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You're thinking of of trans-fats, not unsaturated fats. Unsaturated fats are still better for you. Regular butter is basically all saturated fat while margarine is mostly unsaturated fat and a tiny bit of trans fat. I have not found any study that concluded that margarine is worse for you than butter.
As for the Atkins diet, my mom went on it and had success.
This is because you're reliant on fiber for intestinal motility. You could probably wean yourself off of it, although with increasing age the likelihood of this being done decreases. If your intestines are not used to eatings tons of fiber, then you don't need it. Constipation is definitely not an issue.
The only important type of fiber is soluble fiber, because it's one of the things your gut flora eats. And a good diet of fruits and veggies takes care of that.
And in the only controlled study that I'm aware of that examined the health effects of just an increase in wheat bran in the diet, all cause mortality increased.
I already answered this:
You literally cannot think of this in terms of calories in versus calories out because calories out as a variable depends on calories in.
Since human bodies are not designed to excrete nutrients, and since lack of insulin means you can't store them as fat, the only way to get rid of excess food is to up-regulate the metabolism and burn it. Which is indeed what happens.
for fats, the basic deal is:
- avoid omega 6 fats (Linoleic Acid). This is a poly unsaturated fat, just like omega 3. most cooking oils that are derived from plants have high levels of linoleic acid. Basically if it wasn't cold pressed (olive oil, coconut oil) or isnt animal derived (butter, lard, tallow) then don't use it. Also, commercially raised meat has higher levels of omega 6 and lower levels of omega 3 then pastured. Same applies to the butter that comes from them.
- avoid trans fat.
- Saturated fats are fine, not dangerous. Mono-unsaturated fats are fine.
- get more omega 3's. Whats most important though is your ratio of omega 6 : omega 3 as this controls your systematic inflammation levels and how your body heals itself. This is important for virtually every aspect of health, and has a huge impact on heart disease and aging. The lower the ratio, the better. But absolute amounts matter too, so just taking tons of omega 3 wont cut it to make up for too much omega 6.
Oh man, this was the key to getting my weight loss started. I started replacing a lot of my food with veggies (mostly broccoli) and that helped immensely. They fill me up, leave me satisfied and the more of them I eat the less I eat of anything else without feeling hungry.
Replying to the bolded statement, but also this post in general:
Your body "needs" an extremely small amount of carbohydrates. And, the fun fact is that your liver is capable of producing this amount. What this means is that you can essentially live on a zero carb diet. How do you think the Eskimos survived all this time? Their diets consist almost entirely of animal fats and protein. The only carbs they eat are during short sub-arctic summers, when certain types of berries can be found growing in the bushes. Even those however are extremely low on carbohydrates.
Also, to reiterate my point in the OP, Eskimos gain weight only if they start eating the starchy food that they buy from the civilized towns. This happens despite keeping overall calorie intake the same (essentially replacing some of the protein and animal fat with carbs = weight gain!).
I'm not really sure how to counteract it, in the house we just don't keep it, and we've gotten an espresso machine which lowers the number of times anyone goes out for sugary coffee, and honestly she has the ability to bring healthy snacks to work but she just can't seem to resist.
My only thought at this point is to throw (low sugar/filler) protein bars at her in the hopes of making her too full to snack on anything sugary, but there's got to be a nicer/cleaner/less expensive solution. Especially since she may still crave and eat the sugar even though she's full (which is the case now, at times).
Dietitian told me a long time ago to eat as many veggies as I pleased, with the caveat that you should only eat very small amounts of starchy vegetables (mostly root vegetables). Seems to work fairly well.
From what I'm reading, it is in general a healthy move to replace saturated fats with unsaturated fats. Also, I've been using Saffola margarine. It's delicious and apparently has a great fat makeup as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fatchart.svg
Not really. It's full of polyunsaturated fats, which, like geckahn says, you need to avoid.
Also, not sure about replacing saturated with unsaturated. There are some monounsaturated fats that are essential, so you need them. But unsaturated is not any healthier than saturated in general.
