WHERE IN THE WORLD IS CARMEN SANDIEGO?

Okay, so I dropped off the face of the blogosphere about nine months ago.  I started this blog back in February of 2009, which was over three years ago.  I used the blog as a place to record my personal stats, which I was very into at the time, and as a storehouse for all the great articles I was finding in my main area of interest, which was, and still is, nutrition.  Low Carb High Fat nutrition, to be precise.  And then, without an explanation, I disappeared, and no one knew where I was, just like my old friend, You-Know-Who:

(I would watch that show just to hear them sing!  I'm really dating myself now!)

Everyone has had the following experience:  Someone says something snarky (or downright mean) to you out of the blue, and you are so taken aback that you can think of nothing clever to say.  Later, when it is much too late, you think of the perfectly scalding comeback that would have put that person in their place and elevated you to “most clever person ever”.  I had one of those experiences back in August 2011 when a random stumbler stumbled across my blog and called me and my blog, well, stupid.

The comment posted by this anonymous person went something like this, as best as I can remember:  “Your blog is so lame!  Who cares about all your stuff?  Why don’t you get a life?” and more along those lines.  I posted back something like:  “Oh, yeah?”  I know.  Not the height of cleverness.  After I posted that brilliant response, I deleted both his (I don’t know why, but I always assumed it was a guy) and my comments so that no one else but me and that guy would see them. He never returned and it was a good thing, because I spent the next three days coming up with the most scathing comebacks I could think of, and I’m glad I never got the chance to use them.  I did not want to go on record tearing some stranger a new one as if I cared about what he said.  But I did care, and shortly after that, I stopped blogging.  To you, Guy that Commented:  I assume you will never read this, but you got your way.  I realized that no one cared about all my stuff and I got a life.  Not that I didn’t already have one, but you know what I mean…

I’m not sure what motivates a person to make a comment like Guy did.  I tried to imagine myself visiting someone’s blog about, say, restoring classic cars, and leaving this comment:  “Your blog is stupid!  I don’t care about cars and neither should you!  It’s a stupid hobby and a waste of money!  You need to get out of the garage and get a life!”  Nope, I don’t see me doing that.  Because, at heart and on the surface, I’m a pretty nice guy.

Anyway, the stats I posted nine months ago were the last ones I recorded here, right before I stole away into the night like Carmen Sandiego.  Not only did I stop recording them here, but I stopped in the real world, too.  No more weighing and measuring of food, no more tracking of fat grams or any other kind of grams and no more weighing and measuring of my own body.  Oh, I would hop on the scale every now and then (every few weeks, if I was looking fat), but those times were few and far between.  My tape measure stayed in the drawer and my digital kitchen scale stayed in the cabinet.

I feel pretty confident that I am only talking to myself here, because any people who were following my blog have long since given up on me, I’ll bet.  But if anyone is reading, the answer to “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego (aka Rebecca Latham)?” is that I just hit the wall and could not stand having to micro-manage my food and activities for one more second!  Being the anal retentive, perfectionist, obsessive compulsive person that I am (that last one has never been diagnosed), it was a hard thing to give up.  My charts would be incomplete and I would not be able to look back to a certain date after August 24, 2011 and know what my thigh measured that morning or how many grams of carbs I had eaten that day and what percentage they had been of my total calories!!!  Oh, the agony! 

Long story short, I got over it, and I am much happier now.  I have been sticking, mostly, to the low carb lifestyle.  I have had times that I have gone completely off of it, like during the holidays, but it is now my default way of eating and I always come back to it.  Over the past few months, I realized that I was getting too far away from what I knew to be the best for me and my chubby body and my chubby hubby.  I was starting to do things like grabbing a bag of Peanut M&Ms when I was out and about and a little hungry, and ordering and eating a pizza (crust and all!) when I was too tired to cook.  Lately, I put on about five pounds, and decided to get really serious about low carbing it again.  Just to see where I was starting at, I dusted off the ol’ tape measure and measured neck, waist and hips, and found out that I was almost EXACTLY where I was, body-size-wise, back in August, within an eighth of an inch.

Here is what I learned (again, pretty sure I'm just talking to myself to solidify things in my mind and convictions) after my nine months off:  Whether I obsess over it or not, it looks like this is the weight my body wants to be.  All the many months and years I spent tracking everything and trying desperately to shed some more body fat were a waste of time and effort.  I mean, hey!  I did not track for the last nine months, and no harm done!

Having said that, I have made a new commitment to get really serious about low carbing and high fatting it again.  I have decided that I am not going to eat candy and chips (did I forget to mention the Doritos that I was having with more and more frequency?) and I am not going to grab cookies at the bank (yes, my bank has a cookie jar and there are bowls of candy on every flat surface accessible to customers).  For the past week or so, I am doing what I know is right and eating protein, fat and some veggies, no fruit save a few berries now and then, and drinking only water, tea and homemade lemonade sweetened with a little liquid Stevia.  I am not measuring my food.  I am eating what appears to be a reasonable amount.  After all the measuring all these years, I guess I should have a handle on what that means without having to get out the dusty digital scale!

If I never decrease my weight from here on out, I am resolving to be content with that.  In clothes, I look pretty good, and no one sees my secret love handles but me and my husband, and he’s not complaining.  I have dropped a couple of pounds in the past week or so, and that’s nice.

I have spent the last several days shoring myself up with reading great nutrition articles on the internet and catching up with all my favorite low carb bloggers that I have ignored for nine months and finding a few new ones, too.  I am rereading “The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living” by Volek and Phinney (two of my faves, who chose me to be a success story in “The New Atkins For A New You”, for which I will always be grateful), which was a gift from Karen Norris, my ol’ Atkins pal.

