F~B Censors Baby Formula Recipe.

I have a love-hate relationship with that certain pro-censorship social medium, Face~Book. I love that my aunt, my brother, my nieces and my cousins post there, I love it that I have years worth of kitten and cat pictures there, so I can discover the age of some of my cats by looking at what year their kitten pictures got posted.

But I hate all the topics you can’t even mention any more, like a certain US election, a certain disease, a certain theory about the global clim~ate… And now, baby formula. I posted a recipe from The Healthy Home Economist for home-made baby formula. I thought someone might need that information. I was just shocked that so many women didn’t know to breastfeed, and didn’t know how to make their own baby formula in case they couldn’t.

Face~Book took that post down. After all, many of their advertisers peddle processed food. And processed food addiction starts with babies, who are evidently supposed to be fed processed food formula and pureed processed baby food until they are old enough to eat goldfish crackers, boxed macaroni and cheese to replace vegetables, and Twinkies, setting them up for a lifetime of carbohydrate addiction, processed food eating, and obesity and diabetes.

I believe in people knowing the truth about nutrition and how to preserve their health. My mama cat, Refrigerated Roxie, knows how to feed her babies. She’s not that great a mother— she often weans her kittens too early and some other mama has to feed them for a while. But she doesn’t run to the store for processed-food kitten formula— she feeds her kittens herself, from her own milk. 

I have heard there is an old formula recipe making the rounds with evaporated milk and Karo corn syrup. The Healthy Home Economist does not recommend that— though I think that’s the formula my mother made for me, quite some time ago. The HHE has a couple recipes, including a hypoallergenic one. Visit the link before it vanishes. https://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com  

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A little while ago, I started a Substack newsletter to go along with this blog at https://nissaantimatter.substack.com. Not sure why I did that, other than frustration at WordPress wanting me to download a different browser instead of working with the browser I prefer. It is a free newsletter— it’s just an alternative, in case this WordPress blog goes nonfunctional.

You might also contact me on Gab, a free-speech social medium:  https://gab.com/nissalovescats

I have a Keto group there, which you are welcome to join: https://gab.com/groups/63757 

Those Atkins Levels! #lowcarb101

I’ve thought of myself as ‘fat’ since my teens, since before I ever became actually overweight, and so stories on how people have lost weight have always interested me.

It’s almost a tradition that when a person tells the story of the weight-loss method that worked, they give a list of what they have tried that didn’t work. And on some of their lists is ‘Atkins.’ It’s even been in a commercial for some weight-loss gimmick— the actress said she gave up bread and pasta— for a couple of hours. If the advertiser based this ad copy on a true account, the person involved never gave low-carb a chance— not if they called it ‘giving up bread and pasta’ and only tried it for a few hours. The person was probably pretty carb-addicted if he couldn’t even go a few hours without his favorite carbs— normally people on conventional calorie-counting/semi-starvation diets go without carbs for a few hours between meals and after the day’s meals every single day.

But what about people who have given Atkins a good, fair try, read the books, followed all the rules— and still count their experience as a failure? The problem might be in Atkins levels.

Level One on Atkins is also called Induction. The only carbs come from the two cups of daily salad, and in hard cases you may have to cut back on even that. 

The purpose of Induction is to get your body to switch over from being fueled by carbs, and go over to being fueled by fat— your body fat and the fat in your Atkins diet. It is hard. You can get unpleasant symptoms during the switch-over— the low-carb flu, or keto flu. What you are supposed to do is hold out, stay on Induction, for two weeks until you are feeling energetic and un-hungry because of your switch into ketosis.

Then, you go on Level Two— you add about 5 grams of carbs in some category or other. The problem here is that once you start going through the levels, your focus is NOT on all the delicious zero-carb or nearly-zero-carb foods that are on Induction, that are our Ketonian/Lowcarber birthright, but on these added carb foods. Carbs once again become our treats!

It is suggested you go to a new Level each week until your weight loss stops. Then you go back down one level to resume losing. 

Here is the problem: especially if you are getting older, or if you have been significantly overweight, your body may work in slow motion when it comes to adapting to changing carbs. If your body can’t handle Level Three, maybe you won’t see the evidence for sure until you are beginning Level Five. Going back to Level Four, you are STILL at too high a carb level for you, and you plateau— you don’t lose expected weight, or your blood sugar doesn’t lower itself back down to the desired level. 

