How does this compare to bacon cooked in the pan? My experience is that the microwave is only acceptable as a reheating device, not for actually cooking anything.

13 minutes? You realize that it'll cook on the stove in a fraction of that, and still keep all the fatty goodness? That's a very rube goldberg solution, if you ask me.

Tomorrow's post - using a crock pot to make sunny-side up eggs, followed by orange juice squeezed by tectonic activity.

Do riff on about Taubes and GC,BC. Reading it changed my life. Please read "Life w/o Bread" by Lutz and "The Protein Power Life Plan" by Eades. Your readers will benefit from these books which are far more accessible. You're doing a great service by promoting low carb eating. Thanks.

Agree re. the Eades. The book is excellent; very informative, while still practically useful.

Looks like a great idea if you were cooking just a bit of bacon. However, we do a pound at a pop, infidel bacon junkies that we are. I keep a grease jar just like Grandma, to cut into our venison burgers for flavor, to cook eggs in (HEAVEN!), rub on a roasting chicken, or brown meat in when cooking soups and stews.

Just finished GC/BC myself. Loved the actual science rather than rhetoric. His historical references to dietary changes of non-Westernized cultures are what brought it home the most. Shall bring it up with my GP next week; she wants to rubberstamp and put me on cholesterol meds with nary a thought. I'm doing 6 months low carb rather than low fat to see what happens.

Okay, THAT's it. Bacon and Guacamole cheeseburgers for lunch.

I've been trying to cut back the carbs... doing things like mozzarella and tomato for lunch without bread or pasta, or some seitan, but I'm finding I'm STARVING in a couple hours if I don't have some sort of starch. Then I go eat more starch than I would have. Any advice for avoiding this?

Maybe this just isn't possible as a vegetarian.

Part of the problem may be that seitan without sauce sucks, so I don't end up eating much of it, but most sauces are very carby so I don't use them. The guac idea above could work... seitan fried in butter and garlic with guacamole?

Carbs give you gas, by the way. So does fiber.

I'm finding too that a calm stomach is a terrific side effect of the low-carb diet. For you and everyone around you. :)

Hi all,

Here is an interesting article written by Dr Eades for Tim Ferriss.

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2008/02/25/the-science-of-fat-loss-why-a-calorie-isnt-always-a-calorie/#more-278

It is interesting reading about how our bodies react to low carb and low fat diets.

One of the problems I have in going too low carb is constipation. Has anyone here managed to overcome that 'difficulty'?

-Julie

Ack! I've been cooking it a shorter time on high. That explains my uneven results. Will try the lower heat/longer time method.

To the commenter above who mentioned that it takes as long as cooking in a pan...true, but one can multitask more easily while cooking in the microwave. And no spatters on the stovetop to clean.

Oh, and heartburn: switching to lower carb eating has totally eliminated my heartburn. The only time I ever need to dip into the Tums is after I've indulged in a piece of bread or dessert.

One of the problems I have in going too low carb is constipation. Has anyone here managed to overcome that 'difficulty'?

Try smoking. :-p

"And please let me know how you do on the low carb thing vis a vis whether you need medication at the end."

Am hoping it works; IIRC, Taubes' examinations of studies indicate full-carb/ low-fat diets actually lead to HIGHER cholesterol. I'll be doing Taubes' approach on the QT, telling doctor that I'm doing oatmeal for every brekkie and fat free lettuce nibbling. She wants me popping prescription meds for everything. No thanks.

I looked at the paleolithic/ caveman diet as well; it makes sense, but I just can't give up dairy. I need my butter, cream and cheeses. Example: I just made chocolate creme brulee with ancho and pasilla peppers for a little kick, and almost no sugar. 3 cups heavy whipping cream. Sigh.....

Julie,

You need more fat in your diet. You are probably making the mistake I did by eating low fat meats. You have to get over the low-fat thing. Eat a greasy burger coated in blue cheese dressing or something.

Interesting piece on Slate this morning:

http://www.slate.com/id/2219314/

"One of the problems I have in going too low carb is constipation. Has anyone here managed to overcome that 'difficulty'?"

Julie: kg is correct. You need fat...and fiber.

You must, MUST!, eat at least one serving of veggies or fruit with every meal. Not only does this help fill up your stomach but it helps regulate your body's digestive process. I don't support eating habits that exclude veggies or fruit (unless you're gearing up to shoot the cover of a swimsuit edition of Sport Illustrated and need to be totally ripped at an unsustainable level, you should eat fruit. They're PACKED with awesome antioxidants and vitamins. They also have lots of water in them to help make you feel full.).

I'm a big baby spinach eater. Saute a few handfuls with olive oil, salt/pepper and some garlic. Goes with everything. Put it in your morning omelet with cheese. Eat it with steak. It's a balancing act - low carb doesn't mean "only eat protein." It means eat all this other stuff and limit the carbs.

