Say it isn't true!

Hi Revnice, welcome!

First things first. Before you worry about things like alcohol, you need to choose a low carb plan. If you go to "Which low carb plan is right for me?" on the Quick Links to the right of your screen, you can select the plan that will best suit you.
Then I cannot recommend strongly enough that you buy the book and read it. Thoroughly!

I don't think any of the plans totally prohibit alcohol, but some are more lenient than others.

Also bear in mind that the body will burn alcohol for fuel in preference to fat, therefore postponing weight loss!

Most of us try to confine our drinking to special occasions, rather than every day.

Rosebud

....that with LCing you need about 1/2 the alcohol and get twice the buzz! So.... go easy on it and make sure you have a DD!!!

"It isn't true"

Was there a specific question about it

Nat

Rosebud and Teri:

Clearly ladies after my own heart (glad somebody is!) - I'm much encouraged by your words of wisdom.

I have a (natural?) reluctance to buying into a 'plan' though, food should be such a natural thing. Two thirds of the world (the healthiest two thirds) lives on rice, something LC claims is evil.

I don't want to join millions of people who are afraid of thier food and we shouldn't need a book to tell us what to eat (never mind the motives of the authors).

One of the premises I read says that cave men ate more animal flesh and only a few boxes of granola, and we're really not much different. I'm not, my cave has a network in the bedroom (she doesn't understand) - but there's an equal and opposite argument - we're obviously omnivorous canine teeth have all but disappeared and we can move the jaw in a grinding motion (canines cannot) - this supports an argument that we have learned to eat LESS meat over time.

To hear a doctor spout off on the evils of a banana (or whatever) is kinda frightening to me, at one time they had eloquent arguments for a frontal lobotomy! I dunno about yours, but my doctor is an idiot and grumpy too, he thinks the world is round. Who am i going to believe, him or banana?

If no one ate meat there would be enough grain to feed the world - and what about respect for life, the abuse of animals? Woe is me! Maybe I should just learn to be a happy fat guy and shut up!

Nat:

Sweet of you to ask. Yes, it was implicit, maybe I just wanted to hear from those who understood...

rev

someone correct me if i'm wrong.

as far as carbs go with drinking i've been doing the research aswell... I have found that the clear drinks such as gin and vodka have 0 carbs. white wine is about 2 for 8 oz glass, 3-4 for red wine.

So i have my gin and diet tonics WOO HOO! (it's not easy to find diet tonic...)

here is a link for carb counting with alcohol

http://atkinscenter.com/global/carb...tml?cat=alcohol


if someone see's an error in this let me know.

Hey Rev,

Well we're not here to try to convert anyone who is reluctant, that doesn't do any good for you. But if you decide to research the subject of weight loss, please be sure to include low-carbing on your list. Keep in mind though, as with any weight loss plan, you need to consider whether or not you can stick with the maintenance phase for life....otherwise you'll be a fat guy again!!

There's tons of info here.... click away!! Thanks for posting!

There is a plan called the Drinking Man's Diet. It came out in the '70's. I don't know much about it. I did a search for it here, but there were very few threads that even mentioned it. The only firm fact I got was that it was 60 grams of carbs.

I don't believe that it is quite true that 2/3rds of the world lives on rice and that they are the healthiest in the world. New evidence recently has been released that while they may have fewer heart attacks, they are more prone to strokes.

Obviously cavemen didn't eat granola...they were hunters and gatherers and ate meat, roots, shoots, berries, nuts and vegetables, grains and fruit in season in moderation.

As for what our bodies need to eat, there are two essential things that we cannot live without--fat and protein. We do not actually need any carbohydrate to live, although the nutrients found in vegetables and berries will make us healthier.

In the history of our species we spent an very long time eating foods that humans didn't tamper with. Only recently, like in the last hundred years or so were we able to have things so far from what nature intended, such as refined nutritionally barren flour, (so much gets taken out and they only replace some of the nutrients) sugar in massive quantities, artificial sweetners, and partially hydrogenated oils--otherwise known as trans fatty acids.

Over the last 30 years or so a growing trend has been to cut fat consumed, mostly replacing it with refined carbohydrates. The obesity rate has skyrocketed. Instead of getting healthier, we are losing health because of some shoddy science. You could check out "The Soft Science of Dietary Fat" if you care to know more about it. I think it may be in the Hot Links! section.

Plans are essential. Reading books will make you understand the whys and hows of low carbing. For any plan to work you need to be able to commit to it and stick with it and be comfortable with it. If you try it for a while and then go back to the way you used to eat, the weight will come back. There is no cure except for changing your eating habits.

Maybe I'm saying too much for someone who asked a very simple question. But maybe others will benefit from this as well.

Good luck,

Elihnig

Thanks Elihnig, for straightening me out on cavemen and granola!

I think I'm going to get into it, last night I got boozed and ate a cow, tonight it might be fish.

rev

I understand rev's reticence, but to be honest, I started Atkins today, and I honestly chose Atkins above the others for, ummm, no better reason than the fact that it starts with A and was first in the list!


Quite. For one thing though, I think the word "natural" is far too frequently exploited by the advertising industry. Just because something is natural, it doesn't automatically mean that it's good for you. After all, it's natural for lightening to kill you. It's natural to get skin cancer from too much exposure to natural sunlight.

That said, I do agree with Elih's point about processed flour. It's very hard to decide what exactly is natural these days and what isn't ... assuming that natural means good anyway ... which it doesn't ....

But you aren't really "buying" into anything. So what if you don't want to buy a book? Get it out of the local library. Or get it from a second hand store. One book can do the rounds for all your mates.