Here is what I suggest— DON’T look on Induction as something you do at the start and never again. Touch base with your Ketonian roots by having Induction days. If you are a Christian and have practiced fasting/abstinence on Fridays, how about making Friday your back-to-Induction day now? Why not do an Induction Lent?

Be prepared: once you have developed T2 diabetes, EVEN IF your blood sugars are rapidly brought to prediabetic or normal levels, your lowcarbing may be a bit harder. You may find that you can handle fewer carbs— and that it takes longer to recover from a carb excess. Recently I went strict low-carb and it took me until about day 13 before I got my first morning blood sugar in the normal range. Earlier in my low-carbing life, it would have only taken a few days.

If you can get to Level Four or Five, don’t plan on eating that way for six or seven days of the week. Maybe have weekends where you enjoy your full Level’s complement of carbs, an Induction Friday or other day, and weekdays in which only one meal has the extra carbs, and the other meals are Induction meals.

OK, yes, this is hard. We have to fight our carb addiction, and learn to find new favorite foods allowed on Induction, like bacon, ham slices, flan (crustless quiche,) steaks or pork chops, chicken thighs with low-carb Hoisin sauce, and other nice things. 

Adjusting My Blood Sugar

Adjusting My Morning Blood Sugar.

I’ve been having a bit of a problem with my morning fasting blood sugar reading— they’ve been a bit higher than I like. 105, 199, even 124! (Normal is 84, 80-120 is the goal, a little lower than 80 is OK, if I feel energetic/don’t have low-blood-sugar symptoms.)

My medical people took me off my diabetes meds a few years ago for reasons other than the fact that being strict about my Lowcarb/Keto worked better than the pills, anyway. They were planning to put me on insulin just as soon as my A1c skyrocketed, but since I got stricter with Lowcarb/Keto, they never did. 

Formerly, I did both Lowcarb/Keto at just-above-Induction levels, and the No-Breakfast Plan— intermittent fasting, by extending my overnight fast through morning and until 11am-12noon, whenever I made lunch. 

I’ve had a harder time doing that lately since I was hospitalized a couple years ago. Lately, I find if I skip eating during the morning hours, I have a hard time resisting temptations at around 2-4pm— including going out to buy some carb-binge foods I shouldn’t be eating. 

I’ve also been unable to travel to stores to get my LC ingredients, and had a shortage of money to buy things online. And being unstrict with my LC, I not only get bad blood sugar and keto readings, I feel too tired to do things like cook proper food and do laundry. 

SO, I’m getting back on track by changing my plan. First, I am getting stricter about sprouting my daily salads. I use Broccoli & Friends alternating with Sprouter’s Choice seed blends, and eat my sprouted salad with my noon meal. I mostly eat them right out of the sprouting tray— I DO have some home-made vinaigrette dressing from a Dana Carpender recipe on-hand (Italian Vinaigrette recipe from 500 Low-Carb Recipes,) but quite honestly I prefer the taste of the sprouts without vinaigrette, and I do get my fat percentage from other sources.

I had been having a ’bulletproof’ beverage each day, and am now upping that to two. I have bulletproof coffee with cinnamon in the mornings, and Mexican Hot Chocolate (another Dana Carpender recipe from Fat Fast Cookbook, also with cinnamon) after lunch. 

For my morning meal (I eat in the mornings now) I’m having a bowl of low-carb hot cereal, usually an adaptation from the Fast Bran Cereal in The Four Corners Diet by Goldberg and O’Mara, with 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, 2 T coconut milk or else Heavy Whipping Cream, a pat of butter, and 8 or so drops of SweetDrops liquid stevia, often English Toffee flavor, which tastes like brown sugar. Between the cereal and the bulletproof coffee, this keeps me unhungry until lunch.

For lunch I can have more variety, say I can get the ingredients where I live and afford them. I can usually get hamburger meat, though my local market does not believe in keeping the fat on the hamburger— the one-pound packages are only in 90/10, you have to get bigger packages to get 85/15 which is the best you can get there. I’m hoping the next time I have money for grocery shopping to buy a package of ground pork and one of hamburger to make mixed burgers. I keep the burgers packaged in my freezer compartment, and pull one package out in the evening to thaw by morning. 

With my new plan, I am closing my eating window earlier. I have my lunch around 11-noon, I MAY have my Mexican Hot Chocolate a bit later, and then my eating window is closed. 