I will post again when I feel like I want to write something down in font, or when I find a great bit of information that I don’t want to lose track of.

Onward and Downward, as I always say, but even Onward and Straight Ahead can be a good thing!

(By the way, I have gotten back into quilting as a business, so if you want to visit my other blog on that subject and see photographs of my quilts, you can click here.

INCREASING CARBS FROM VERY LOW TO MODERATE

Back when I first started Atkins in March 2009, I did Induction for three weeks and then moved to Ongoing Weight Loss (OWL) for an additional four and a half weeks.  During that time, I:

Lost a total of 11-1/4", which included:
3/4" around my neck
3/4" around my bust
1-1/4" around my midriff
1-3/8" around my waist
2-7/8" around my navel
1-1/4" around my hips
1-1/4" around each of my thighs
1/4" around each of my calves

Lost 0.022 off my waist-to-height ratio
Lost 0.010 off my waist-to-hip ratio

Lost 2.2 points off my body fat percentage
Gained 2.2 points onto my lean body mass percentage

Lost 4.1 pounds of body fat
Gained 2.1 pounds of lean body mass
Lost 2 pounds on the scale

Looking back on those numbers now, they look pretty darn good.  But all I saw was that I had only lost 2 pounds on the scale in seven and a half weeks, which is a total of only about a quarter of a pound per week.

I talked to Colette Heimowitz, the Atkins Nutritionist, told her that I had only lost 2 pounds, and she suggested that I reduce my food intake.  Together, we came up with this plan:

1400 calories
106g fat (68.4%)
91g protein
19g total carbs
8g fiber
11g net carbs

Over the next 15 weeks, I slowly started adding in more fat, protein and carbs, and was steadily losing scale weight and body fat.  At the end of that time, my food basically looked like this:

1637 calories
122g fat (67%)
101g protein
30g total carbs
15g fiber
15g net carbs

During that 15 weeks, I:

Lost a total of 11-1/2", which included:
1/4" around my bicep
1/2" around my bust
1-1/4" around my midriff
1-1/8" around my waist
2-5/8" around my navel
2-1/2" around my hips
1-1/4" around each of my thighs
1/4" around each of my calves


Lost 0.018 off my waist-to-height ratio
Gained 0.019 off my waist-to-hip ratio


Lost 4.4 points off my body fat percentage

Gained 4.4 points onto my lean body mass percentage


Lost 9.6 pounds of body fat
Gained 0.4 pounds of lean body mass
Lost 9.2 pounds on the scale

This was better progress, but then everything fell apart, and I started gaining again.  If you read this blog with any frequency, you know that I have been gaining and losing and gaining ever since, usually with no rhyme or reason.

I have been reading a lot lately about how staying very low carb for a long time can have a detrimental effect on thyroid function.  Obviously, this is not true for everyone, but it might be true for me - my thyroid function has been decreasing and my metabolism seems to just be shut down.  I gain weight very quickly, and it is really hard to get it back off again.

I have decided to try to increase my carbs up to a moderate level, rather than the low level that I have been at for the past couple of years, to see if it will help my thyroid function and metabolism.

I am going back to a modified version of the plan Colette gave me over two years ago, as far as the total calories go, but I am going to increase total carbs by 2 per day and decrease fat enough to keep me at 1400 calories per day.  I am also lowering the protein to the lowest level that is recommended by Atkins for my height - 71g of protein daily.  I started on this plan on August 9, 2011.  Below is the starting point and the ending point, which will fall on September 8, 2011:

August 9, 2011
1401 calories
106.3g fat (68.3%)
71g protein
40g total carbs

September 8, 2011
1401 calories
79.6g fat (51.2%)
71g protein
100g total carbs

I have completed 5 days of this new plan, and my food today will look like this:

1401 calories
101.9g fat (65.4%)
71g protein
50g total carbs

One of the other considerations of this new plan is how it will affect not only my body fat, but my blood glucose.  I have started testing my blood glucose on a regular basis, and so far, it has not gone out of normal ranges eating this way.

When you only eat low-carb vegetables, it is a challenge to get those carb numbers up.  So I have started having a serving of fruit per day and also full fat Greek Yogurt.  As the carb numbers climb, I will start adding starchier vegetables, like squashes, and even an occasional tuber, probably yams.  I ate a peach the other day, and it was like heaven!

Here are my beginning stats:

August 9, 2011
Total inches - 286.375", which includes:
12.25" neck
11.5" bicep
36.5" bust
31.5" midriff
32.25" waist
36.625" navel
40.25" hips
22.875" thigh
14.125" calf

0.512 waist-to-height ratio
0.801 waist-to-hip ratio

53.4 pounds body fat (36.2%)
94.2 pounds lean body mass (63.8%)
147.6 pounds on the scale

Because I love charts, I have decided to track my progress on this new plan with charts.  And here are those charts since I started this five days ago:

I tracked my food five days this past week on Fitday.  Here is the breakdown of what I ate:

I take my full measurements every Sunday.  In the past 5 days:

I lost a total of 1", which includes:
I lost 1/8" around my neck
I lost 0" around my bicep
I lost 0" around my bust
I lost 1/8" around my midriff

I lost 3/8" around my waist
I lost 1/8" around my navel
I lost 0" around my hips
I lost 1/8" around my thigh

I lost 0" around my calf

Lost 0.006 points off my waist-to-height ratio

Lost 0.009 points off my waist-to-hip ratio

 Lost 0.3 points off my body fat percentage

Gained 0.3 points onto my lean body mass percentage

Lost 1.3 lbs. of body fat

Lost 1.1 lbs. of lean mass
Lost 2.4 lbs. on the scale

Days Completed - 5

Days To Go - 28

LESS PROTEIN - MORE FAT - "THE OPTIMAL DIET"

There is an interesting discussion going on right now on the Atkins Community Forum.  Someone there has found a diet that is written by a Polish doctor, Dr. Jan Kwasniewski.

