I found that losing weight using a low-carb diet was pretty easy. After the adjustement period of about two weeks you suddenly start feeling much less hungry and the portions you eat become smaller. You are essentially losing weight without feeling hungry at all which is terrific. The only problem is that a very strict low-carb diet can be a bit monotonous with the type of foods you are "allowed" to eat and can be hard to follow if you don't have the time or patience to actually cook food for yourself.
A Call for a Low-Carb Diet
31–40 of 248 posts
Re: A Call for a Low-Carb Diet
#32For anyone who has access to the paper ( http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1900694 ) and is skilled in reading medical research papers, I would love to know if they account for snacking. When I briefly tried a low-carb diet (just out of curiosity, not to lose weight as I'm already quite healthy) I found that I was unable to snack because almost all snack foods are loaded with carbs. I can only eat so much beef…
Its weird that this pops up on HN because I have been trying a low carb diet for the last 2.5 weeks (with quite a bit of success). I have run into the same issue as you in regards to snacking. The best snack I found was flavored almonds. They are about 4 carbs an ounce and come in a bunch of flavors (coconut is my favorite).
I have had a huge sweet tooth my whole life but I find the thing that I crave the most is fruit (I know fruit is sweet but not like ice-cream and candy). I've always ate a ton of apples and now that I can't I am craving them like crazy. Also, no bread is really hard, especially since good whole wheat bread seems so healthy and is so satisfying, and it limits your options for most meals like pizza and sandwiches.
I hear a lot of knee-jerk reactions about the diet saying how it must be awesome to just eat steak, chicken, etc. all the time, but it gets real old real fast. Without bread/buns, bbq source, and common high carb toppings, it become really repetitive. Cheeseburgers are amazing but they are a hell of a lot less appealing with no bun, onions, tomato, or ketchup.
All this being said I do not see keto or whatever you want to call it as a long term diet/lifestyle for me. I have been convinced that I used to eat way too many carbs, but I think I just need to balance my meals more and do some portion control. Eating no more than like 20 carbs a day is really hard and for me it affects the quality of my life too much. But, I totally understand that there are people out there where this diet is basically the only thing that works for them, so I think it's awesome that more people are at least trying it.
Re: A Call for a Low-Carb Diet
#33For anyone who has access to the paper ( http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1900694 ) and is skilled in reading medical research papers, I would love to know if they account for snacking. When I briefly tried a low-carb diet (just out of curiosity, not to lose weight as I'm already quite healthy) I found that I was unable to snack because almost all snack foods are loaded with carbs. I can only eat so much beef…
People often recommend nuts and jerky, but I don't find them to be satisfying and I'm hungry again fairly soon. For my daily snack at work, I really like Chocolate Brownie Quest Nutrition Bars. They are high in fiber, and if you eat one with some water it keeps me going for 3-4 more hours. I've tried a lot of alternatives, and these are the best I've found: http://www.amazon.com/Quest-Nutrition-Protein-Chocolate-Brow...
Re: A Call for a Low-Carb Diet
#34This study adds nothing new to the debate: > “To my knowledge, this is one of the first long-term trials that’s given these diets without calorie restrictions,” said Dariush Mozaffarian, the dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, who was not involved in the new study. “It shows that in a free-living setting, cutting your carbs helps you lose weight without focusing on calorie…
> That's important, but nothing we don't already know.
There is a lot of people who debate this point, having a study back it up is useful.
Re: A Call for a Low-Carb Diet
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Low carb doesn't necessarily mean more animal products. It can mean that you replace the carbs with nuts and veggies, so that you are getting more of your calories from protein and healthy fats.
100 calories of nuts or broccoli costs a whole lot more than 100 calories of bread or rice, and this is reflective of the greater agricultural demands of pretty much everything else versus bread and rice.
Even rice is a substantial improvement in glycemic index over refined wheat and sugars. If it does turn out that empty carbs are a major public health problem, there are incremental improvements that can be made all over the world regardless of poverty.
Re: A Call for a Low-Carb Diet
#36For anyone who has access to the paper ( http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1900694 ) and is skilled in reading medical research papers, I would love to know if they account for snacking. When I briefly tried a low-carb diet (just out of curiosity, not to lose weight as I'm already quite healthy) I found that I was unable to snack because almost all snack foods are loaded with carbs. I can only eat so much beef…
I've did low carb a few years ago to lose some weight and I'm on it again now to burn off the effects of free startup food over the summer. Here's what I've found as far as snacking is concerned:
Jerky: a standby but actually it often has more carbs than you'd think -- one 3oz package usually has 12-15g of carbs, which is around 3/4ths of my ideal consumption for a day.
Nuts: almonds are the best, but others work too.