If temptation strikes later than that, I drink some tea or rooibos. If I am REALLY tempted, I may make a bullletproof or slightly bulletproof beverage— after all, Dr. Jason Fung allows bulletproof beverages when fasting except when he doesn’t, and I’m trying to stave off eating late enough to affect my morning blood sugars.

Since I made the change, my morning blood sugars have been 85, 78, and 73 along with good ketosis and high energy. When I eat later in the day than I’d planned, this goes higher, like 102 and 108. I’m trying to stick with these changes until my No-Supper-Plan becomes as easy for me as the No-Breakfast-Plan became back in the day. 

Coffee, Tea and Caffeine on Lowcarb/Keto

Ever since I became a lowcarber/ketonian, tea drinking has been a part of my life. My paternal grandmother, Alice Kehoe Armstrong, was a lifelong tea drinker. She got her nice Golden Wheat dishes as a premium from a tea company which might have been Red Rose tea. Having gone through the Great Depression, when there were no dishes on the line I think she generally got whatever brand of tea bags was cheapest at the local Red Owl grocery. 

Tea is good because a cup of plain tea is free of carbohydrates and calories, and we now know from sound research in quality medical journals that tea is associated with health benefits and weight-loss benefits.

Tea also has caffeine— which used to be called ‘theine’ when scientists thought it was different somehow from the caffeine in coffee. A cup of black (‘regular’) tea has between 23 and 110 mg of caffeine. A cup of brewed coffee has between 60 and 120 mg of caffeine. Other kinds of tea have different amounts of caffeine— oolong has between 12 and 55 mg, green tea has between 8-36 mg, and white tea has between 6-25 mg. My favorite Prince of Peace brand Pu-Erh tea (dark tea, post-fermented tea) claims to have between 5-15 mg of caffeine.

Doctors tend not to know anything about tea or the caffeine in it. I read a story— I think on a national kidney disease website— warning of the evils of ‘herbs’ like green tea. A man went to his doctor and said his weight loss was progressing because he’d been drinking a lot of iced tea. The doctor got worried— he wasn’t using that scary green tea, was he? That stuff was full of caffeine! The patient reassured his doctor— he was just using ‘regular’ tea. The doctor was relieved— because evidently he didn’t know that ‘regular’ tea (black tea) had more caffeine than green tea. 

Dr. Robert Atkins limited coffee to 6 cups a day over caffeine, and recommended going down to 3 cups for patients with hypoglycemia, in his first Diet Revolution book. and disallowed all caffeinated coffee or tea in later books because of possible bad effects on the blood sugar. Other doctors working in the low-carb realm are apt to allow a ‘normal’ amount of caffeine from tea or coffee unless that causes problems in the individual.

You Can Decaffeinate Your Own Tea at Home.

In “Lose Weight With Green Tea” by Patricia Rouner (who is not a doctor and who believes conventional non-wisdom about weight loss) the author tells how to decaffeinate your own tea at home. She says to steep your tea bag or tea leaves in hot water for 30-45 seconds, then discard the resulting steep-water. (If you cool it down or dilute it in cool water, you can water plants with it. My cats seem to like a little caffeine-discard steep-water in their water dish, but I wouldn’t recommend it for overactive kittens.)

My grandmother Alice always reused her tea bags— she always had used but not used-up tea bags sitting around in saucers in the kitchen. Since according to Patricia Rouner the bulk of the caffeine exits in the first cup, every cup of tea after the first one made with the same teabag or tea leaves would be naturally decaffeinated. 

I reuse my teabags, especially since I buy Prince of Peace brand which I can’t get locally and which costs more than the cheapest brand of locally-available tea. I tear a corner out of the teabag tag before each steeping, and discard tea bags after I’ve made 4 cups from them. I do have some loose pu-erh tea (in tea balls from China) and steep it for more than one cup, but I can’t keep track as well of how many cups from each batch of loose tea.

Bigger Modern Tea/Coffee Cups.

The tea/coffee cups from my grandmother’s Golden Wheat dishes held about 6 oz. cups of tea or coffee. My modern tea/coffee cups hold twice as much, so I tend to use 2 teabags or 2x the amount of instant coffee for one smaller cup. 

Since tea is zero carb and even instant coffee nearly so, increasing your cups-per-day by drinking double cups doesn’t necessarily threaten your state of ketosis. In fact, I believe drinking some tea or coffee (or rooibos, a caffeine-free tea substitute) helps me resist the temptation to eat a carb-containing snack.  Now, if you have decided you can put ‘just a little’ sugar or a blood-sugar-affecting type of artificial sweetener in each cup, increasing your daily coffee/tea dose does pose a problem— but from your added sweetener, not the coffee/tea itself.