Dr. Kwasniewski, along with Dr. Atkins, believes that an excess of protein will turn into glucose and be stored as fat.  They differ on the proper amount of protein.  Dr. Kwasniewski teaches that as long as protein and carbs are kept sufficiently low, dietary fat will not cause weight gain and does not need to be limited.


The basic premise is this:  First, you figure out how many grams of protein you should be eating based on Dr. Kwasniewski's formula.  Then you use these ratios to figure out how many grams of fat and grams of carbs you should be eating:

PROTEIN   :   FAT   :   CARBS

            1      :    2.5 - 3.5    :   0.5      

I'll use myself as an example and show you how I came up with my numbers.  I am 5'3" tall, which is the same as 160 cm.  To arrive at my "due body weight", I subtract 100 cm from my 160 cm, and I get 60 cm.  The number 60 is now the amount of kilograms I should weigh.  I decided a while back that I wanted to weigh 132 pounds with 25% body fat.  And guess what!  My goal weight of 132 pounds equals 60 kg, which is exactly what Dr. Kwasniewski's says I should weigh!  Interesting...

So, now my magic number is 60, which I can adjust up or down 10%, so for me, that is 6.  I decided to adjust my number to 66, because I can.

This means I am allowed to eat 66 grams of protein per day.

Now I use the number 66 to figure out how many grams of fat I should eat per day:

66 x 2.5 = 165 grams of fat
66 x 3.5 = 231 grams of fat

So, this means I should eat between 165 and 231 grams of fat.

Now I use the number 66 to figure out how many grams of carbs I should eat per day.

66 x 0.5 = 33 grams of carbs

The doctor's website is not clear on whether I should eat 33 grams of total carbs or 33 grams of net carbs, but someone on the Atkins Forum said that they heard somewhere that it was net carbs, which is total carbs minus fiber.  Just to be on the safe side, I am counting 20 net carbs, which goes along with the Atkins Induction Phase.

If I use the lower number of fat grams (protein grams x 2.5), my day would look like this:

1881 calories
165g fat (79%)
66g protein (14%)
33g carbs (7%)
13g fiber
20 net carbs

If I use the higher number of fat grams (protein grams x 3.5), my day would look like this:
2475 calories
231g fat (84%)
66g protein (10.7%)
33g carbs (5.3%)
13g fiber
20g net carbs

So how does The Optimal Diet measure up to The Atkins Nutritional Approach?

The basic guidelines of Atkins are that a women should eat between 1500 and 1800 calories per day, with 60-70% of calories coming from fat, and 45 grams total carbs, 25 grams fiber, which will equal 20 grams of net carbs.  These are starting recommendations, and can be adjusted if you are shorter, which I am.

According to the low end of Atkins recommendations (lowest protein and lower end of calories), my day would look like this:

1500 calories
115g fat (69%)
71g protein (19%)
45g carbs (12%)
25g fiber
20 net carbs

According to the high end of Atkins recommendations (highest protein and higher end of calories), my day would look like this:

1800 calories
114g fat (57%)
149g protein (33%)
45g carbs (10%)
25g fiber
20 net carbs

The Atkins protein recommendations for a woman my height are between 71 and 149 grams of protein per day.

The Optimal Diet protein recommendations for a woman my height are between 54 and 66 grams of protein per day, so only a few grams less than Atkins.

The Atkins fat recommendations are 60-70%.
The Optimal Diet recommendations are 79-84%.  Obviously higher.

The carbs are in the same range for both diets.

Anyway, I'm going to try it and see if it is true that I have been eating too much protein all this time and that is why I have trouble losing weight.

ADELE HITE IS INTERVIEWED BY DANA CARPENDER

Adele Hite is the guest on this episode of Dana’s Low-Carb For Life!
 

In episode 3, Dana discusses how to eat meat for cheap, rants about obsessing over “good carbs,” answers some listener’s emails and Facebook questions about low-carb bread and more, as well as presenting part one of a two-part interview with Dr. Eric Westman’s protege, Adele Hite. Don’t miss this one!

The podcast is 41 minutes long.  To listen to the show, click here.

MY SECOND ATKINSVERSARY

Today marks two years on Atkins!  There have been so many ups and downs.  I have lost weight and inches and gained weight and inches.  My body fat has gone down and then back up, usually based on when I am on vacation and eating a few extra net carbs, but not always.  There have also been times that my hormonal imbalances have driven my weight gains and losses.  But, all things considered, I am smaller now than I was when I started.

Here is what I have lost in the past two years:

Total inches - 315.75" to 284.125" - down 31.625"

Neck - 13.75" to 12.25" - down 1.5"

Bicep - 11.75" to 11.625" - down 0.125"

Bust - 39.5" to 36.5" - down 3"

Midriff - 33.75" to 31.5" - down 2.25"

Waist - 35" to 31.375" - down 3.625"

Navel - 41.75" to 35.875" - down 5.875"

Hips - 45.5" to 40.375" - down 5.125"

Thigh - 25.75" to 22.625" - down 3.125"

Calf - 15" to 13.875" - down 1.125"

Waist-to-Height Ratio - 0.556 to 0.498 - down 0.058

I am 43% of the way to my goal of 0.421.