Cheese: cheese sticks make a great on-the-go snack, you can find them in a lot of gas stations. I also will do cured meats + cheese when I want an easy dinner, though it's a tad expensive.
Pork Rinds: good for when you're craving something like chips. I sometimes dip them in salsa.
Veggies: some low-carb folks have success snacking on celery and carrots, but I have difficulty at times.
But, to be honest, a lot of my problems with eating in the past involved snacking. I eat when I feel like eating, rather than when I'm actually hungry, and so my eating habits become tied to emotions rather than biological needs. And once I start eating sweets, I don't stop until I feel sick. Having fewer options makes it easier to abstain, as you said. However, did you actually feel hungry/need to snack often when you were eating low carb? I rarely feel hunger between meals like I did when I was eating carbs regularly.
My goal with low carb is to get my habits back to the point where I no longer eat because I'm bored or because it's in front of me. I'm also cutting out artificial sweeteners this time around to try and reduce my sweet tooth (last time I drank tons and tons of diet soda, but I'm finding that seltzer/club soda is an acceptable substitute) (I also heard that sweet tastes produce an insulin response regardless of actual sugar content).
Re: A Call for a Low-Carb Diet
#37It'd be nice to have this squared with research in vegetarianism (high-carb, low-fat) which long term studies indicate has a number of health benefits [1] My own take, which I've mentioned before, is that the the starting point is so bad (refined carbohydrates) that you can pretty much walk in any direction and get positive results. That is, what people are eating doesn't matter nearly as much as what people aren't.…
Refined carbohydrates are not a problem. Sugar, potatoes, properly prepared white flour, and white rice are excellent food choices. In fact they are superior choices to foods like whole grains and beans, which tend to have allergens and antinutrients like phytic acid and trypsin inhibitors.
Anyway, any apparent epidemiological advantages to avoiding animal products in the industrialized world come down to two things. 1) The meat is mostly garbage; you have to consider only grass fed. 2) People are eating large amounts of muscle meat to the exclusion of the organ meats and connective tissue. This results in a chronic excess of tryptophan and a major deficiency of glycine. Iron overload is also a problem with eating too much muscle meat. A diet of steaks and chicken breasts without eating the rest of the animals is totally unnatural.
Dairy doesn't have these problems of low quality meat and too much muscle meat. Vegetarian with high dairy intake is an excellent nutritional choice.
Re: A Call for a Low-Carb Diet
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe you would be downvoted less harshly if you provided a few reputable sources to back your statement.
This subject freaks people out, vegetarians especially. A huge part of identity for some people is based on the knowledge that they're living on a healthy plant-based diet. It turns out that said diet is less healthy than subsisting on bacon grease. This causes cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance causes knee-jerk downvotes. Citations? How about the study spelled out in the article?
The reddit thread, you mean? Are we calling those articles now?
The vegetarian thing does not folow. Just because keto/atkins/paleo works, doesn't mean anything else works. Nothing is better than the low calorie diet.
Re: A Call for a Low-Carb Diet
#39For anyone who has access to the paper ( http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=1900694 ) and is skilled in reading medical research papers, I would love to know if they account for snacking. When I briefly tried a low-carb diet (just out of curiosity, not to lose weight as I'm already quite healthy) I found that I was unable to snack because almost all snack foods are loaded with carbs. I can only eat so much beef…
Its weird that this pops up on HN because I have been trying a low carb diet for the last 2.5 weeks (with quite a bit of success). I have run into the same issue as you in regards to snacking. The best snack I found was flavored almonds. They are about 4 carbs an ounce and come in a bunch of flavors (coconut is my favorite). I have had a huge sweet tooth my whole life but I find the thing that I crave the most is fru…
"Keto" and "paleo / low carb" are different. Keto goes to the extreme, allowing almost zero carbs, to induce ketosis in your body. Paleo is more "no grain, no dairy, no legume", but fruits are still allowed and encouraged for providing natural, sweet-tooth-satisfying carbs.
Re: A Call for a Low-Carb Diet
#40I know this is just anecdotal coincidence (and not really that interesting to most people other than myself) but today when I weighed myself I had my ideal body weight for the first time in my life. This is after following a low carb diet for six months and losing 50 pounds... so throw another vote in the "yes, low carb seems to be effective" bucket. The findings in this article are certainly music to my ears. (Here…
I've lost about 130 since last September and I took a 2 month period off from a low carb diet to see whether I could maintain my weight. Am now 30 pounds from my goal weight and I weigh less than I did after my freshman year of college (which was over a decade ago). I don't see carbs as necessarily the enemy, but it's a bit disheartening when you start paying attention to nutrition labels and see all the foods with added sugar. I tend to avoid the middle aisles of grocery stores, but even the outer aisles have products full of hidden sugars.