Caffeinated Coffee/Tea and Your Blood Sugar.

How will your blood sugar be affected by any caffeinated drinks you use? I don’t have the answer, but you can find out. If you have been diagnosed with diabetes, pre-diabetes or hypoglycemia, you should have a blood sugar monitor. Yes, you have to prick your finger to get a reading, but you can get used to that. I have, even though I still hate getting shots or getting blood drawn. It’s not much worse than getting tapped on your finger. It’s 100% less painful than getting a cat scratch from a tiny kitten. 

Whether you find caffeine beverages to be helpful or unhelpful in your battle to keep your blood sugar normal, there’s a good reason to regulate your caffeine intake. What if caffeinated coffee or tea suddenly became less available to you? If you are used to caffeine every single morning, if you consume a lot, you may have to deal with painful caffeine withdrawal. Imagine if the zombie apocalypse hits and you have to go out and kill zombies while dealing with a massive caffeine-withdrawal headache. 

Learn to Be a Party-Pooper.

Dr. Jason Fung, in his book on fasting, says that with fasting, you don’t have to be a ‘party-pooper.’ You can eat ‘delicious’ wedding cake or birthday cake at celebrations and not stick out as the one who won’t partake, so long as you work in enough fasting hours or days before or after. (I’m a little amazed that Dr. Fung trusts his friends to provide ‘delicious’ cakes and not the ordinary kind.)

Well, Dr. Fung admits he has a problem with patient education— he tried to get them to go on low-carb diets and was frustrated over his inability to explain what foods were allowed and which were not, so that some people ate pasta or pita bread freely, thinking those things didn’t count since they weren’t real ‘bread.’

But, here is the real problem— if you are on the low-carb/keto way of life, you ARE the party pooper. Or else you aren’t on this way of life after all, but letting other people decide what you eat. This makes our way of life hard enough if you are just doing it to lose some extra weight, but if you are trying to control your blood sugar so you don’t have to go on insulin, putting other people in charge of what goes in your mouth is fatal.

I had some bad experiences early on. Back then, when my father was alive, I regularly got invited to family meals at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Since I didn’t want to be a bother, I ate whatever they had whether it was low-carb or not. 

Mostly, each time I went ‘off-track’ to avoid being a party-pooper, I stayed ‘off-track’ for about a month. My appetite for carbs was renewed, and my hunger, and so I kept on getting ‘just a little’ carb containing foods on each grocery trip. 

Once T2 diabetes hit, a one-month carb binge became even less of a good strategy. I WANTED to have lower blood sugars without meds, every day, and this meant being in control of what I ate, every day.

When we are little children, we are judged ‘good’ or ‘bad’ based on whether we clean our plates, eating whatever foods the grown-ups choose to serve us. Sadly, for many of us, carbohydrate foods were big on the list of foods grown-ups thought we should eat.

Now that we are grown up and know at least a bit of the science behind what we should be eating, life gets harder if we are still little children inside our heads and have to eat foods chosen by others for social reasons. 

Is it so fatal to be a party-pooper? I think of the faithful Jewish person who keeps the kosher laws wherever he is. Maybe that is being a ‘party-pooper,’ but most people understand about the Jewish person keeping kosher, or the person allergic to peanuts who won’t taste their famous peanut butter brownies.

When we have serious health issues, from diabetes to obesity to autism spectrum disorders, we need to treat these issues, even when it means turning down the foods ‘everybody’ eats. Be an adult about it. If you choose to accept an invitation from a hostess who doesn’t care to provide food you can eat, bring along some teabags and ask for hot water, and perhaps an Atkins bar or some pemmican. If they really want your presence, they will put up with your health needs. If they demand otherwise, perhaps they are not your real friends after all.

Atkins101: What Causes Overweight and T2 Diabetes?

#Atkins101 series, post 2.

What made Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution a revolution was that it offered a science-based answer to a question that popular ‘wisdom’ already had an unscientific answer to.

Popular ‘wisdom’ taught that being ‘overweight’ (being unattractive in a non-slim way) was caused by ‘overeating,’ gluttony, shoveling in the food non-stop. Of which all of us ‘overweights’ were guilty— people could tell just by looking at us!

