All I read when it comes to low carb diets is that it's not healthy to be on long term, is this because they think people cannot stick to it or because they are just ignorant? How long have you been on a low carb diet? How many carbs per day do you eat? What about fat/protein/calories? How do you make sure you are eating enough without making your blood sugar go too high?
Check out Blaine's low carb kitchen on FIT TV; he also has a web site with all his recipes. Low carb, though a lot of his dishes are high fat. He has lost a ton of weight eating low carb so, arguably, even if the diet may not be the healthiest, he runs into more danger not losing weight.
I am not low carbing but half carbing I would say. This means I eat half of the for my weight recommended amount per day. In general I have a problem with the proposed figures of our carb needs and I think they are exaggerated. Never in history mankind had access to such high volumes of carbs. We are still programmed on carb preference because of millions of years of scarcity. The genetic setting of our DNA is optimized for scarcity not abundance of carbs. It is known that several repair operations on the DNA will be triggered in phases of scarcity of food. The triggered operations are considered as very beneficial for the lifetime of the cell. The positive effect is greater than the effect of just fulfilling the needs of the cell as "good eating" guarantees. This is very likely related to the discovery that the ingredients of our food directly influence the DNA modulation (the thought is a little bit scary). The oldest people in the world have in common that their general intake of food is lower than recommended. In addition to that they prefer an eating style that is considered as healthy in their arrangement or preference of foods (Mediterranean, sea food oriented, socially integrated). I still would not recommend a radical diet like Bernstein does. With very little carbs the conversion of protein and fat will be the main source of cabs. In my view this is harder to control. The conversion will take hours and this does not fit to the activity rate of rapid acting insulin (except regular insulin like Acctrapid). With some direct carbs in the mix the pressure for the body to convert fat and protein to carbs is lower. The direct carbs will be treated with the injected insulin and the tail of the injection (the insulin loses potency quickly but then fades out with a long tail) will handle the converted carbs later. Much easier than leaving carbs out of the equation. What is the use to eat only eggs for breakfast and then the liver starts to dump carbs into the bloodstream to provide the energy for the day? These counterreactions to very low carbing should be considered too. The real challenge is to find out how "some" carbs are defined. Where does unhealthy begin? The absence of hard scientific facts makes it hard to find an answer. But I am very sure that the ADA guidelines are not the way to go.
Interesting..so technically if I ate only half my weight in carbs I would eat 51 carbs per day..would this be enough?
I have been low carbing it from Day 1, almost 11 years ago. I first studied diabetes in 1947. The people who had survived without complications had been on close-starvation diets. I did not get what we consider low carb at the time of diagnosis. The nutritionist tried to give me the usual ADA diet and I implored her to reduce the carbs so that I would have a 1200-1400 calorie diet. I then went home and pared it down carbwise some more.
I eat 6-8 grams carbs at breakfast, lunch 11grams carbs, and supper 8-15 grams of carbs. I eat lots of protein and fat is in butter, mayonnaise etc. I am never extra hungry; I include protein at every meal.
I only ravage for food if I go low, and I am a hardliner at 100 (e.g., I take glucose tablets if below 100). I can go low when I'm doing heavy gardening work or now, snowshoveling. I'm very active.
I went low carb shortly after being diagnosed nearly 6 years ago. You don't say what low carb is, but my definition is a diet whose proportion of calories from carbs is less than the profile recommended by the corporate farmers at the USDA food pyramid. For much of that time, I've followed Dr. B, although generally not as low, typically 50-100g/day. I am pretty much in ketosis below 100 g/day. I have eaten as much as 5,000 calories a day with high levels of protein and fat without adverse affect or weight change.
I'd be interested in any research you have indicating that low carb diets are not healthy in the long-term. That has not been my observation.
It's not my research just when I am googling and reading different information on low carb diets I keep reading they are okay "short term". I personally consider anything under 100 carbs as low carb because you generally produce ketones to a certain extent. I eat about 60-80 carbs per day. After being low carb for 6 years you are still in ketosis? Still tryin to figure all this out...does your body adjust to the low carb or how does this work?
Wow thats awesome! Keep up the great work!! Do you continue to lose weight like this or do you plateau after a certain amount of time?
Dr berinstein has been doing this for decades! Something he is doing must be correct. He is in tight control of his diabetes.
