more rice and beans than I wanted or went hungry for hours. If you would
have chosen hunger over the beans and rice because you would lok better in the
mirror, that would have been a valid choice for you.

Obviously, you ate those things because you wanted to. Why
isn't that enough? Why all the rationalization that goes with it?

Because merely wanting to doesn't explain everything that went through my mind
before making the choice.

You don't need to justify what you eat to anyone -- certainly not to
the people who read this group. But for some reason you seem to feel
compelled to do so.

Thanks for the free pass.

If it's to help others understand how your
dietary choices are working for you, I think the part of your post
that I quoted above shows that is not the case.

My dietary approach worked when I lost thirty pounds in less than two months
and kept losing at a slower rate until last month.

These are your choices -- why not own them? Instead, you seem to have
a need to see yourself -- and everyone else -- as helpless in the face
of a constant dietary onslaught. No thanks.

I never situated myself as a victim of a constant dietary onslaught. I know
what certain foods do to my body, I know how much I enjoy them anyway, and I
try to balance the two sets of data--one objective and the other subjective. I
am also an acculturated creature. Food is an important symbol of who I am,
where I come from and what my people eat. I like staying culturally connected
to my people's foods without eating them to excess. Those things are honestly
more important to me than my appearance in the mirror or any compliments I
might get. My health is also very important to me. I have brought my
cholesterol down more than a hundred points and taken my fasting glucose out of
the borderline diabetic range. I walk with less pain and have more energy. I
continue losing weight, albeit more slowly than I could if I sacrificed more. I
know how it feels to start a diet ready to conquer the world and sacrifice all
urges to the higher goal of weight loss. I also know how quickly I've burned
out with such zealotry. So, if it takes me double your time to lose the same
weight as you, I'll gladly endure it if I'm enjoying more of what I eat along
the way. Why is that choice so difficult to understand?

Orlando

BlueBrooke wrote:
More misinformation. A low-carb WOL does *not* mean that you can't
have carbs "in some form."

Which I have been doing, much to your apparent consternation. I went through
phases 1 and 2 of South beach for six mostly pleasurable months.

I would think the short-term desires would be the desserts and the
rice, and the bigger picture would be losing weight and feeling
better. But the message in your posts is the opposite of this.

Balance, babe, balance! Short term desires for carbs versus long-term desires
for weight loss.

What a great idea! When are you going to start doing that?

When are you going to start asking me how I eat rather than assume you know? I
didn't bring down my fasting glucose, blood pressure and abnormally high
cholesterol by eating twinkies. At most, we're talking about a total of twenty
days off plan out of six months. That's really not a bad average.

Orlando

"Orlando Enrique Fiol" wrote in message

You don't get it! There are some people for whom no amount of substitution
will
satisfy their desire to have carbs--even sometimes. You are a zealot.
Look, I
don't need to read volumes of posts about what to order in restaurants or
how
to prepare sugar free desserts. Most of it is common sense. If a
restaurant has
some LC offerings that I actually want to eat and that will satisfy my
hunger,
I order them. If they don't I make due with available options. You and
others
seem to think that people would make better low-carbers if they only had
more
information on how to buy meat when it's on sale or how to politely refuse
that
slice of wedding cake. Most people don't go off plan because of a dearth
of
data; they go off because they can't stand eating low-carb anymore and
want
their beloved foods back. Part of this stems from people doing the
strictest
phases of LC plans for longer than their creators originally intended.
There's
a reason why Atkins induction and South Beach's phase 1 are only supposed
to
last two weeks. Agatston address the issue of boredom quite directly.

Zealot? Hardly. I think successful low-carber fits better. People that
successfully low carb, usually don't have those kinds of cravings after
awhile. In my experience, it's all the forays into "sugar-free" and
substituting for what I consider to be real foods that bring those cravings
on. Sure, after a person has lost the weight they want to lose, some of that
can be fine on occasion, though not necessary. I've been on LC for many
years, and my beloved foods are BBQ any kind of meat without commercial
sauce, roasts, chicken, fish, veggies, cheese, taco salads, etc. It's JMO,
and I did struggle with it when I slacked up for more than a few days.