But Dr. Atkins, based on a lot of actual scientific studies, gave a different answer. ‘Overweight’ is caused by a metabolic imbalance. Specifically, it’s an imbalance in the way our body handles carbohydrates, one of the three macronutrients. 

In fact, the cover copy on my edition of Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution uses the term ‘carbohydrate allergy.’ It’s not a clinical allergy, like an allergy to peanut products or penicillin. It’s just that if you have this metabolic problem of carbohydrate sensitivity, being on an eating plan that includes carbohydrates will cause problems such as weight gain, low blood sugar, insulin resistance, prediabetes, T2 diabetes, and possibly in the end ‘Type 3’ diabetes, or Alzheimer’s Disease.

At the time the book came out, most doctors recommended a calorie-counting diet and prescribed ‘diet pills’ to deal with the overwhelming hunger that diet produces. At one point, amphetamines were routinely prescribed— even to fat little girls— for weight loss. 

The ‘Atkins advantage’ was the advantage of going into ketosis, a state in which the body releases ketones, the result of fat burning, into the breath, blood and urine. Being in ketosis kills your hunger. Going back to eating carbohydrates kicks you out of ketosis, which brings back hunger. We don’t want to do that!

I personally learned about doing a low-carb, ketogenic eating plan from the book we are studying, which I got at a St. Vincent de Paul thrift shop many years ago. I had heard of Atkins years earlier, but folks said it was a ‘heart attack diet’ to be avoided. But I was so desperate to lose weight that I thought I would try it, just a little while, to drop some weight.

To keep myself on track, I started every morning reading a chapter or so from Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution. At first, I also often re-read the chapter which listed the allowed and forbidden foods, and how to do it, until I got to the point I just KNEW what foods I could eat, and what I couldn’t.
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Group Study Participants:

How is it going so far? Have you purchased the book? Started doing Induction? Whether you zipped through the book as soon as you got it, or struggled through chapter by chapter, continue reading a portion of the book each day. When you are done, start over. Highlight sentences or phrases you find significant, or perhaps copy these into a notebook (that will help you retain the information better, and it won’t mark up your book.)
If You Are Not ‘Book Smart.’If you don’t normally get information from books, or don’t feel confident in your level of formal education, don’t give up. Many people in your situation have learned the essentials of doing low-carb, ketogenic eating. Continue to read a chapter or part of a chapter every day. If an audio version of the book is available (I don’t know if it is, offhand) get it. If you have a Kindle, get it for Kindle. You will be able to highlight any sentences you feel are important— and un-highlight if you realize they weren’t so important after all. If the text contains words you don’t understand, look them up in a dictionary. You can do this!

Learning how to get started on lowcarb/keto.

#Atkins101 series, post 1.

OK, you’ve decided to try lowcarb/keto to deal with some health problems or some weight you want to lose. If you are like most people, your biggest stumbling block will not be a lack of ‘willpower’ but a lack of information.

Diet product marketers love that lack of information. Big marketers use ignorance to sell vast numbers of products to deluded people— like those ‘keto’ pills that contain a tiny amount of MCT oil, and the claim is that if you take those pills, you can still eat loads of carbs and stay in ketosis. 

There are also the pathetic mini-marketers, many of whom seem to live in India, who spam social media groups on MeWe, Gab, and the anti-free-speech social medium with F and B in the name. They will sell you ‘keto’ meal plans and fast weight loss gimmicks and self-published ‘keto’ recipe books with non-functional recipes full of typos. OK, folks, real businessmen with a product to sell don’t spam online groups to get free advertising. 

How do you get real information? From actual books, most of which will be published by actual publishers. The best authors are doctors who have become known in the keto community. Some non-doctors like Jimmy Moore and Dana Carpender are useful as well.

The problem with getting your initial infomation on lowcarb/keto from podcasts, web sites, spammers, or self-published spam books is that anyone out there can make podcasts, web sites, spam posts in groups, and so on. They can put up wrong information if they want to, too. I remember encountering some one that had a book out about carnivore, who demanded that his followers in a social media group accept his theory that a carnivore having a hard time losing weight should cut the fat from his diet. I pointed out the Kekwick and Pawan study of 1957, but that person didn’t seem to think it applied as much as his own personal authority did.

