Angel here: I know it has been a minute.
Since we last posted, lots of things have changed, including a good 10-15 pound weight gain for me. Our lovely mother dropped 22+ pounds simply by going back to the training she and dad got from the diabetes educator back when he was diagnosed. She looks great and even though I shoveled carbs at her over Christmas, she has kept it off. Between her success and reading Jason Fung's The Obesity Code I started to look at the way we were eating at Casa Codgers. For the last eight years or so, since the first year of medical school, our eating at home has largely been vegetarian-vegan. But that means more of the same--low fat, high carb eating. When I read Fung, it was clear to me why even if I focused on calories I was hungry and also not losing any weight, even if I tracked calories and tried to keep the fat low. I went back and looked at the last time I really cracked down on calories and found that on an average day I was eating 150 carbs or so. Many days, I ate over 200. And even when I looked at net carbs, it was out of control. I, like most of the US, had become a carb addict. So, we're taking a different route this time and using Dietdoctor.com to help retrain us as to what to eat. Because Ancel Keys' Lipid Hypothesis has basically been shown to be false we're not doing a vegan low-fat approach. Eventually I plan to start cooking more plant-based and working some tofu, soy curls (I have bags of those hiding in the freezer), and seitan back in the diet, but for now nothing--including reasonable portions of meat--is off the table. Doing vegan low carb often leads to people having to use a lot of protein powders and eat things like "noatmeal" which I cannot do (to be fair, I can't eat oatmeal porridge either--slimy). As Fung notes, any diet works in the short term. And we know that if someone loses weight, whether they lose it from calorie restriction, carb restriction, going vegan and raw, etc, their numbers improve for LDL, HDL, and blood pressure. Dr. D and I have been eating this new way for just over two weeks now. We feel great and despite us lovingly storing away our box of carbs at the start, not once have we been tempted to open the cabinet over the fridge and dive in. We have boxes of GS cookies sitting untouched right now. I'm sure we'll eat them at some future point, but for right now, they are just sitting sealed. I leave this post with an answer to a question or two: Isn't what you're describing Atkins? Nope. There are some differences from the old-school Atkins. For instance, protein is not king here. I'm working on lowering the protein to a more moderate level. The idea promoted by Fung, Hyman, and other docs is that protein should be no more than 30% of your daily intake. This has to do with the ways in which our body's insulin response works with protein. Also, Atkins focuses a lot on "legal" sugar alcohols. The way we're eating is far more focused on whole foods, no sweeteners (not even stevia, which I actually seem to have lost my taste for), and no "franken-foods". This is far more Whole 30 similar. I prefer to simply say we're eating grain free and sugar free. What about The China Study? Well, it turns out that the message isn't that different. Campbell argues to moderate protein intake as a way to control cancer genes. Fung, Hyman, and others also indicate that protein should be lower than fat intake (at least a 1:1 ratio gram wise up to a 1:2 ratio in favor of fat). So, this way of eating is not that far afield of Campbell's conclusions.
5 Comments
Patricia Rodgers
3/13/2018 07:53:33 am
Will be following your progress, and looking forward to all the good things that will happen for you and Dani!
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Angel
3/13/2018 08:35:34 am
Thanks! I did buy sugar-free jello yesterday :)
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Renee
3/13/2018 07:21:28 pm
Good post! I will try to do my first one this weekend. That is when I will be doing my weekly weigh in.
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Debbie
3/14/2018 05:57:56 am
Good to see this back! I’m a carboholic too. Been trying to be more plant-based but it’s hard to eat beans all the time. I need to get back to the tofu, curls, etc. Been having to cook meat for Lobo so that he’ll eat something that cooking it is turning me off. Planted lots of different greens in the garden to help and hope they all do well. Been eating salad for lunch but greens at the store are somewhat limited - so I’m looking forward to fresh stuff from the garden.
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Angel
3/14/2018 06:20:50 am
Are you mainly looking to reduce/exclude soy because of links to inflammation? Soy curls only have 2 net carbs per serving and tofu isn't bad carbwise. Marinades can be tricky, I guess.
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The Two Fat SistersRenee and Angel welcome you to their blog. Hopefully we can change our name some time. In the meantime, watch as we try to get there. Archives
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