Is fat killing you, or is sugar?
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
My goal is to get 80% of my calories from fat, no more than 20% from protein, and to consume a maximum of 20g of carbs per day. I intend for this to be my diet going forward; this is not something I am doing temporarily to lose weight.
I've done a good deal of research on this topic, and my conclusion is that the human body is not equipped to deal with the massive amounts of simple carbohydrates that it gets in today's world.
After a month or so it seems to have leveled out. We collected a dozen or so recipes we liked and were easy to make, and we knew what we could and could not get at restaurants.
At this point, the net effect is that we spend more money on food, eat at home more often, and often order modified meals at restaurants (e.g. chicken fajitas, but instead of tortillas, rice, and beans we'll just have guacamole).
These days it is rare to find any bread products at our house, pasta and rice are found sometimes since the teenager eats that stuff every now and then. And pizza is fair game the weekend.
Though, now it is not uncommon to hear my daughter complain that she has been eating too many carbs. (e.g., during after robotics build sessions where other parents bring food for the team.)
Generally you can just add another vegetable side to replace the carb sides. At restaurants you can often substitute a vegetable/salad for the carb-side.
Another trick for sustaining healthier diet is not be too orthodox about carbs. For us, weekends are wide-open and occasional weekday cheating is okay too.
I also pretty much don't drink beer anymore, just whisky or gin.
Seem to have stayed at 235 for a few weeks now so i'm guessing it's easier to lose the first lot of fat.
Been going to a gym most days but then i'm a student so have the time in the middle of the day. It would have been difficult to go that much with a FT job. Went a bit far with the cardio and now have hurt knees so watch out for that. Good luck.
Before that I used to eat unsweetened shredded wheat + skim milk for breakfast. Boy what a rube I was.
I was pretty frustrated to find out that shredded wheat has a higher glycemic index than plain table sugar.
A can of coke has double the daily allotment of carbs.
You quickly realize how devoid of nutrition modern processed food is.
Low-carb vegetables are usually around 5% carbs. Fruits 10%. A single 10g square of 90% dark chocolate, 2gr. Quinoa, 20%. Yams, 24%.
Think about that. If you ate no other vegetables or fruits, 100 grams/3oz of quinoa supplies all the carbs allotted.
I'm sure much of the benefit from keto is forcing you to eat less processed, nutrient dense food.
It depends on what you mean by 'better'. Taste better, or nutritiously better.
My friend here in San Francisco runs a Pakistani-"Indian" restaurant on Jackson St, and during Christmas week I helped him out in the kitchen as his staff was thin (just moving food in and out to customers' tables, taking back dishes etc, no cooking)
This may not be the case at all restaurants, but I was pretty horrified at how the average restaurant around the corner operates. They put loads of salt, cream and butter in everything. Vegetables and meats are purchased in bulk from restaurant supply stores and are rarely fresh. If a customer didn't like an entree, they'd just make a new one with more salt, cream (if applicable) and butter. They have 4.5 star average reviews on YELP. Always packed on lunch hour and evenings during the week.
In his (Owner / my friend's )own words "Anything can be made to taste great if you throw in salt and butter".
Some Indian restaurant use oil and a dash of butter even in their Basmati rice!
Curious. plant-based protein or animal protein?
If you think you are avoiding sugar in your diet by avoiding the usual culprit (processed juices, soda, desserts), think again. Now sugar is being injected into everything, processed meat, soups, etc...
I just bought some Jerkey at Trader's Joe. Each serving contains 10-11 grams of protein and, 5 or 6 grams of sugar. That's one teaspoon and a half of sugar! A packet, ( a normal snack), has 3-4 servings, and you end up with 5+ teaspoons of sugar that if you didn't look at the nutritional labels you wouldn't know. Normally jerkey shouldn't have any, (or maybe one gram and best).
This is just one example, but the pumping of sugar is becoming so pervasive that it is almost impossible to avoid.
There has been tons of advertising about the health benefits of cereals, but cereal has tons of sugar. Honey Nut Cheerios have 10g of sugar per serving. Corn flakes have 8g per serving. Frosted Flakes have 11g. Some of the few low sugar varieties are Kix, Cheerios, and Rice Krispies. Even then, the added milk will have 10g of sugar.
Likely it's just not sugar, but any easily digested foods that cause insulin spikes and crashes.
After switching to low-carb (really just dumping bread, pasta, potatoes, cereal, skim milk, sugary stuff) I stopped getting fat and subsequently quit exercising. So I guess lack of fitness is my side-effect of low-carbing it.