She may need to try changing her mentality regarding sugar. My wife has a similar issue, and finds that if she tries ignoring her desire for sugar, she winds up binging. Instead, if she wants something sweet, she lets herself have a small amount. She wants a candy bar? Fine, she eats a small candy bar. By addressing the urge when it comes up, she meets her body's craving and also defetishizes the sugary stuff to where she's not building it up to be so important.
If it's just about stuff in your household, it's simple to just not have it around. If your coworkers are bringing in sweets every damned day, though, you need to learn to manage your urges. And if that's the case, avoidance can be counterproductive.
When I first started low-carbing, it was pretty hard to see a coworker stuff their mouth with a bar of Twix or Kit-Kat. After a while though, I developed a tactic: whenever I crave sugar, I go and get myself some almonds from the kitchen. It works surprisingly well.
There exists a balance between "virtually no carbs" and "carbs all over the fucking place", you know.
Are my whole wheat pitas going to make me fat? A very large portion of my meals involve a whole wheat product plus something else: pitas with hummus, or salsa, or peanut butter and honey, or veggie dogs/burgers with a whole wheat bun, or whole wheat cereal with milk, or whole wheat toast with eggs, and etc.
It's a lot of bread, but ostensibly of the nutritious sort.
Have you tried giving her sugar-free sweets? They have a lot of Splenda-made goods that taste pretty good.
Maybe, but that balance does not exist if you're trying to limit fat intake, because then you'll make up for its lack by either eating carbs all over the fucking place, or trying to eat lots and lots of protein.
I mean, given a 2000 calorie diet, if you reduce fats then you have to increase carbs and/or protein in order to remain at 2000 calories. If you don't do that, then you will have reduced your overall calorie intake, maybe slim down a little (calorie restricted low fat diets are effective to some extent, but have significant side effects), and become convinced that your low-fat, high carb diet is making you healthier. Whereas what will happen is that your body will downregulate your metabolism, maybe even break down your muscles for its protein and glucose, and you'll feel miserable. Why do you think people on traditional low-fat diets are so cranky all the time?
You can try to convince yourself that "hey, I'm eating lots of complex carbs and fiber and therefore being healthy" but that really is not the case. As far as macronutrients go, complex carbs are only slightly less bad than refined carbs because their only difference is that they don't cause insulin spikes (but they make up for that by increasing the amount of time for which your pancreas secretes insulin).
I think you're fine if you have some protein and veggies in there, too. For breakfast I'll have a couple of eggs and a couple slices of bread in various ways. (Eggs over hard, or an omelet with a little cheese and toast, or sometimes french toast drizzled with some honey.) Lunch might be a peanut butter and honey sandwich with a stick of low-fat string cheese and some raw mini-carrots. Dinner is typically a meat plus a starch plus a vegetable in roughly equal proportions, volume-wise. I keep walnuts around for snacks.
It's not low-carb, but it's also not carbs all over the damned place.
They are only slightly less bad for you.
Do not believe the food industry. The manufacturers LOVE to label their whole grain products as "heart healthy" "may reduce chance of CVD" and things like that, but the thing they aren't telling you (or maybe don't even know themselves) is that those statements are true only when compared to refined carbs like white bread. In other words, those labels aren't incorrect, but they aren't telling you everything.
So you're saying that the only way to reach 2000 calories is either by eating a ton of fat, or by eating a ton of carbs? You might need to brush up on your math skills, home skizzle. Or else you have a peculiar definition of "lots"
Fun fact: carbs in moderation will not kill you or rape your loved ones.
I've moved towards eating a lot more stir fried or sauteed vegetables, which are ostensibly okay because all the calories come from the cooking oil, but they require breaking out all the cooking stuff and don't really work well for snacking throughout the day. I would put a lot more fresh fruit in that role, but my grocery store has produce of only questionable quality, and I often end up buying it only to go on not to eat it before it goes bad because I don't really want it.
Errr, hello strawman? Come on, you're a moderator. Certainly you can do better than that?
Let's say you're consuming 500 calories of carbs, 500 calories of protein, and 1000 calories of fat.