Waist-to-Hip Ratio - 0.769 to 0.777 - up 0.008

My goal is of 0.711.

Body Fat - 44.8% to 35.3% - down 9.5 percentage points

Lean Body Mass - 55.2% to 64.7% - up 9.5 percentage points

My goal is 25% Body Fat and 75% Lean Body Mass.

I am 48% of the way to my goal.

Pounds of Body Fat - 70.8 to 52 - down 18.8
I am 49% of the way to my goal of 32.5 Pounds of Body Fat.

Pounds of Lean Body Mass - 87.2 to 95.4 - up 8.2
I am 79.6% of the way to my goal of 97.5 Pounds of Body Lean Body Mass.

Scale Weight - 158 pounds to 147.4 pounds - down 10.6 pounds
I am 37.9% of the way to my goal of 130 pounds.

BMI - 28 to 26.1 - down 1.9 points
I am 38.8% of the way to my goal of 23.1.

 Yesterday, I made up a virtual model of my goal weight, and here it is:

FITDAY VS. FATSECRET

 On the Atkins Community Forum, there are two popular free food tracking websites that people use.  There is always a friendly "disagreement" on which one is better - Fitday or Fatsecret.

I have tried them both, and I prefer Fitday, and there are only four things I can see that make Fatsecret superior to the free, online version of Fitday:

1.  Fatsecret tracks net carbs and the free, online version of Fitday does not.  It gives you the carbs and fiber, and you have to do the math yourself to get net carbs.  The downloadable PC version of Fitday will track net carbs, but the program costs $30.

2.  Fatsecret lets you track your foods according to breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks, and the free, online version of Fitday keeps all your food in one list.  The PC version of Fitday lets you separate food into meals and snacks.

3.  Fatsecret has lots of brand name foods in their database and Fitday does not.  Personally, I eat mostly real, whole, fresh foods, and I don't use brand name foods, so for me, this is not an issue.  For someone that uses a lot of processed foods or name brand foods, this might be an issue.

4.  Fatsecret has a smart phone ap.  Fitday does not.

Even considering these four differences, I still think Fitday is the program that is easiest to use and has the most tracking options.  Here are the reasons that I think Fitday is better, at least for me:

1.  Fitday lets you track an unlimited number of options, such as calories, carbs, protein, fat, sodium, cholesterol, sugars, fiber,  sodium, nutrients and RDI.  Fatsecret will only let you choose six of these then things to track.  If you want to track net carbs, you have to give up tracking sodium, for example.

2.  Fitday allows you to show your food journal, in its entirety, to anyone by making your journal public and supplying a link.  Fatsecret will let you do that to, but the person you are showing it to needs to have their own account with Fatsecret, and be logged in, and even then, at times you cannot see their full journal.

3.  Fitday allows you to put your food items into your journal in the order you wantto appear.  Fatsecret will put the food items into your journal in the order it wants then to be in, and you have no control over the order.

4.  Fatsecret allows users to input their own information, which then becomes part of the database of foods.  I don't like that a person can put inaccurate information into Fatsecret, and then make it part of the database.  With Fitday, you can make changes to anything you want, but it will not be shared with other Fitday users.

5.  Fitday allows you to customize foods.  If you want to create a custom food, you can choose a similar food and then change the numbers and save it as your custom food.  Fatsecret makes you start from scratch to create a custom food.  And if you decide that one serving is a slice, and enter it that way, when you look at your menu for the day, it will not show you that one serving is one slice, it will only say "one serving".  You have to go to another page to remind yourself of what a "serving" is.  For example, you may decide that "one serving" is one ounce or one gram, and if you forget which it is, you have to go to another page to see that.  When you look at your menu for Fitday, everything is on one page.  You can print that page and hang it on the fridge and know that everything you need to know is on that page.

A REVERSAL ON CARBS - LOS ANGELES TIMES ARTICLE

Fat was once the devil. Now more nutritionists are pointing accusingly at sugar and refined grains.

Carb consumption has risen over the yeras. So have U.S. obesity levels. (Kirk McKoy, Los Angeles Times / December 20, 2010)

By Marni Jameson, 

Special to the Los AngelesTimes

Most people can count calories. Many have a clue about where fat lurks in their diets. However, fewer give carbohydrates much thought, or know why they should.

But a growing number of top nutritional scientists blame excessive carbohydrates — not fat — for America's ills. They say cutting carbohydrates is the key to reversing obesity, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and hypertension.

"Fat is not the problem," says Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. "If Americans could eliminate sugary beverages, potatoes, white bread, pasta, white rice and sugary snacks, we would wipe out almost all the problems we have with weight and diabetes and other metabolic diseases."

It's a confusing message. For years we've been fed the line that eating fat would make us fat and lead to chronic illnesses. "Dietary fat used to be public enemy No. 1," says Dr. Edward Saltzman, associate professor of nutrition and medicine at Tufts University. "Now a growing and convincing body of science is pointing the finger at carbs, especially those containing refined flour and sugar."

Americans, on average, eat 250 to 300 grams of carbs a day, accounting for about 55% of their caloric intake. The most conservative recommendations say they should eat half that amount. Consumption of carbohydrates has increased over the years with the help of a 30-year-old, government-mandated message to cut fat.

And the nation's levels of obesity, Type 2 diabetes and heart disease have risen. "The country's big low-fat message backfired," says Dr. Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. "The overemphasis on reducing fat caused the consumption of carbohydrates and sugar in our diets to soar. That shift may be linked to the biggest health problems in America today."