I am not a medical doctor or a ‘diet’ guru or an experimental scientist. I’m just someone who has found out about lowcarb/keto and used it for blood sugar control and weight loss. Since I’m decently well-educated and have read loads of books about lowcarb and about diet and health in general, I’d really like to help others get correct information, too.
So— I’m starting a series on this blog. We are going to study the book ‘Doctor Atkins’ Diet Revolution’ and apply some of the things we learn to our lives. 

To participate, you will have to buy a copy of ‘Doctor Atkins’ Diet Revolution,’ which was published in 1972. You can get it as a mass-market paperback from Amazon or other online retailers, or you may be able to get a copy from a used book store if you have one where you live. I got my copy of the book from a thrift shop years ago. 

Dr. Atkins later wrote ‘Doctor Atkins New Diet Revolution’ in 1992. This book is a useful book, it advocates for the same eating plan, and I own a couple of copies of that book as well. But it’s not the exact text we are going to be talking about. Do consider the book an officially encouraged secondary textbook, however.

When you get your Atkins book, start out by reading it. If you are a big reader like me, you will dash through it the first time, and may need to read some of it over again to catch some important points. If you are not big on reading, if you don’t consider yourself good at reading, start at the beginning and read a chapter a day or a section a day until you get through. Read at your own pace. If you have the book on Kindle you can easily highlight anything that seems important or that you might want to read again later.

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Are you on board with joining us in this look at Atkins? Say so in a comment on this blog, then order the book, and read it when it arrives to get yourself basically oriented as to what Atkins and the lowcarb/ketogenic way are really all about. The next post in this blog series will come along in about a week.

The Fast-5 Diet by Bert W. Herring, MD #fasting

Among the many volumes in my low-carb and health library is ont called ‘The Fast-5 Diet and the Fast-5 Lifestyle,’ by Bert W. Herring, MD.

I first heard of Dr. Herring when I read ‘The Complete Guide to Fasting’ by Jimmy Moore and Dr. Jason Fung.

Dr. Herring’s approach is to have people slowly adjust their eating window— the time of day when they allow themselves to eat. Some people only don’t allow themselves to eat when they are sound asleep!

You figure out in which hours your eating window is currently open, and when it is closed. And then you start adjusting. If you snack constantly in the evening til 11 pm, you start ending the snacking at 10, then at 9.

Dr. Herring’s goal is to narrow your eating window to the hours of 5pm to 10pm. But he also says you will be eating one meal a day. Does it really take from 5 to 10 to eat your supper? 

Dr. Herring also does not say one word about doing low-carb in your eating hours, and he seems big on cutting ‘calories.’ If you know about Kekwick and Pawan’s 1957 study, you know the ‘calorie is a calorie is a calorie’ slogan has been disproved some time ago.

If you want to add intermittent fasting to your life and have the choice between this book and Moore and Fung’s ‘The Complete Guide to Fasting,’ go with Moore & Fung. Much more informative book.

But if you or someone you know is just not at the point of doing low-carb but needs to get more control over weight or health issues such as blood sugar, the ‘Fast-5 Diet’ might be the right approach.

Personal note: I’ve been doing intermittent fasting every since the Moore/Fung book came out. Usually I do morning fasting. Sometimes I have allowed myself a bulletproof coffee, or lightly-bulletproof coffee in the morning.

After my health issues a few years ago, I did less fasting— I had to fast part of the time in the hospital, the rehab center, and ‘elsewhere’ to avoid meals that were mostly carbs.

But I’ve recovered now, and decided to get back on track with fasting. After a failed attempt with Dr. Jason Fung’s 30-hour fasting protocol, I went back to the no-breakfast plan. I usually close my eating window at 5 to 5:30 pm, since eating late raises my blood sugar the next morning. 

And I realized— if I eat my lunch at 12 noon and my supper just before 5, I have the same eating window Dr. Herring recommends. I just have two meals within it. Since they are low-carb meals, I think I can expect as good a result as the Fast-5 dieters.

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Ketogenic Mediterranean Diet vs Atkins Induction #keto #lowcarb

How does the Ketogenic Mediterranean ‘Diet’ by Steve Parker MD compare with Atkins Induction?
Atkins Induction allows 20 grams of net carbs per day. (Net carbs = total carbs – fiber.) The KMD allows 20-40 grams of carbs per day. If you do closer to th 40 than the 20, you may have problems getting into ketosis (check your Ketonix, test strips or blood ketone meter.)