Try taking fish oil capsules and a few spoonfuls of ground flax into low fat yogurt.

Also, if you perform glycogen-depleting exercise (like 40 minutes of hard weight lifting or intervals on a cardio machine) you NEED carbs. If you don't take them in you'll lose muscle mass and feel like dog shit. Just make sure it's brown rice (with some pesto on it) or steel cut oats (make it with 1% milk, cinnamon, splenda and some walnuts) - anything like that is fine. And only after your workout!

make it with 1% milk,

EEEWWWW! I have problems even doing 2% let alone anything less. According to this site your only saving about 50 calories and, in my opinion, giving up a lot taste.

Diet should match activity level. So if you tend to the more intellectual sedentary life style then bread and pasta is out. Now if your idea of fun is paint ball and martial arts carb free diets won't work. I tried that once while I lost weight I also lost sustained energy, hence the whole carb loading for runners. Now if your favorite activity is sucking down Pizza and cola in front of the tube your screwed.

As far as high fat diets well first lets put some number to it. The term high is relative, as is HUGE. Burger wise are you talking 1/4 lbs, 1/2 lbs or 5 lbs gut busting record breaker.

Cave men tended to eat gathered nuts (high fat) and berries (carbs but not refined) food as hunting was both difficult and dangerous, they did not eat processed carbs though.

Okay, I'm gonna go where I've never seen anyone go before on this blog; I'm posting an actual recipe.

For fiber, the aforementioned missing vitamin C, not to mention a ton of lycopene, try Pico de Gallo. Homemade and fresh, not canned or jarred, which has glop in it. Try as follows: 4 large tomatoes, seeded and chopped fine. 1/2 medium yellow onion, also chopped fine (or even minced). Two jalapenos seeded and minced. 1/2 cup finely chopped cilantro. Juice of one lime, 1/8 cup red wine vinegar, salt and pepper to taste. Mix all this together and let it set for at least three hours before eating (trust me, flavors need to mingle).

We go through two or three large batches of this a week; we have it on eggs (huevos rancheros!), on grilled chicken or burgers, on fajitas, almost everything. It's addicting. Our local grocer started carrying this and sold maybe two cases a week in the beginning, now he sells over 60 cases a week and can't get any more from the supplier.

Thank you everyone for all of the information.

For most people the suggestion of fruit would likely be a great idea, however my hypoglycemia is so severe that I cannot eat any sucrose or fructose. No honey, no juices, few cooked veggies. For those in the know, on a good day I can get my blood sugar up to 90 after a meal. Most days it sits in the 70s with dips that are lower. Because of this I CRAVE sugar, sweets, and carbs. I don't eat any sugar or sweets (except no sugar ones), but I'm trying to give up flour now, as I can't think that it will help things. The past two days I have felt somewhat better, but we will see how the numbers turn out.

Amy,
Do you ever get tired of your food rotation? I love the idea and results, but still find myself looking for variety.

Regarding artificial sweeteners: My ob/gyn says that the ONLY artificial sweetener I can have right now is Splenda. No Equal, no Sweet-n-Low. So, no diet sodas, etc. I've read a few things about the artificial sweeteners screwing up your metabolism, but haven't really done any research on it.

I try not to keep the bad stuff in my house, because I have no self-control. If I do get ice cream or candy, I get a single serving, never a tub or a whole bag, 'cause I'd eat all of it in two days.

My dear, sweet husband, who thinks that I need to gain lots of weight because I'm pregnant, keeps bringing home delicous cookies and toffee from Central Market. I told him that I was going to throw them away if he keeps doing this, because they have no nutritional value and, if anything, I'll end up with gestational diabetes. So, if wants them for himself, he'd better hide them.

Anyway, I'm only 15 weeks along and have already gained 10 pounds.

I want a steak. Now.

Seitan with butter or olive oil would have fat, though. And mozzarella is very high in fat! I think I'm getting plenty of fat... I'm just ALSO getting plenty of carbs.

I dunno if I'm totally messed up, though, but say I'm having raclette... if I eat it with the potato, I fill up pretty fast. If I eat it without the potato, I'm eating cheese all night and it takes me forever to stop feeling hungry. A bagel with mustard and tomato will satisfy me for a good 5 or 6 hours... a breakfast of full-fat yoghurt or cheese or whatever won't. Is my metabolism just that fucked up? Or am I just not eating enough of the cheese/yoghurt?

AHW- I would advise watching how much Splenda (sucralose) you consume; there's recent findings of liver and kidney damage. More of it gets absorbed than originally thought, might want to do that research after all.

there's recent findings of liver and kidney damage

I wasn't able to find those studies through google, can you point me in the right direction?