Cheri

"BlueBrooke" wrote in message

I've lost over 80 pounds in the last year and a half -- and yeah, I
think that's pretty awesome. I'm enjoying it immensely -- being able
to actually look in a mirror and starting to like what I see. The


You bet it's AWESOME!!!

Cheri

Orlando Enrique Fiol wrote:
wrote:

This reminded me of something. *A friend had a gosling. *It wasn't
doing very well. *I don't know if it is true or not, but someone told
them that the grain they were feeding the gosling had some kind of
additive in it that was poisonous to baby geese (maybe adult ones,
too, for that matter, but that's not really the point). *
The response was, "But that's the only feed I have for him." *
It died. *

It's amazing the ignorance folks have about food. Watch
some wild geese for a while and it's not hard to figure out
what their evolved natural diet is. It's not grain, especially
not grain that's been impregnated with insecticides or
whatever the toxin was. It's grass and bugs and worms
that wild geese eat.

Most people will not die if they indulge in occasional carbs;

Note the confusing use of the word carbs here. I will
guess it means high glycemic load foods because all
low carb plans do in fact stress eating carbs in the form
of low glycemic load foods.

If it were occasional there would be little obesity. Note that
most folks have no clue what "occasional" even means.
Watch some newbie posts for a while and you'll conclude
that for some people it means "not at every sitting but
definitely every day". Even weekly is too often for occasional.
There are even events that are called occasional rather than
annual because sometimes they skip a year so the time
scale for occasional is somewhere in the range of several
weeks to several years.

they do die if
they eat practically nothing but carbs for decades, though.

False but largely irrelevant to low carbing. Eating too little
carb grams do not help loss no matter what newbies wish
to believe and no matter how man out of context quotes
are pulled out of books. But there are stone age societies
where the people eat near zero carbs for years on end and
they are quite healthy. The foods they eat to acheive this
are pretty disgusting to a lot of us but they aren't unhealthy
in spite of not helping for weight loss.

... Some people can eat vast amounts of carbs their entire lives and
exhibit no health problems,

Which is why low fat programs remain popular. They work
for a percentage of the population.

... As I've said in other posts, very few
cultures contain naturally low-carb diets because most civilizations are based
around agriculture.

But the advent of agriculture is recent on an evolutionary
time scale and it is associated with a huge drop in health
in early generations. The trouble with the term "early
generations" is it depends on how strict you are in judging
the health decreases - 20,000 years later we are still in
the early generations for issues like diabetes incidence.

Meat consumption increases in nomadic herding cultures
because they don't stay in one place long enough to grow food.

As does consumption of wild vegitables. Most of human
evolution was during stone age times so our bodies are still
evolved for that type of diet. Nearly all but not completely
all stone age hunter gatherer societies eat/ate low carb
diets with lots of low carb veggies and smaller amounts of
root veggies. Not surprisingly this sounds like the result of
following the directions for the most popular books in the
field. There are even paleolithic eating plans that work
well for many people.

Also note that of the few stone age societies that do eat
low meat diets the foods they eat are a mix of root and
low carb veggies. It ends up a low glycemic load low fat
plan. Not low carb but still taking advantage of some of the
standar dlow carb strategies of low glycemic load and high
vegitable content.

Orlando Enrique Fiol wrote:
Susan wrote:

Everyone here eats carbs daily.
We're just very selective about which ones.

Excuse me, but a few people assumed I had not read a single low-carb book just
because I had some desserts over the past couple of weeks.

I've reached a new level of understanding - Your reading
comprehension is so low you and I don't even agree on
what the word "read" means.

