CG – a quick google gives

http://www.yankodesign.com/2009/09/07/single-hand-cook/

Knowledge costs nothing and whilst sometimes it may be hard to wade through all the so called evidence if you choose your sources wisely (i.e. not the daily mail) you will find that most learned forward thinking people come to the same conclusions.

Hmmmmmmmm

Not so sure on that. there is still a lot of divergence in opinion on the role of carbs and fats. the orthodoxy is still that its calories that count no matter the form

However having a good look around and making your mind up on the evidence you can find is a good way to proceed and to think about yor diet as something for life and to take a moderate approach cannot be far wrong

Solo – do you think you obsess about your diet a little too much? Or have I misunderstood you?

this made me think when i read it.
since i started on the idiet, after speaking to both Dave and Solo, i now think that i am starting to get obsessed about my diet.
but, i dont see it as a bad thing, i see it as a very good thing.
cos the reason that you end up 6 stone overweight is by not thinking about the shyte that you put in your body, and the damage that it is doing to you.
so for me, a little bit of being obsessed is fantastic.

and dont go Solo, cos you make a hell of a lot of sense, and also some of us need a bit of help and good advice mate, which you seem to give.

TJ – are you seriously thinking that the ‘orthodox view’ is correct by default?

ton – you’ll find as you get into it you just know what to eat what to avoid and it becomes more chilled. keep up the good work mate.

Well, my inbox is overflowing with offers from STW’ers offering to feed a helpless female. 😉

Yes, I think I need to get organised and may even have to buy a cookery book. Menu planning is the way to go.

Thanks for the replies. 🙂

I have been trying to get my wife to get her head around this.
She is a PT and specialises in the overweight. So is very brainwashed in the current taught way.
She understands and takes on board how this works.

Her one comment that stands out is… People don’t understand what they are doing now never mind confusing them even more with a ‘new’ way of eating.

I think you will have you work cut out Tom

“People don’t understand what they are doing now never mind confusing them even more with a ‘new’ way of eating.”

So stick to same old ineffective methods? If she takes this on board and adopts it her business will boom. It works.

Tenuous links between Government/food manufacturers and pharma need to be investigated. Too much self-serving going on.

cynical C_G

Not at all, but changing government policy and big corporations may be a tad tricky and take a long time. I just hope people are up for the fight.

*edit* She works on the NHS weight wise program and delivers a set program.

Great informed thread. Been stumbling towards this over the last year after recognising insulin spikes after carb heavy meals. I’ve been a heavy carb user for years as a (mostly) vegan. I guess soya in its natural state is OK but soya milk + other manufactured products isn’t great?

My previous experience of riding on no intake has been hideous bonks. Is this a hangover from physiological conditioning to expect loads of carbs?

Thanks for the input onto the thread.

My previous experience of riding on no intake has been hideous bonks. Is this a hangover from physiological conditioning to expect loads of carbs?

I would say almost certainly so.
I certainly hope so anyway, otherwise my current carb restriction and horrid bonks will have been in vain!

horrid bonks

And yet you’re still getting married 😉

Well I used to suffer terribly from bonking and you would naturally think the solution would be to take on more carbs during exercise. However since going low carb, I’ve not suffered this at all. But up until this point I hadn’t even twigged that I had stopped bonking. But thinking about it it makes perfect sense as my blood sugar levels are now so much more stable.

Quick question. Now that we have established what types of food to eat/avoid, what do people actually eat on a low carb diet? Looking for some meal ideas, and preferably one-handed ones for the benefit of CG!

Mal – if you are having trouble with bonks riding on nothing have a handful of nuts before you go out. It will at the very least put something in your stomach that should be enough to fool the body into thinking energy is imminent.

For the record I eat almost all my food one handed.
Lots of salads – if anyone says salads are boring I charge them to try one of my salads, I’m no chef but I think they are pretty good!

curries (made of course with all natural ingredients and tonnes of cream , yum)
Mushroom stroganoff

Casseroles, stews,

Meat and veg, lots of red meat. Venison goes down very well.
Sausages made from cows I’ve seen walking around the fields and produced by a proper butcher.