To understand what's behind the upheaval takes some basic understanding of food and metabolism.

All carbohydrates (a category including sugars) convert to sugar in the blood, and the more refined the carbs are, the quicker the conversion goes. When you eat a glazed doughnut or a serving of mashed potatoes, it turns into blood sugar very quickly. To manage the blood sugar, the pancreas produces insulin, which moves sugar into cells, where it's stored as fuel in the form of glycogen.

If you have a perfectly healthy metabolism, the system works beautifully, says Dr. Stephen Phinney, a nutritional biochemist and an emeritus professor of UC Davis who has studied carbohydrates for 30 years. "However, over time, as our bodies get tired of processing high loads of carbs, which evolution didn't prepare us for … how the body responds to insulin can change," he says.

When cells become more resistant to those insulin instructions, the pancreas needs to make more insulin to push the same amount of glucose into cells. As people become insulin resistant, carbs become a bigger challenge for the body. When the pancreas gets exhausted and can't produce enough insulin to keep up with the glucose in the blood, diabetes develops.

The first sign of insulin resistance is a condition called metabolic syndrome — a red flag that diabetes, and possibly heart disease, is just around the corner. People are said to have the syndrome when they have three or more of the following: high blood triglycerides (more than 150 mg); high blood pressure (over 135/85); central obesity (a waist circumference in men of more than 40 inches and in women, more than 35 inches); low HDL cholesterol (under 40 in men, under 50 in women); or elevated fasting glucose.

About one-fourth of adults has three or more of these symptoms.

"Put these people on a low-carb diet and they'll not only lose weight, which always helps these conditions, but their blood levels will improve," Phinney says. In a 12-week study published in 2008, Phinney and his colleagues put 40 overweight or obese men and women with metabolic syndrome on a 1,500-calorie diet. Half went on a low-fat, high-carb diet. The others went on a low-carb, high-fat diet. The low-fat group consumed 12 grams of saturated fat a day out of a total of 40 grams of fat, while the low-carb group ate 36 grams of saturated fat a day — three times more — out of a total of 100 grams of fat.

Despite all the extra saturated fat the low-carb group was getting, at the end of the 12 weeks, levels of triglycerides (which are risk factors for heart disease) had dropped by 50% in this group. Levels of good HDL cholesterol increased by 15%.

In the low-fat, high-carb group, triglycerides dropped only 20% and there was no change in HDL.

The take-home message from this study and others like it is that — contrary to what many expect — dietary fat intake is not directly related to blood fat. Rather, the amount of carbohydrates in the diet appears to be a potent contributor.

"The good news," adds Willett, "is that based on what we know, almost everyone can avoid Type 2 diabetes. Avoiding unhealthy carbohydrates is an important part of that solution." For those who are newly diagnosed, he adds, a low-carb diet can take the load off the pancreas before it gets too damaged and improve the condition — reducing or averting the need for insulin or other diabetes meds.

Americans can also blame high-carb diets for why the population has gotten fatter over the last 30 years, says Phinney, who is co-author of "The New Atkins for a New You" (Simon & Schuster, 2010).

"Carbohydrates are a metabolic bully," Phinney says. "They cut in front of fat as a fuel source and insist on being burned first. What isn't burned gets stored as fat, and doesn't come out of storage as long as carbs are available. And in the average American diet, they always are."

Here's how Phinney explains it: When you cut carbs, your body first uses available glycogen as fuel. When that's gone, the body turns to fat and the pancreas gets a break. Blood sugar stabilizes, insulin levels drop, fat burns. That's why the diet works for diabetics and for weight loss.

When the body switches to burning fat instead of glycogen, it goes into a process called nutritional ketosis. If a person eats 50 or fewer grams of carbs, his body will go there, Phinney says. (Nutritional ketosis isn't to be confused with ketoacidosis, a dangerous condition that can occur in diabetics.)

Beyond the fat-burning effects of ketosis, people lose weight on low-carb diets because fat and protein increase satisfaction and reduce appetite. On the flip side, simple carbs cause an insulin surge, which triggers a blood sugar drop, which makes you hungry again.

"At my obesity clinic, my default diet for treating obesity, Type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome is a low-carb diet," says Dr. Eric Westman, director of the Lifestyle Medicine Clinic at Duke University Medical Center, and co-author of the new Atkins book. "If you take carbohydrates away, all these things get better."

Though the movement to cap carbs is growing, not all nutritional scientists have fully embraced it. Dr. Ronald Krauss, senior scientist at Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute and founder and past chair of the American Heart Assn.'s Council on Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism, says that while he fundamentally agrees with those advocating fewer dietary carbs, he doesn't like to demonize one food group.

That said, he adds, those who eat too many calories tend to overconsume carbohydrates, particularly refined carbohydrates and sugars. "It can be extremely valuable to limit carbohydrate intake and substitute protein and fat. I am glad to see so many people in the medical community getting on board. But in general I don't recommend extreme dietary measures for promoting health."

Joanne Slavin, professor of nutrition at the University of Minnesota and a member of the advisory committee for the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, is less inclined to support the movement. The committee, she says, "looked at carbohydrates and health outcomes and did not find a relationship between carbohydrate intake and increased disease risk."

Most Americans need to reduce calories and increase activity, Slavin adds. Cutting down on carbs as a calorie source is a good strategy, "but making a hit list of carbohydrate-containing foods is shortsighted and doomed to fail, similar to the low-fat rules that started in the 1980s."

As nutrition scientists try to find the ideal for the future, others look to history and evolution for answers. One way to put our diet in perspective is to imagine the face of a clock with 24 hours on it. Each hour represents 100,000 years that humans have been on the Earth.

