Why only 3 cups of lettuce?
 

During the "induction" period, the book specifies to only have 3 cups of lettuce per day (if no other veggies are consumed). When I looked up Romaine lettuce in the carb-counter, I found it only had about 4 grams of carbs in 3 cups. If 20grams of carbs are allowed per day, why should I only allow 1/5'th of those to be lettuce? I've been following it fairly strictly none-the-less, but I was just wondering the reasoning behind it.

Have a great day!

--Drew

Hi Drew!

It's because it's assumed that you will also be getting carbs from some of the other foods allowed on induction such as eggs (0.6 grams of carb each), cheese (1 gram of carb per ounce), cream (about 0.5 grams per tablespoon), coffee (about 1 gram per 8 oz. cup) and artificial sweeteners (1 gram per packet). If you factor in all of those are are still short of 20 grams of carb, go ahead and eat more veggies. I have a feeling that not too many of us got overweight eating too much broccoli, green beans or lettuce. :)

I think too that when the say "lettuce" they don't just mean lettuce, but rather all the "salad" vegetables listed on the approved list.

I dont think you can eat enough lettuce to hurt you even on induction.

Thanks a ton for your insight guys!
I'm off to eat some more salad $_$

Cheers,

--Drew

For the most part, I didn't follow the restrictions on vegetable consumption. I did only eat the "acceptable" veggies, but didn't restrict as long as I had carbs.

I have never figured out how to measure my lettuce in cups anyway, so I resorted to weighing all my veggies on a digital kitchen scale and counted carbs that way. Much more accurate anyway.

I often at more than the allowed amount, but my total carb count for a normal induction day was around 14-18 net carbs.