The list is literally endless. Remember that most of our foods are low carb but we add carbs to them. Potatoes, rice, pasta etc.

Something I should add about paleo living, for me anyway, is that it’s about so much more than just fat loss, which for me has been fantastic. It’s about what you are putting into your body and how you feel. The ingredients list on many so called healthy foods is quite frightening in my eyes these days. I prefer to buy foods that don’t need to come with a label, at least you know you’re getting something natural that way.

But yes, it did push me through a weight plateau of 14 stone and 20% odd body fat to a current weight of 12 stone 12lbs and 8.9% bodyfat. Intermittent fasting has been the key to that for me, and that would be a whole other conversation in itself!

C’mon Solo… come back. It was an honest question and it’s fine to obsess over your diet if that’s what you want to do. Maybe you should consider a career move?

Intermittent fasting has been the key to that for me

😯

Slight digression as that is really not right IMO, and is a good step on the way to developing a proper eating disorder.

What I really want to know is how many people come to Paleo diets and ‘diets’ in general from a healthy weight?
What would be gained from following one of these diets if you’re not overweight?
What is the benefit of ditching chocolate, bread and fruit if you can eat these with no impact on your weight?

Or do slimmer people make healthier diet choices by default?

FieldMarshall – Member
Well I used to suffer terribly from bonking and you would naturally think the solution would be to take on more carbs during exercise. However since going low carb, I’ve not suffered this at all. But up until this point I hadn’t even twigged that I had stopped bonking. But thinking about it it makes perfect sense as my blood sugar levels are now so much more stable.

Quick question. Now that we have established what types of food to eat/avoid, what do people actually eat on a low carb diet? Looking for some meal ideas, and preferably one-handed ones for the benefit of CG!

Meal wise, the best thing you could do is get a slow cooker. Mine is used nearly every day and it’s deadly easy to stay organised with one.

Example of meals.. Today I have:

3 chicken thighs wrapped in cabbage, beetroot, a fried egg and half an avocado for lunch.

When I get home from work I will have rabbit stew that I put in the slow cooker this morning.

If i’m eating breakfast which only really happens on training days, it’s generally 2 fried eggs, bacon and some of whatever vegetables I have lying about at the time.

I’m sure folk on here and probably registered there but for meal inspiration and general paleo/primal info, Marks Daily Apple is the forum I would go to.

Why so shocked Yeti? Everyone fasts when they are asleep, i just extend mine by a further few hours to give me a 16 hour fasting, 8 hour eating window to get my calories in which tends to be 2400 or so on rest days, and 3600 on training days.

Edit – as I bagged the 300th post and this thread is about trying to lose weight…

Sorry Stralfur I know of people who do fast but will take it to 24 or 48 hours. They also go on weight management forums like http://www.prettythin.com . That forum knows all about how to get super skinny.

Skinny is not my intention, healthy and somewhat ripped is. Obviously my training is based around this and curiously, I’m forever setting pb’s when fasted. I find 16 hours is perfect for me, though I do a 24 hour fast around once a month just to mix it up.

I eat a huge amount of food in the two meals I do have, certainly far more than the people who keep telling me I’m starving myself.

that prettythin website scares me, seen so many lives, families and friendships destroyed by eating disorders 🙁

Tell me about it Philly 🙁

Fat is better than stick thin.

Staralfur – be careful dude.

yeti….how much do you weigh, if you dont mind me asking.

Stick thin is grim, definitely a sign of the times though when it’s socially unacceptable to be thin, being overweight is just the norm now in my opinion. Far too many people, women especially hiding behind this ‘curvy is healthy’ ideal, when they are far from curvy, they’re just a fat mess.

Thanks for your concern Yeti, I love food too much to go down that other road though! Merely my own way of getting better food into me, and getting the most benefit from it.

When I was a chubster myself I used to tell people I was half bulemic, just kept forgetting to be sick 😀

ton – not at all.

11st 8lb this morning. Heaviest I’ve ever been is 13st. Probably lost 50% fat 50% muscle.

I’m not fat, but I am interested in all this. I know people who’ve lost large amounts of weight through conventional diets, through iDiet and through prettythin diets.