On this clock, the advent of agriculture and refined grains would have appeared at about 11:54 p.m. (23 hours and 54 minutes into the day). Before that, humans were hunters and gatherers, eating animals and plants off the land. Agriculture allowed for the mass production of crops such as wheat and corn, and refineries transformed whole grains into refined flour and created processed sugar.

Some, like Phinney, would argue that we haven't evolved to adapt to a diet of refined foods and mass agriculture — and that maybe we shouldn't try.

To read the full article, click here.

DOWNLOAD MY SIMPLE FAT PROTEIN CARBS CALCULATOR HERE

I just put my calculator online, so it can now be downloaded directly to your computer.

The calculator is very simple, and helps you figure out how much to eat each day on Atkins. The instructions are included in the calculator.

Although you may need to make adjustments as you go along, this calculator will give you a starting place.

To get the calculator, click here and then be sure to click "Download" to be able to input your own numbers:

If you have any questions after you download the calculator, post them here.  Have fun!

I AM INTERVIEWED BY ADAM KOSLOFF OF WHYLOWCARBDIETSWORK.COM

I was sure that I posted this on my blog back in July when it was posted on Adam's site, but I can't find it.  So, just in case you missed it (or I never posted it!), click here to go to the interview.

DAY 3 OF THE 6-WEEK CURE

Okay, I'm not doing it exactly as the book says to, so I want to say that right up front.  I could not get an answer from the Protein Power camp on why I had to drink shakes instead of just eating the same macronutrients of real, whole, fresh food.  So I calculated the macronutrients recommended for a woman my size, and came up with a plan that included a breakfast of bacon and eggs, a shake for lunch, and a regular dinner.

Here is where I started on the morning of Day 1:

141.6 pounds
30.75" waist
12.5" neck
40" hips
25.1 BMI
0.49 waist-to-height ratio
0.77 waist-to-hip-ratio
33.7% body fat (47.7 pounds)
66.3% lean mass (93.9 pounds)

Here is where I am now, on the morning of Day 4, after three full days:

141.6 pounds
31" waist
12.5" neck
40" hips
25.1 BMI
0.49 waist-to-height ratio
0.78 waist-to-hip-ratio
34% body fat (48.1 pounds)
66% lean mass (93.5 pounds)

In three days I have gained 0.4 pounds of body fat and lost 0.4 pounds of lean mass.  Not great results so far...

Even if you ignore the body fat calculator results, in the past three days I have lost nothing on the scale and have gained 1/4" around my waist.  I suppose those numbers are too close to call accurate, but still.  The 6-Week Cure book told me to expect to start losing weight from Day 1.

Here is what I have eaten in the first three days:

Day 1 - Bacon, eggs and butter and BCAA for breakfast, a shake, fiber and BCAA for lunch, and a pork chop, salad and BCAA for dinner.  True to the book, I was not hungry.

Day 2 - Bacon, eggs and butter and BCAA for breakfast, a shake, fiber and BCAA for lunch, and grilled salmon, cooked cabbage and BCAA for dinner.  Still no hunger.

Day 3 - A shake and BCAA for breakfast, and I was starving after about two hours.  A shake, fiber and BCAA for lunch, and again, I was starving after about two hours.  Pork "hamburgers" and salad for dinner.  After this meal of real food and no BCAA, I was fully satisfied until time for bed, when I took my final BCAA for the day. 

I do Atkins - I'm not used to starving!  I'm used to eating on schedule even though I am not really hungry.  I'm not used to counting the minutes on the clock until I can eat again!  And what's that weird noise coming from my midsection?  That's my stomach growling!  I haven't heard that in over a year and a half!

In the actual 6-Week Cure, you do not only have two shakes per day - you have three.  The problem there is that I am so small that I can only have four scoops of protein powder in one day.  If I have it in three shakes, that's only 1-1/3 scoop in each shake, which makes a pretty thin, watery shake.  So I thought that I would have two thicker, better tasting shakes, and the BCAA was supposed to suppress my appetite.  It didn't.

Just because I am a glutton for punishment and I might as well find out for sure, I'm going to do three watery shakes and a meal today, and see how my hunger does.  If I am still starving all day like yesterday, I will go back to meal-shake-meal the next day.

Starving all day - Mama don't play that game!  If I was losing fat and inches, I might play that game, but I am not.  I have been doing low carb for 19 months, and I do not have excess water weight to lose at the beginning, like most people who are trying the 6WC after eating the SAD (Standard American Diet).

And the BCAA - I'm not sure what I think of that.  I am actually getting used to the taste of it, and it no longer makes me gag, so that's good!  But is it suppressing my appetite and preserving my lean mass while I lose fat?  So far, not so much!

Plus, it does weird things to my body.  I read on the internet that it is supposed to energize you, but I am having the opposite reaction - it is putting me to sleep!  It actually makes me feel drowsy.  I took it last night after dinner, and within 20 minutes or so, my eyes were drooping and my throat, mouth and eyes were very dry!  I slept like a stone last night!

I am having one other problem with conforming to the plan - I have some sort of inflammation going on in my right calf, and the pain is so bad that it keeps me up at night and keeps me noticing it all day long.  So, against the rules of the diet, I have had to take an ibuprofen twice since starting.  The pain I am in is like 50% of a "charlie horse" and I can't just ignore it.  During the day, it's better, but lying in bed at night is torture.  Gotta have the drug.

I am willing to tough it out, but if I am still seeing no results by the end of seven days, I may decide to just put this "diet" into the scrap pile with all of my other failed diets.  I think seven days is a long enough trial.