Diagnosed almost 4 yrs ago T2 I’m at 60-80 carbs a day. Lost 60# at 30 or so. Think low carb is the only way to go for diabetics. I believe low carb is considered anything below 100. Which for some, is totally doable for good glucose. My opinion is that we do what we need to to keep as good control as possible
I've generally considered a Very Low Carb diet as a ketogenic diet, namely a diet that put you into ketosis most of the time in a fasted state. I found the new Atkins book New Atkins for You, to be really helpful with lots of pointers on research (and it also has a lot of vegetarian info as well). The adaptation phase is well known, often called the "Atkins Flu," that is why the Atkins diet has an "induction phase." My experience, like many others, is that your body adjusts, your energy levels restore (often to higher levels than before).
Ketosis is a normal state. Basically everybody will switch over to ketosis at times, after all that is how you burn fat. When I am in ketosis, I can measure it using ketostix, but I usually only read trace or marginal levels. I only produce higher levels of ketones after exercise.
I've done low carbing twice in my life... Once, in college, which was a starvation type diet.. At the time, it was considered that my 'morbid' obesity needed to come off of me, right away, and we did 36 grams of carb a day, and only 700 calories... That was tough, let me tell ya. lol But the second time around, I did low carb as soon as possible, first day of diagnosis... But I eat an adequate amount of calories a day... bout 1400-1500. This I know from when I've calorie analyzed what I eat, as I mostly do intuitive eating and could care less about the calories in my food. lol I've lost close to 80 lbs. (A little over a year, now... 1 year and 1 month on low carb)
I eat "lower-carb" rather than "low carb"--it works out to 100-120 gm carb a day. That in turn is less than 30 percent of my total calories. I try to keep it where carbs are like 25 percent of my diet by number of calories, protein is 25 percent, and fats are 50 percent. Works for me.
I've been doing it since shortly after diagnosis about a year and a half ago, I'm T2. It was immediately obvious the ADA diet wasn't going to cut it. I tried to use the glycemic index approach but it would not allow me to reach my goals. So low carb was what was left. I started out at 40 to 50 grams but started to experience readings above 140 so I have cut back to 35 to 45 grams. This has helped.
I have done this by cutting out the food groups that caused spikes. No grain, no potatoes, no beans, no fruit and almost no sugar( I still get some in salad dressing and in 70% chocolate bars). The chocolate doesn't bother me at all but I am trying to use more homemade salad dressing to cut those carbs out. Whats left is meat, vegies and cheese. There are still many good things to eat.
As far as the reasons usually sited against low carb. My blood lipids are good despite consumption of fair amounts of saturated fat. I see references that the brain needs 130 grams of carbs to function, but I work in a technical field which means I need to think clearly all day every day. If the 130 gram figure was correct I think I would have lost my job by now. I could not mask a loss of mental function. The other reason frequently cited is that people can't stay on it. If I had tried low carb to loose weight that might have been true. But, I was in the hospital for 6 days at diagnosis which really got my attention (HbA1c 13.1). I tried other ways of eating and low carb worked the best, giving up this way of eating would mean surrendering to diabetes. All the complications would not be worth eating high carbs meals again. I really have no problem keeping on the straight and narrow in regards to carb consumption.
I have been low-carb since July of 2010. Lost 20#s and can say I have more energy. My BGs' in the last 4 months are forming a near Flatline and my need for insulin has decreased in that time. Endo wants me to keep carbs at 120 per day, but I prefer 100-110 per day. Planning good meals I have found is not as hard as I thought, given all the recipes and help from everyone here. I can safely say I have better control on low-carb since I was diagnosed in 1976. The pump did nothing but add to my weight, 136 on pump and 115 now. Started with Dr. B. and feel great. Besides I am only 5'0" and at times feel like I know more then my Endo.
Correlation DOES NOT mean causation. He may have residual beta cell activity, for example, which could be the cause of his tight control. We CANNOT assume that his tight control is attributed to something just because he does it, statistically speaking.
Actually, Dr. B likes to point out that he has only seen two patients who tested zero on the c-peptide test, indicating "no" remaining beta cell function. Dr. B is one of those two. You are right, correlation does not mean causation. But it does work for him. I would not suggest it is the only way to achieve tight control, we could probably list some others factors that lead to tight control, among those is remaining beta cell function.
Thanks bsc, for pointing out Dr. B's c-peptide level