Kaz Kylheku said:Duffy said:I realized that I am one of those people that can't have a taste, one
chip or a single cookie or a bite. Nope. Give me one tortilla chip and
I'll eat the bag. A lick of ice cream will have me finishing off the
carton. So it's easier to just say no. I tell people that low carb
eating takes away the voices in my head.
You chose an interesting set of foods as your examples here. Although
they are high in carbohydrates, we cannot gloss over the fact that
they are also high fat items!
Certainly... and one might conclude that Duffy had inadvertently been
on a low-fat diet if one only looked only at those foods.
However, some thought shows that is unlikely to be the case.
Excluding alcohol, the primary macronutrients that provide calories
are carbohydrates, protein and fat. If one is going to lower one's
carb consumption, the percentages of protein and/or fat must
increase.
Perhaps Duffy chose to increase primarily protein foods rather than
fat foods. Even so, given that most protein foods are also high-fat
foods, it seems unlikely Duffy was doing a low-fat diet. Unless Duffy
was getting protein primarily from protein powder and egg whites, it's
very unlikely the diet was low-fat.
Generally speaking, a low-carb diet is low in carbs, adequate in
protein and high in fat.
Just look at a simple salad for lunch as an example:
A couple cups of very low-calorie vegetables topped with a TB of salad
dressing is a high-fat dish, not because the amount of fat is huge,
but because almost all the calories are from fat. The percentage of
fat is high because the calories of everything except the salad
dressing are very low.
On the other hand, if you eat the same salad with a few whole wheat
rolls on the side, it becomes a low-fat meal because the calories from
the rolls raise the total calories and hence lower the percentage of
calories from fat.
It wouldn't have to be rolls. You could make an "unhealthy" high-fat
salad into a "healthy" low-fat salad by adding a couple cans of Coke
too. This example shows why measuring the "healthiness" of a diet
based on it's macronutrient breakdown is ridiculous.
Most people end up eating more protein and fat when they cut back on
carbs. But even if the amount of fat you eat doesn't increase, simply
cutting out carbs means your diet changes from a low-fat one to a high-
fat one simply because these terms are defined in terms of
percentages.
On *any* diet, you can do the diet in a healthy manner or in a crappy
manner. You could do a low-fat diet by eating primarily Snackwell
cookies. You could do a low-carb diet by eating primarily bacon
cheeseburgers without buns.
For many years, my daughter was vegetarian... but because she doesn't
like vegetables, pretty much all she ate was noodles, pasta and
potatoes.
Regardless of the type of diet, you can do the diet in an unhealthy
manner if you try!
Rather than focusing on the macronutrient breakdown, I think the most
important factor in a healthy diet is eating a wide variety of fresh
produce, hence fulfilling your micronutrient needs. Making the
largest portion of one's diet fruits and vegetables (by volume)
improves the healthiness of one's diet. Because these foods generally
are very low-calorie, if you eat mostly fruits and vegetables, you can
do it in a manner that is high-fat or low-fat, high-carb or low-carb,
because fruits and veggies are lightly weighted in the total
calories.
In my family, my SIL has been doing a low-fat version of Weight
Watchers for years. She and I have more in common in our diets than
any other members of the family... because both of us eat piles of
fresh produce. That we use different salad dressings isn't nearly as
significant as the fact that each of us considers a huge salad with 15
different veggies a great meal.
Sometimes I track my own food intake for days or weeks at a time. As
a diabetic, I not only need to limit carbs, but also limit protein to
some extent (since protein can be converted by the body to glucose).
My recent daily status is I eat around 50g carbs. Because most of my
carb intake is from low-sugar fruits and non-starchy vegetables (with
some from dairy), I get another 50g or so of fiber as well. I eat
around 100g of protein and 100g of fat.
Converting to calories, I get around 200 calories of non-fiber carb,
200 calories of fiber, 400 calories of protein and 900 calories of
fat, for a total of approximately 1700 calories. This makes my diet
around 53% fat, hence it's a high-fat diet.
There's no way for it not to be a high fat diet. I cannot raise
either the carbohydrate or protein amounts and maintain decent bg
readings. Bg control is a MUCH worse risk factor for cardiac disease
than are cholesterol profiles - even for non-diabetics!
Hence the only way to reduce my fat intake would be to lower my
calories to below my maintenance needs. In other words... I'd have to
starve to make my diet low-fat.
As an example of what this diet looks like, this is what I ate
yesterday:
breakfast: protein powder shake made with 12 fl oz water, 1 cup frozen
strawberries, 1 fl oz heavy cream, 2 scoops (2/3 cup) unflavored,
unsweetened milk isolate protein powder
throughout morning: several cups of coffee with a TB of heavy cream
and a packet of Equal in each cup
lunch: 1/10th of my standard salad mix (1 head butterhead or bibb
lettuce, 1 head green leaf lettuce, 1 head radicchio, 3 medium
tomatoes, 1 medium onion, 1 cucumber, 1/2 pint alfalfa sprouts) with 2
TB ranch salad dressing and a whole avocado and 1/2 cup cantalope
throughout afternoon: several glasses of Diet Pepsi and several
glasses of water
dinner: 1/4th of a hamburger/cabbage strifry recipe (whole recipe
contains 2 lbs hamburger, 1 inch fresh ginger root, 3 cloves garlic, 1
head cabbage, 1/2 cup soy sauce)
throughout evening: several more glasses of water
evening snack: 3/4 cup full fat cottage cheese and 1/2 cup watermelon
balls
Yesterday was a pretty good day. Some days are less healthy, with
things a slice of leftover low-carb cheesecake for breakfast, or pizza
made on a low-carb tortilla for dinner, or a serving of Carb Smart ice
cream for a snack. I don't *always* choose the healthiest foods, day-
in and day-out. Some days, you need a treat or two.
Aside from the absolute necessity to control my bg at all times and
the usual heavy emphasis on fresh produce, the third component I think
is important on a diet is it being something you can live with, day-in
and day-out, without being tempted to "cheat". For me, "blowing it"
by binging on a regular pizza means doing organ damage... much better
to have low-carb treats that fit into my diet on occasion.
Those are the three things I think are most important in ANY diet, bg
control, lots of fresh produce, and the diet being livable in the long
term.
Weight loss or maintenance is much less important than these three
things with I believe have the most significant impact on health.
After all, it does no one any good to leave a skinny corpse.