I think the obvious thing to bear in mind here is that the paleo/primal lifestyle is the oldest human diet there is. I was dismayed to hear a PT at the gym describe it as a fad diet on Tuesday evening while also advising my girlfriend that she should eat less eggs and more wholemeal bread!

yeti, how would you know that it is better to be fat than thin.
seriously 11.8stone must be stick thin.

ton – go and read stuff on pretty thin… watch programs on people with anorexia. Talk with someone who’s a little overweight and someone who is hellbent on becoming critically underweight. Try and rationalise with someone who purges.

My BMI is 23.1, I’m far from stick thin.

Assuming that’s an online BMI reading? ie – not worth a shite. According to the onlineones I am only just barely into the healthy weight range, but it doesn’t take muscle mass into account.

staralfur – yes, but it provides a rough view of how ‘skinny’ someone might be.

Could someone with a BMI of 25 ever actually be skinny??

You’re not too far away from 25 and you sound pretty thin, so possibly?

A true bodyfat reading done with calipers is the only way to know for sure I guess.

TSY – you won’t think fat is better than thin when you get to Mow Cop on Sunday

You’re not too far away from 25 and you sound pretty thin, so possibly?

but it doesn’t take muscle mass into account.

❓

Bodyfat calipers can’t measure the fat that is sat around your organs though… and rely on one of a variety of algorithims to make an estimate of your bodyfat.

The mirror test is the best IMO. Hip to waist ratios are pretty telling too.

TSY – you won’t think fat is better than thin when you get to Mow Cop on Sunday

😆 hence why I’ve been doing 20 miles every morning this week on sod all food.

I was dismayed to hear a PT at the gym describe it as a fad diet on Tuesday evening while also advising my girlfriend that she should eat less eggs and more wholemeal bread

That’s because its what they have been taught by ‘experts’

Star, not many people on here have enough muscle mass to skew BMI that far.

Ton your not *that* fat, in my wife’s work she deals with people who are so large they can only do chair based exercise to start with.
One lady was 5ft 3 and 26 stone.

Insulin question again, does anyone know whether the sleepy after food feeling is a) increased glucose levels in blood b) the insulin spike as it sets out to deal with increased glucose c) the drop to low blood sugar post insulin or d) something else / the process?

I was very lucky as my mum was one of the original whole food evangelists (not the world’s best cook so I feel as though I was brought up on gravel and chaff) so I can’t really eat much processed food (I tried a McDonald’s at 21 in an act of rebellion and felt so sick I haven’t done that again). I think to get a good relationship with food you need to start young and if you’ve not be taught about nutrition from an early age you have a real uphill battle to retrain your body and taste buds and habits. Hats off if you’re onto it – it’s really worth it.

As for me I am just a bit worried about getting the balance right since I have stepped up the exercise – I seem to be less intolerant of carbs but that may not be a good thing.

US Marines body fat calculator based on meadurement if neck, waist, thighs, forearms is pretty accurate, based on thousands of actual measurements. Any decent implementation presents your value as a range within its known tolerances.

Meal wise, the best thing you could do is get a slow cooker. Mine is used nearly every day and it’s deadly easy to stay organised with one.

+1 for the slow cooker, makes life so much easier!
I’ve done a curry, sausage casserole & lamb tagine so far this week and will have spare ribs in a primal BBQ sauce bubbling away when I get home tonight!

have spare ribs in a primal BBQ sauce

Sounds nice.

Are the any recipe books that are primal/idave oriented?

I will need a variety of decent recipes to keep me going.

Thanks for all the menu idea replies.

Was just wondering whether I was missing out on anything in particular, but seems my diet of casseroles, stews, meat, sauasges and salad is pretty much par for the course.

Interestingly slow cooker was one of the first things I bought when I went low carb two years ago. Wouldnt be without it.

Despite the improvement in my health, I still cant seem to convince my wife that low carb and not low fat is the future. Plus she still always wants to have pasta, potatoes or rice with the meals, whereas I just have the protein.

She also still insists on eating the rubbish that people like weightwatchers turn out, yes she loses weight but more through malnutrition than anything else.