PROTEIN POWER AND THE 6-WEEK CURE FOR THE MIDDLE-AGED MIDDLE

I read The 6-Week Cure for the Middle-Aged Middle the other day.  It is written by Dr. Michael R. Eades and Dr. Mary Dan Eades, the authors of all the Protein Power books.

The Drs. Eades were featured in the movie Fat Head, and I really liked everything they were saying, and disagreed with nothing.  So when I saw that they had this new (2009) book out, and I have stubborn belly fat, I got the book from the library.

The main point of the book is that, for some people, eating low carb is not enough, and some extra measures need to be taken to detox "fatty liver", also known as Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD).  The book goes into great detail explaining the difference between Subcutaneous Adipose Tissue (SAT) and Visceral Adipose Tissue (VAT), with VAT being the more dangerous to health of the two.  SAT is the fat the lives just under your skin, and VAT is the fat that lives in your abdomen and invades your vital organs.

According to the Eades, a fatty liver will not be able to deal with VAT because it is being overtaxed dealing with toxins and fat within itself.  Detoxing the liver, and getting the fat out of the liver, will very quickly return it to health and give it a chance to do its job, and VAT will be decreased.

So far, it's sounding pretty good, right?

Next up in the book was the method used to heal NAFLD:  The first two weeks of the plan involve drinking a special protein shake three times each day plus one very low carb meal once per day.  The calories for the day are around 1400, with 86g fat (55% of total calories), 127g protein (36% of calories) and 30g carbohydrate (9% of calories).  This information is not given in the book - I input what was suggested for a woman my size into www.fitday.com to get the values.  So this is definitely a lower calorie diet than what I am used to.  According to the book, the caloric restriction in combination with the Leucine is supposed to burn fat while preserving muscle.  During this two weeks, no caffeine, alcohol and certain drugs are permitted.

I googled Leucine, and found that it is a supplement taken by body builders to burn fat and increase muscle.  One of the effects of Leucine is to supress the appetite so that you are not starving while your calories are being reduced. 

The shake is any low carb protein shake you like, plus heavy cream, a little sweetener (optional) and a nice big dose (2500mg) of the amino acid l-Leucine.  Leucine is supposed to preserve muscle while the body is burning fat.  As an alternative to Leucine, you can use Branch Chain Amino Acids (BCAA), which contain l-Leucine, l-Isoleucine and l-Valine.  Either the Leucine or the BCAA can be taken in powder that you mix into a shake or water, or in capsule form.

The next two weeks of the plan involve eating a very low carb, low calorie diet consisting of three meals (and snacks, if you like) that exclude all dairy.  Caffeine and alcohol are permitted back in moderation.  I have not figured out the breakdown of macronutrients for this period, but looking at the suggested meal plans, it looks like what I am already eating.  One difference in the "meat weeks", as they are unofficially referred to, is that carbs are restricted to less than 20 or so net carbs, and that would consist of vegetables.

The final stage of the plan is very similar to Atkins Lifetime Maintenance, with dairy being allowed.

The book says that you can find information and a special 6WC forum at the Protein Power (PP) website, but when I went there, I found that, although the Eades had intended to create this forum, they had not actually done it.  I went to the regular PP forum, and found it very inactive, and all the discussion about 6WC had died down almost a year ago.

I tried asking a few questions about it and why it works, and was told that the Drs. Eades are the only ones who know the answers, and that I can try contacting them directly to see if they will answer.  I did ask one question on Dr. Michael Eades' blog and got an answer, but my followup questions to him have not been answered.  Maybe he will answer in time.

My own personal opinion is that the presence of VAT in my own body may be the reason I have not been able to lose a big portion of my body fat, and why I have a large belly that just won't go down.  So I am very interested in trying this, but my main question, which no one on the PP forum could answer, and which Dr. Mike has not answered (yet), is this:  Why do I have to drink protein shakes?  If the reason behind the success of the plan is the increase of protein and the decrease of fat and carbs along with the supplementation with Leucine, then why can't I just eat whole foods that give me the same breakdown of macronutrients?

The best answer - actually, the only answer - I got on the PP forum was a variation of "Don't worry your pretty little head about why you can't just eat food in the right breakdown of fat, protein and carbs.  Just do it and don't ask questions!"

Hmmm...  That's not good enough for me, and I am not willing to hand over the responsibility for my health to someone who wrote a book and will not tell me why it works.

But, in the interest of possibly getting rid of my belly, once and for all, and decreasing my VAT, which is really dangerous to my health, I have decided to try my own adaptation of the 6-week cure.  Here is what I plan to do, and as a matter of fact, I started yesterday:

I am going to eat a combination of real food and only one daily shake and take BCAA.  I will eat bacon and eggs with butter for breakfast, along with BCAA, a shake and some fiber for lunch, along with BCAA, and some sort of fresh protein and veggies for dinner, along with BCAA.

The way I was eating:
1800 calories
137g fat (69%)
107g protein (23.5%)
34g total carbs (7.5%)
16g fiber
18g net carbs

The way I will eat for the next two weeks:
1400 calories
86g fat (55%)
127g protein (36%)
30g total carbs (9%)
20g fiber
10g net carbs

Basically, I will be cutting fat by 51 grams, increasing protein by 20 grams and my carbs will be staying pretty much the same.  It's actually not that different than what I was advised by Colette Heimowitz, the Atkins nutritionist, to do this past summer.  Atkins Induction fat intake is supposed to be 60-70%, and mine will be 55% - very slightly lower, and still a far cry from low fat or even moderate fat.  And the protein recommended in the new Atkins book for a woman my height is 71-149 grams per day, so at 127, I am within that range. 

