FOX News & Low Carb Diets

I’ve posted before Kelly, so I’ll just be brief here.

Right after Thanskgiving last year, I decided I wasn’t going to keep gaining weight ANYMORE. I had reached a “new all time high” other than when I was pregnant, and it was going to END. I started with the “South Beach” principals, but “Nourishing Traditionized” them myself. For 2 weeks, I had no sugar or grains whatsoever. I needed to break the sugar cravings that I had. I also wanted to be able to add in foods to see how they affected me. I ate bacon and eggs for breakfast, huge chef salads (with full fat homemade dressings),or cobb salads, or turkey/cheese roll ups with cilantro may (homemade), for lunch. I ate a cut of meat, lots of veggies for dinner. I lost about 10 pounds in those two weeks. After the two weeks, I began to add in my “whole food carbs”: sweet potatoes or winter squash with dinner (with sea salt and butter, not brown sugar anymore!), a serving of real brown rice here and there, barley or other grains in my homemade soups, oatmeal with butter, cream and raw honey alternating with my egg breakfast. Still mainly salads for lunches (although I learned to make many others: deluxe tuna on a bed of lettuce; crab/seafood on a bed of lettuce, my usual chef, cobb, etc.)

I steadily lost a total of about 30 pounds, and have maintained it to this day. It was an “easy” weight loss. Now that I am in maintenance mode, I can eat whole fruit in season, and I have been able to add in my fresh milled 100% whole grain breads moderately. Part of why I need more carbs is my running – I have also recently upped my training schedule, so I NEED more carbs – but I do not eat any ***refined*** carbs. Only whole, real food. I also drink a lot of whole, raw milk.

On the rare occasion that I have a handful of potato chips, or some refined white flour in something – I feel AWFUL. I can’t believe I ever THOUGHT those were good, or that it was even in the category of “food”.

I do not count calories. I just eat whole, real foods – and vigilantly stay away from sugar, refined flours, and processed foods. It was april when I reached my goal weight, and I have not had any trouble keeping it off.

Shauna

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Kelly, I hope I can post this. It’s not a low carb success story though. I was on the low fat diet. Yeah, Weight Watchers. I was on it for 3 years. I lost 160 lbs in those years. I’m not on it any longer. I gained back 50 lbs of it in less then a year. I remember so many times being so hungry on that diet. They say it’s not a diet but it really is. They push their “diet products” in the meetings like crazy. I actually thought I was eating healthy eating all that junk. I now know I was not healthy at all. I may have been skinny but I was not healthy. I suffered horrible depression, hair loss, lack of energy and moodiness just to name a few side effects from the low fat diet. I found Nourishing Traditions and your site among others and found out how to eat healthy. I haven’t counted any points, no calories and have not gained since eating fats (it’s been 6 wks now). I am so happy to see you posted this post today because I really, really want to learn how to do low carb to lose those 50 lbs I gained back before eating healthy. Thank you Kelly for being so helpful. I just love your blog.

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Hi Faith,

You can hog my comment space any old time you want to – and I hope you will keep us posted as your weight falls off!

I’m so glad you brought up Weight Watchers – I know some who have lost weight on that diet, too, but it always seems to be an uphill battle for them to continue on. I could be wrong, but I doubt it can be kept off long term unless they’re eating PLENTY of healthy animal fats (butter, eggs, whole dairy, meat, etc.), which our body craves, like you said, and NOT just a little Olive oil every day. Olive oil is fine, but we still need other good fats.

Problem is (as everyone familiar with WW knows), on WW you use up more points if you drink whole milk vs. skim, for example. So they discourage the healthier food! Drives me crazy.

Thanks again for commenting!

Kelly

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Kelly, let me ask you… can I have fruit? I love fruit. I usually make a fruit smoothie daily. Is that okay? I can live without bread, flour, sugars, pasta and rice if I can have fruit. lol

I’m still trying to figure out WHAT low carb really is.

You’re right about WW letting you have some olive oil. You are to eat 2 tsp a day of a “healthy oil” which really the choices are not healthy at all, except olive oil. And yes, full fat milk is 4 points for one glass. If you are only allowed 20 pts all day, well, that goes fast with 2 glasses of full fat milk. I’d rather have full fat milk and enjoy it then skim anyday. I’ll never go back to a low fat diet.

Now, off to read that other stuff you pointed out and try to figure out what I can and can’t eat.

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Can’t seem to get my whole thought out in one post tonight…

Another thing about WW – I’ve suggested before that if people are going to choose that diet, then they should eat full fat, but count points as if it’s the no-fat version, because the good in the healthy fat is sure to “cancel out” the extra calories. (Remembering that all calories are not the same in our bodies.)

No one has tried that that I know of though, they’re too convinced that the whole WW program is the way to go.

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Great advice, Shauna, thanks!

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Whoops! Kelly, I forgot to give you the link for Luci Lock:
http://products.mercola.com/turbo-oven/

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I know this is an old post, but I’ll comment anyways. My husband is following the WW points method, and we eat whole foods. I cook his eggs (yes eggs, not egg whites like they suggest) in butter. We use homemade full of fat mayonnaise and I make our ranch dressing from that too. We eat a lot of vegetables and a reasonable amount of fruit. We’ve cut down our portion sizes- especially at dinner, when he was prone to go back for seconds and even thirds sometimes! My husband has lost 20 pounds in 8 weeks. My stepdad has been on WW for 8 months and hasn’t lost as much weight as my husband, but they’re eating egg white omelettes, processed foods, etc. I don’t think that the WW points system works that well for short people like me- even though I’m still nursing my 2-year old I would only get 22 points a day according to the system, not nearly enough food (I would like to lose a couple more baby pounds, but I’m not overweight). But for large men like my husband who get a lot of points every day (he gets 38 points), it might be a good system to use in conjuction with real foods to help eat reasonable portions (especially in our “super-size” culture). And I do “cheat” sometimes when I tell him how many points a serving of dinner is… I might use just a little extra butter here and there while I’m cooking

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