KMD allows 14 oz. of vegetables a day (400 g.) Atkins Induction allows 2 cups of salad and 3/4 cup of cooked low-carb vegetables (probably 1 cup fresh.) I think this comes pretty much to the same amount. Two cups of salad is 4 net carbs if it’s lettuce, about 1 net carb if it’s alfalfa sprouts. 1 cup of green beans is about 5 net carbs. So, let’s say on both plans we may get around 9 net carbs from our veggies.

KMD allows 3 oz. of cheese, Original Atkins allowed 4 oz. and New Atkins made cheese a ‘free food.’ 1 oz, which is one slice of cheese, is a ‘trace’ of carbs for most cheeses and 2 g of Swiss cheese. So let’s say 3 net carbs for KMD and 4 or more for Atkins Induction.

KMD allows 1 oz of nuts-and-seeds daily. Atkins doesn’t allow nuts on Induction. 1 oz of pecans is 1 net carb, walnuts or macadamias are 2 net carbs, and peanuts are 3 net carbs. 

KMD allows 6-12 oz. of table wines, red or white, such as Burgundy, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Sauvignon blanc, Riesling, Pinot Grigio. These are all 1 gram of carb per oz, so this is an addition of 6-12 grams of carbs. (I only drink 2 oz to a glass and have the wine at my two meals.)

So— following the KMD may add as much as 15 grams of carbs from items not allowed in Atkins Induction. Now, among the carb-containing foods allowed on both, you may not be getting 20 full grams of carbs from just those items. I would advise keeping a food diary and checking up at least on the carb-containing foods you eat. If you are close to 20 grams even with the addition of a little nuts-and-seeds and a little wine, that is great.

If your net carb grams are creeping along toward the 40, check to see what you are doing too much of. I would cut back on the wine amount if you are doing the full 12 oz, rather than, say, cutting out one of the daily salads. 

I like the KMD as it is a nice change from doing Atkins at Induction or near-induction levels for years. I find I like having a bit of wine with my meals— when I finish my wine, I feel more like I’ve had a real meal and am finished. 

The KMD also insists that you have a daily serving of fish. Mine is mostly canned tuna, which I have for lunch prepared into one of two different recipes, one a low-carb ‘tuna casserole’ and the other a ‘tuna loaf.’ (I add my nut ration, in pecan or walnut pieces, into the tuna recipe.)

Sources: 

Parker, Steve, MD – Conquer Diabetes & Prediabetes: The Low-Carb Mediterranean Diet, 2011.Atkins, Robert C., MD — Dr Atkins Diet Revolution, 1972.Atkins, Robert C., MD and Gare, Fran – Dr Atkins New Diet Cookbook, 1994.
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My Grocery Shopping Carb Binges #keto #lowcarb

I have a bad habit lately. Whenever I go to get groceries, I come home with a few high-carb items I really shouldn’t eat— chips, a big candy bar, or cookies. And every carb binge I have awakens more carb cravings, so I just want to do it again.

And the amount escalated over time. From being OK with a small bag of chips, I get a large one— or two. And the worst thing is, when I am done with my deadly carb foods, I’m still not happy or satisfied.

Doing this more and more lately, I’ve felt awful, had higher blood sugars, and my weight is up. 

I’ve decided this must stop. Yesterday when I went to the stores, I made a point of getting some low-carb food I liked— they had little ‘flatiron’ steaks, and I got two. I normally can’t afford beefsteak. I also bought some Merlot wine, which I am allowed on the Ketogenic Mediterranean ‘Diet’ I’m doing now.

I also decided if I didn’t buy any carb foods, I could get myself a tiny bag of nuts and a small bag of sugar-free, stevia sweetened mint chocolates. 
So, yesterday’s shopping trip went well. I got what I needed— though I had to go to two stores to get it all. It’s tough doing low-carb shopping out in a rural area. The grocery store has only started to carry a very few loaves of low-carb bread (1 net carb per slice.) I know the bread truck arrives on Wednesday, so I go to the store on Thursday. Usually there are three loaves, 5 Seed bread, Wheat and White. This week there was only the White left. I bought it anyway. I keep extra loaves in the freezer until I need them. 

Low-carb bread like other ‘carby’ things isn’t the greatest food— not like tuna or salmon or bacon and eggs— but I use it as a substitute for worse carb foods. It makes me feel a bit more normal. I ration it— no more than 2 slices a day, not every day, and with a meal, usually topped with cheese or sardines.

What about you? Are grocery shopping trips a source of temptation? Do you have any strategies for dealing with that temptation? Share your story!

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