Now let's say you read somewhere that fats are bad for you, so you decided to reduce fat intake to 300 calories per day.
Now, to make up for that and still remain at 2000 calories per day, you need to increase carb + protein calories from 1000 calories to 1700 calories. This means that you need to eat either more carbs, more protein, or more of both.
The problem is that fat has 9 calories per gram, whereas both carbs and protein have 4 calories per gram. So, while you're reducing your fat intake by 700/9=77.7g, you have to increase carb+protein intake by more than twice that much in weight (175g). That's a significant increase in insulin, which means your blood cholesterol level, blood pressure, blood sugar, and body fat ratio will all go up.
I won't really comment on your vegetarianism (or pescetarianism, since you eat fish) - I was planning on starting another thread for it - but a low-carb vegetarian diet is extremely difficult. You're essentially limited to nuts, fish, fatty low carb veggies like avocados, and certain animal products like eggs.
I'd think a lot of the reason low-carb diets do anything at all is that few people snack on pork chops during the day. "Cutting out carbs" amounts to lowering your caloric intake by eating only during meal times.
Here's a question: egg yolks have a lot of cholesterol. Will my heart explode if I eat several every day?
Also: what about legumes? I was big on lentils for a while, for instance.
Finally: most vegetables are mostly carbs in terms of their caloric content, but at the same time, most vegetables have almost no calories. So, in a straight up vegetable dish almost all the calories are going to come from the dressing or the cooking oil, which is straight up fats. So I was under the impression that roasted, grilled, fried, and whatever'd vegetables were fine vis a vie carbs.
This is directly refuted in the OP, and in both of the books: Good Calories, Bad Calories, and Protein Power. I also explained later why "eat fewer calories and exercise more" is over-simplistic and useless.
She pretty much hates them (at least what we've tried). I think the only time she enjoys anything sugar-free is Fresca and her mom's Splenda sweetened pies. It's not a bad idea necessarily though. If you have any specific suggestions that we might not have tried I'll have her check em out.
This is entirely all I have to say about this matter.
Thank you durandal
Some veggies have more starch. Generally tubers like potatoes, carrots, etc. Carrots aren't so bad unless you cook them. Stick with green leafy veggies, and things with a high water content. At least from what I've heard.
Also iirc the more cholesterol you consume the less your liver produces. So it actually makes no difference.
I'm citing the research from memory of studies done around the tail end of the Atkins craze. It's also the conclusion of the metastudies wikipedia lists on its page of low-carb studies.
The main theory for why stuff like bacon and hotdogs are bad for you is that they're usually soaked in salt and cancer (bacon is basically a milder form of salt pork).
Which is absolute bullshit, and will probably kill you, or at the very least give you diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Why? Because the average person, without significant amounts of cardiovascular exercise, only burns 700-1000 calories a day.
Every fast-food chain has individual sandwiches that exceed that amount.
The trick is not just watching your intake (like a hawk), but choosing the less calorie-dense foods so that you don't feel like you're not eating enough. Unfortunately, it's carbs that are most dense and therefore easiest to get rid of. But also, carbs don't break down like simple sugars, and are more likely to get stored as fat than be burnt off as energy.
So kids, each green vegetables, poultry, and seafood. You'll get your fill and not rack on the extra poundage.
Apperantly, any sort of diet can help a bit because you eat less if you have a monotonous diet. That's why new diets work so well until people find strategies to make "Atkins-friendly" bread and the like (I heard this analysis near the end of Atkin's popularity, when somebody noted that all the Atkin's meals companies were coming out with were making the diet too easy).
re: eggs. Dietery cholesterol actually has a clinically negligible impact on blood cholesterol.
http://urbanext.illinois.edu/eggs/res06-cholesterol.html
As for your other question, I avoid legumes because of their carb content, even though they also contain fiber and protein. For other vegetables that are low-carb, you can cook them in olive oil or butter and that would be totally fine.
If you watched the lecture, Taubes dismisses the 'toxic environment' argument by showing examples where there is obesity epidemics amongst populations that are malnourished and poor.