Using my new body fat calculator (in the right hand column on this blog), my starting point yesterday morning was this:

141.6 pounds
30.75" waist
12.5" neck
40" hips
25.1 BMI
0.49 waist-to-height ratio
0.77 waist-to-hip ratio
33.7% body fat (47.7 pounds)
66.3% lean mass (93.9 pounds)

As time goes on, I will give an update on how it is going.  So far, so good, in that I did this yesterday, and I was not hungry.  However, I found the taste of the BCAA pretty disgusting - kind of like grinding up a nasty-tasting pill and putting it in your mouth.  But not so gross as to not do it.

One thing did happen yesterday, and I don't know how much of it to ascribe to the BCAA - After my first dose with breakfast, I felt somewhat energized, which is what all the google information said would happen.  But after working out and having lunch and more BCAA, I suddenly got tired.  Maybe it was just the workout.  But then, when I took the BCAA after dinner, I got sleepy.  There was no doubt about it this time!

I'll let you know if I have the same experience today, on a non-workout day.

BIG FAT FIASCO

This from Jimmy Moore of the Livin' La Vida Low-Carb Show:

Tom Naughton, whose FAT HEAD documentary is one of the most entertaining and informative films on healthy low-carb living ever made, had gone on the speaking circuit with a fabulous speech called “Big Fat Fiasco.” This is well worth your time to watch from start to finish because Tom infuses his trademark humor and ability to make the complex understandable. You’re gonna enjoy this!

And from me, Rebecca - This is one of the best explanations of why the "high cholesterol causes heart disease" theory is false and is doing nothing but killing people. By the time it was over, I was almost to the point of tears because it was so true and moving. Everyone needs to know this!

SOME THOUGHTS ON "CHEATING" FROM ATKINS FORUM MEMBERS

There was a thread on the Atkins Community Forum about whether it is ever okay to "cheat".  There was a lot of good discussion from both camps (yes, it's okay and no, it's never okay), but two members' comments were so helpful to me that I wanted to share them here.

Kittycatwoman52 said this:

Atkins is not a diet.  It is changing the way you eat for a lifetime.  The idea of a "cheat day" is very counterproductive to the concept of Atkins, for the following reasons:

1. You are messing with your metabolism.  After detoxing your body from bad carbs, you inject a large amount of these bad carbs that spike your blood sugar.

2. You are choosing to reject the basic precepts of Atkins by insinuating that bad carbs are a treat of some sort rather than an unhealthy substance that is bad for you.

3. You are putting a few minutes of flavor (which won't be as good as you imagine) over the progress that you have made while following the Atkins way of eating, throwing yourself out of ketosis, reinvigorating cravings and possibly derailing your entire eating plan.  Many folks who plan one cheat day end up not coming back for months.

Bottom Line: A cheat day is a bad idea, but as a grown-up you will do what you want. Just remember, doing exactly what you want is what brought you to Atkins to begin with.  



And Sealyh said this:

Here are two quotes from The End to Overeating by David A. Kessler, that are so important to me that I posted them in my notes on my iphone for quick draw:

Intervention begins with the knowledge that we have a moment of choice- but only a moment- to recognize what is about to happen and do something else instead . 

Play the tape until the end. The cognitive strategy is to become well practiced in recognizing when you're having euphoric recall and selectively remembering only the good parts. Then in your mind, play the scenario out to the end and think " this is what's going to happen. It will feel good for two minutes, and then I'll feel terrible.  



Thanks, Kitty and Sealyh!  I'm going to print these out and put them in my purse, so I can reach in and grab them the next time I am tempted to eat bad, unhealthy food.  My physical cravings have been gone for a year and a half, but my emotional cravings continue to this day!


To read the entire discussion on the Atkins Forum, right click here.

If you are interested in finding out more about The End of Overeating, right click here or here. 

CUTTING BACK ON MY FOOD INTAKE (AGAIN)

Ten days ago, I posted that I was going to stop stressing about losing more weight, and enter Atkins Phase 4, Lifetime Maintenance.  So, for the past week and a half, I have been eating to maintain my weight, and have been doing pretty well.  I only weigh and take measurements on Sunday morning, but I am tracking my food most days on Fitday.  My weight and size has stayed pretty steady.

Here's the problem:  I'm not happy with my weight.  I don't seem to be able to let go of the idea of losing a little more weight, and I am wondering if it is in my power to do so.

I've been eating a lot lately, and I spent some time today looking back at my spreadsheets to see if there is any pattern to my weight loss.  There really isn't.  Sometimes I lose on 1800 calories per day, and sometimes I gain on that amount.  Sometimes I lose on 1400 calories per day, and sometimes I gain on that amount.  The amount of exercise I do or don't do has no bearing on my weight or size, either.

At any rate, I have decided to cut back on my food in this coming week to see if I lose some fat.  Here is my plan:

1440 calories
112g fat (70% of total calories)
81g protein
27g total carbs
16g dietary fiber
11g net carbs, of which 8.5g will come from veggies

This is basically what Colette Heimowitz, the Atkins nutritionist, recommended that I do in May 2009 to break my stall.  And it worked then.  I'm hoping it will work again.

After this week, I will weigh and measure, and see if it made any difference.  I'm not sure what I will do then.

The one thing that I don't like about doing this is that it is a very small amount of food, and so much less than what I want to eat.  But I am a small person, and I guess I should not expect to be able to eat a lot.

I hear people say to let your appetite be your guide, but that has never worked for me.  I can eat enough for five hungry men, as my grandmother used to say!