-Julie

Julie - I can tell you that the only time in my life I ever had a panic attack was when I started drinking diet coke with splenda. I stopped that, the panic attacks stopped. No splenda has passed these lips since.

Nicole - Being a vegetarian is probably the worst thing you could do for your health. Unless you eat a lot of soy, you are not getting all the amino acids you need. Oh, and eating a lot of soy is not good for men.

Whether you believe in evolution, or you believe that everything was created as-is a week ago Thursday, we are designed to eat meat. Humans are an apex predator.

Or to put it another way, I did not claw my way to the top of the food chain to eat grass.

Julie-
Here's a link to a really good article, and if you go to the references portion at the bottom, there's a link to the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, as well as the Japanese Food Sanitation Council Report. Both contain very good information.

http://www.gaia-health.com/articles/000038-Sucralose.shtml

Brian: I was a veg for three years and suffered no ill effects. Many people can do it without any issues, but it's not for everyone. But I agree with you about Diet Coke. I had some pretty unpleasant digestive issues for awhile and traced it back to Diet Coke. It is of the devil.

I accept the science in Gc/Bc, but I have decided to disregard it. Ultimately, it is a lifestyle choice. The minimal benefits I noticed from going low-carb for a month don't outweigh the sensuous pleasures of my boyfriend's homebrewed beer and my grandmother's recipe for fresh ravioli. I love food like some people love art and music. I don't want to limit myself.

So I decided to go with what is probably second best: Since I have no health issues and am a healthy weight, I'm just going to not cram huge portions into my high-carb pie hole.

Beer is not as high in carbs as you might think. Your typical beer is under 10g for a 12 oz serving. The stronger the beer, the lower the carb count.

Granted, there are calories in alcohol, but those are eaten by your body first.

I ran the numbers when I did the Atkins thing - for the carb cost of a single coke, I can have three high-quality beers.

Which one do you think I chose?

Oh, and on an anecdotal note, I've never met a healthy vegetarian.

I'm not surprised that you haven't met a healthy vegetarian. Especially in college, too many lived off of a diet of pizza and beer and called themselves vegetarians. That'll mess up anyone.

I've known two who were quite meticulous about it. One was physically unhealthy all the time. The other was advised by his doctor to eat meat if he hoped to produce a child.

This is, again, because the only complete non-animal protein is soy, and I haven't seen any hard studies, but plenty of claims that soy metabolic products mimic female hormones.

Which would fuck a man up to no end.

which would also explain why GNC sells both soy and whey protein products, but the whey protein needs to be augmented to make it "complete".

Eating fish, foul, and meat gets you the protein you need to keep your own body running. It's already there, needs no preparation beyond cooking (and that's often optional - see sashimi), and needs no complex rules to make sure that all the pieces are present.

No argument here. I think people should know their own bodies and what it takes to keep themselves healthy. If it takes meat, so be it. But I can also rattle off the names of half a dozen vegetarians who have had no problems at all, and some of them have been doing it for decades. I managed to get plenty of protein from eggs, dairy products and other foods. I only went back to eating meat because cooking for myself and my carnivorous ex-husband had become a pain in the ass.

That's a very rube goldberg solution, if you ask me. - Vinnie Bartilucci

I'm sorry but how does pushing less than 6 buttons on one panel qualify as a rube goldberg solution?

There's the saying that a healthy person is someone who hasn't been tested thoroughly enough.

All I can do is judge by what I see and what they say. They're rarely sick, and then, only minor colds one a year or so. They're active and have energy levels that range from normal to rabid. They're a normal weight, and their hair and nails look healthy. One veg I know is really unhealthy, but then, she also smokes three packs a day. (I don't get it, either.)

I've been a vegetarian my whole life, and raised among many other life-long and long-term vegetarians. Some are healthy, some are not. The number of overweight vegetarians seems to be about the same as overweight non-vegetarians in my sample set. In my anecdotal experience, they don't seem to have more or less health problems than the meat eaters I know. You can eat healthily as a vegetarian, or you can eat unhealthily as a vegetarian, same as with meat.

In any case, I also heard about the soy/estrogen thing, and have been eating less of it since then. The healthiest I ever was was when I went Vegan for eight months. It was great... I was so energetic and lost weight while eating as much as I wanted. Reading Amy is making me realize that it might very well be because I was eating less carbs and more protein (ironically)... I relied heavily on seitan with satay and veggies, and completely avoided white flour and sugar (because of the bone filter thing), which limited my consumption of sweets and breads dramatically.

Being vegan is highly impractical, but I might take some of what I did then and apply it to my life when I get home... if I look at labels now as much as I did then, I'm sure I'll be better off. When I get home from my current travels, I am going to try eliminating white flour and sugars from my diet completely when I get back, and start doing more things with nuts the way I did when I was a vegan, without actually eliminating the dairy.