Of course, taking Atkins as an example, a cynic could say that he's trying to push his own nutritional supplements, by saying you need an extraordinarily high amount of Chromium Picolinate. But there's only a little truth in this too, because, again, there's nothing to stop you popping into a nutritional supplement store with the book, and they'll try to match it as best they can. Chances are this will be by way of a combination of an off the shelf standard multivitamin product, together with separate Chromium Picolinate tablets to make up the difference.

Point I'm making is that our friend Dr Atkins need not necessarily make a single cent out of you following his plan. And I dare say the same thing could be said of many of the other plans too.

Now compare that to something like "Slimfast" .... there's a completely different story. Even before you get into the debate of whether it works or not.

Animals - take your point. Admittedly it's difficult to be a vegetarian low carber, but it's not impossible. Of course, my opinion of vegetarianism and animal rights is that it's the "Disney" effect! Movies with cute little fluffy bunnies in it! Before Disney, people used to consider human rights to be more important than animal rights. But perhaps it's not a good idea for me to push that point too far

Going back to the original issue of drink. Yeah sure, it might be a good idea to try and stay off it for a while. But I'm led to believe that after that, you don't need to drink so much to get drunk anyway. Could save you a fortune there. But I'm a newbie, don't take my word for it.

Dear Revnice,

I think your honesty is a good thing and your skepticism is even a better thing.

Actually to be "on topic", I posted a research paper today in the Research Forum showing that eating alcohol while not on a diet causes people to eat more calories than they normally would. It causes people to linger over meals while "consuming large quantities". (conehead reference)

On Atkins, they recommend no alcohol for two weeks, then moderate alcohol consumption afterward.

As far as eating being natural, I agree wholeheartedly. It's "us" that are unnatural. Our bodies are "unhealthy". As kids, we were very healthy. We could eat whatever we wanted. That's because our systems could compensate for anything we put in our mouths. Now we know we can't. Look where it's gotten us. "Dieting" is a science. When your body is not at peak optimal performance, you need a "scientific" approach to food consumption in order to compensate for the defects we now all have in our digestive and endocrine systems (not to mention others). There are "optimal" foods to eat for people who have a propensity to gain weight. There are foods to avoid. A low carb ketogenic diet has certain advantages over other diets. On ALL other diets, you need to reduce calorie intake to at or below basal metabolism to lose weight. THIS IS HARD TO DO! I have a very hard time being hungry. Lowcarbing allows your body to do the work for you. You eat 10 to 12 times your body weight which is definitely not a low-calorie diet. And because you change your metabolism to work harder (without exercise even), your body burns more fuel. If you are willing to just decrease calories to a very low level, then you don't need to low carb. You can eat ANYTHING you want and drink alcohol, just keep your totally calories per day below say 1,500 or so. You'll definitely lose weight while eating bread, bananas, whatever. But if this is not for you, try lowcarbing!

Squidgy and Voyager:

You're right about everything - thanks, I really don't mean to be difficult and of course I don't care who makes money - I guess I'm just irritated that I have to do something! And then if it requires discipline or reading a book (!) my enthusiasm starts taking a nosedive...

I'm a bear of little brain and even less resolve.

rev

You are in good company! Don't worry. If it were easy, we wouldn't be talking on this forum.

Re alcohol: yes, if you're going to drink, the most LC-friendly drinks are vodka or gin with calorie-free mixer. And yes, your tolerance will probably go down. I also find that I have to drink a LOT more water, even after just one or two drinks, to avoid carpet mouth the next morning.

Revnice: I agree with you - we shouldn't be afraid of food, but we should also be able to "parent" ourselves better and not mindlessly buy into everything that Coke, McDonalds, etc want us to. I think junk food has gotten out of control in our society. An "average" diet has shifted way too far to that end of the spectrum. There are new junk products every day and they bombard you (and your kids!) with noisy, flashy, in-your-face ads. They and the diet industry are probably co-conspirators, maintaining each other's existence, just like the antivirus software companies that write viruses for each other. (sorry - that rant got way off topic. )

Anyway, my rule of thumb is that everyone's opinion on nutrition is partially right - and only partially right. What I did was take out a few books from the library, scanned them, and decided what made sense to me and what addressed my problems. I'm skeptical, but I also live by the phrase "don't knock it 'till you've tried it." It can't hurt to give something a try. Good luck, whatever you decide on.

- I agree with you there, though I do have some passing respect for CODC, the Mobman (of subseven fame) and open-sourcing. Point is, I totally share Kristine's slightly cynical view about the whole media industry. But that's the point - you always have the power to say "no". I think even Kristine overstates the difficulty of following the plan.

And I count myself in the company of people with virtually zero resolve too. I mean, hey, I whinged (okay, perhaps I'm being a tad harsh on myself there) in my journal about my life before I even started. But start I did. And it really isn't turning out to be so difficult at all. Hey, it's child's play. Even if you're no great shakes in the kitchen and don't even know how to boil an egg (like me), there's still plenty of stuff in your local supermarket that requires minimum effort from fridge to mouth that's suitable for a low-carb diet. You just need to read the odd label now and then, that's all.

When you start, just take it a day at a time. Don't think of it in terms of your whole life. If you look after today, then tomorrow will look after itself. You might make the odd mistake and get some food that isn't suitable after all - or that you just don't like the taste of very much. But you'll learn very quickly. The first day is the hardest, after that, it gets easier and easier.

On the original subject of drink again, I'm led to believe that once you're through induction, Miller Lite isn't a bad beer for a low carb diet - though this in no way constitutes an endorsement of it by me.

Good luck in whatever you choose. Remember, you can always change your mind too, as many times as you like.