You state that you have glanced at the pages of more than
one low carb book. Based on your postings you have
retained an extremely low percentage of the meaning and
content of those books. Your postings are filled with
misrepresentations of what is said in the books as a result
of what you mean by the word "read". This discussion
shows you have similar reading comprehension problems
with the postings here as well.

My use of the word "read" includes comprehension and
retention. Your statement of why I've accused you of not
reading the book equally misrepresents the discussion so
badly I do in fact assert you haven't read either the books
or the posts in this discussion by my definition that includes
comprehension and retention.

I responded to someone's modified LC plan

It wasn't modified. It was straight out of the directions
in a few of the poluar books.

"Cheri" wrote:

Zealot? Hardly. I think successful low-carber fits better. People that
successfully low carb, usually don't have those kinds of cravings after
awhile.

To me this is the single greatest advantage that low carb
has over other types of plans. For me and for many others
the lack of cravings while following the directions of what
to eat allow me to practice portion control of how much to
eat without getting hungry. And so I manage to lose weight
without hunger except at specific short times like the first
week. I tried that on low fat but I never stopped being hungry.

Of course anyone who gets this lack of hunger on low fat
plans should use low fat plans. IMO the best plan is one
that gets customized to the individual. The reason I'm
such an Atkins fan is it's a custom process based on
your body's reactions not menu based after the first two
weeks are completed. It seems like the percentage of
the population who see lack of hunger while low carbing
is higher than the percentage of the population who see
lack of hunger while low fatting.

In my experience, it's all the forays into "sugar-free" and
substituting for what I consider to be real foods that bring those cravings
on.

For me there are certain trigger foods that cause cravings.
If I stay away from them it hardly matters if I use the
substitute foods or just have tiny portions of the real
versions. As long as a carby food does not have any
of my trigger ingredients it doesn't cause cravings so I
have an easy time keeping portions tiny.

But my main trigger food is wheat and many of the
substitute foods are wheat based - I've never found a
lower carb bread product that I can eat at all yet I often
keep a loaf of carby but wheat free bread in the freezer. I
have a slice of all-rye bread every couple of weeks rather
than a slice of lower carb wheat based bread more often.

Barley is not one of my trigger foods (I seem to have a
specific intolerance to wheat not a general intolerance
to gluten) so I can have a beer most weeks and as long
as I avoid wheat beers I don't need to go with light beers
or carb free whiskey. This weekend I had a bottle of a
Belgian Trappist Ale. Actually only half a bottle as that
brand comes in a 750 ml wine bottle size and it has
more alcohol than I like in a beer so I drank half and
poured out half of the large bottle.

Sure, after a person has lost the weight they want to lose, some of that
can be fine on occasion, though not necessary.

My wife keeps thinking I must miss pasta so she gets
pasta made from quinao or rice. Thing is once I
discovered what wheat was doing to my body I wrote
it off as toxic and I stopped missing any food that's
normally made from wheat. I don't miss pasta or bread
so I don't get the point of substitutes for them.

I've been on LC for many
years, and my beloved foods are BBQ any kind of meat without commercial
sauce

Do you make your own BBQ sauce or dry rub? I now find
even the few mustard based commercial sauces too sweet.
I've made vinegar based BBQ sauce that had nothing
sweet in it but I never wrote down the recipe. Just dump
in stuff that sounded right until I have a pint. I've tried a
couple of mustard based sauce recipes but I have not been
pleased with the results.

"Doug Freyburger" wrote in message
...
"Cheri" wrote:

I've been on LC for many
years, and my beloved foods are BBQ any kind of meat without commercial
sauce

Do you make your own BBQ sauce or dry rub? I now find
even the few mustard based commercial sauces too sweet.
I've made vinegar based BBQ sauce that had nothing
sweet in it but I never wrote down the recipe. Just dump
in stuff that sounded right until I have a pint. I've tried a
couple of mustard based sauce recipes but I have not been
pleased with the results.

I usually use dry rub, but have used a couple of the LC recipes at times,
then it was just so much easier to use dry rub, that that's what I usually
do.

Cheri