"Protein drives both insulin and glucagon up, so you don't have the pure insulin effect"

Was wondering about that! Thanks! I've read why you shouldn't low carb and everyone states protein drives insulin up too. Well guess that's only half the answer.

Thanks to Seroquel my body is fucked up when it comes to sugar. This little drug is known to cause diabetes and even though I don't have diabetes my body acts like I do. I skip all sugar and I loose a ton of weight. I eat a little bit of sugar and I gain 900lbs.

I agree with the science, as well as the results. I lost over 100 lbs with a moderate carb restriced diet, around 100 g per day, over 6 months.

However, this is a one dimensional view. Since then I have trained and become a performance athlete. I spend 1 to 2 hours a day on activities that could be called "working out", sometimes weightlifting, running, biking, rock climbing, etc. I need about 2500 to 3000 calories a day to maintain my weight, and if I don't have 300 g to 400 g of complex carbs a day, my performance suffers. Note, I never eat bread, pasta, table sugar, or sweetened foods. Only whole grains, fruits, and veggies.

The fact that carbs raise insulin levels is clear, but how your body can use that insulin, which is an anabolic hormone, second only to Human Growth Hormone, can be varied depending on your activity level and total body energy balance.

I've been experimenting with more fruit. Those of us who LC tend to avoid it, as fruits are technically high in carbs, but I've found, so far, that I can eat blueberries and cantaloupe and many other fruits, in moderation, without weight gain. I certainly couldn't do that with bread or pasta, so perhaps the effect on insulin is different?

I've also discovered that increasing my fat intake boosts weight loss. LC diets are really high fat diets, as counterintuitive as that seems.
That was mistake I had been making previously - lowering carbs, but not upping fats. A low carb, low fat diet won't work. It should be 60% fat, 30% protein and 10% carbs...at least for those of us who aren't very athletic.

Oh how I wish you liked to cruise, Amy. You would have been in hog heaven with our Low Carb Cruise this past week. I am just off the ship, and I can simply say this was the best cruise I have EVER taken, and I have taken lots of cruises.

The guest speaker list was absolutely impeccable, and access to each of them was amazing. I am still totally star-struck over these wonderful people who were in no way acting like stars, but instead as people who wanted to share their knowledge. (And star-struck isn't something I have ever been accused of.)

Its gonna be a long year, but I'll be on next year's cruise, too.

Who arranges the cruises, gharkness? I read about it on some guy's LC site...Jimmy somebody?

Yeah, wow. How inspiring. Thanks, Amy. I found the official cruise website on her FB page.

I wish there were more LC products. Back when Atkins was all the rage, you could find more in the stores, but now, most of the LC products are gone, and many that you order aren't that good. The protein bars, for instance, have sugar alcohols, which spike insulin for a lot of people the same as sugar. I can't eat them. Doeas anybody know of a really good LC protein bar?

I order my protein shakes from Jay Robb - www.jayrobb.com. They are made with stevia, and all natural ingredients. Really delicious.

lovelysoul: Low carb products are what killed low carb a few years ago. Why? because all the obfuscation on the label (fiber, net carbs, "effective" carbs) is all a bunch of BS.

The problem with low carb "products" is that they are NOT low carb. People bought them by the tubload, then complained that "low carb doesn't work." Yes Low Carb works....but the products are not low carb.

Amy, one of our main presenters, Fred Hahn of Slow Burn fame, was positively green the whole cruise. I can assure you that even with the help of several medicines, it had to have been a tough cruise for him. But I have it on good authority, he'll be back next year!

One additional note: just made it through security at FLL. No nekkid scanners! No 'enhanced' pat downs! YAY!

Yeah, gharkness, it's a shame. There were a few products that were good. The bad ones ruined it for everybody. The "net" carbs thing is a joke. I always have to look at the total carbs.

It seems to me that somebody could do well with prepacked LC meals. That is the biggest challenge for me - the cooking and making sure I have LC options on hand. And I love cooking, but often, when I get hungry, I don't want to take the time.

lovelysoul, keep stuff on hand. One of the best appetite-killing and filling foods I can think of requires no cooking. I always have a few packages of the very thin-sliced lunch meat and some cheese on hand at work (refrigerator), or anywhere I might likely need or want something to eat. And in fact, you can even buy cooked and peeled hard-boiled eggs.

On the plane home yesteray, we stopped and bought the lunch meat, cheese and eggs. More food than we could eat, but we weren't hungry when we arrived home, which removed a lot of temptation.

While I love to cook, sometimes finding time can be a challenge. I think Amy mentions she keeps some hard salami with her (which doesn't require refrigeration). Granted, it may not taste like chocolate cake, but if you are truly hungry, ANY good food will look good. And if you aren't hungry....why would you eat? (This is still a challenge for me, so I am not pointing fingers.)

I rarely endorse things, but buy a flavorwave, frozen to medium rare(depending on thickness) in 10 to 15 minutes

Oops. We didn't stop anywhere ON the plane home. But before we got on our flight, we detoured to the grocery store.

I think I am tired....

I've never heard of flavorwave. I'll look into it.

My problem is that I'm not a big meat eater, which makes it even more challenging. If I really loved bacon and luncheon meat, it would be so much easier. I eat it, of course, because it works, but I don't particularly enjoy the LC diet. I'm not even very fond of eggs.

The kids are taking me to brunch today, and I'm sure I'll have an omelette. I often make a crustless quiche to keep on hand. I like that better than most other ways of consuming eggs.

I have found some snack cheesy things called "just the cheese". I order them from Amazon. Only 1 gram of carbs per small bag. They taste a little like cardboard, but they're nice to have when you're craving some crunch. I also make some flax meal crackers.

Lovelysoul, pretty much anything pre-packaged isn't going to be good for you. You are fighting a losing battle trying to eat in this style of low-carb if you don't like meat or eggs. You could try nuts and avocado as snacks though.

"Fighting a losing battle" is a very apt description. It's tough, but I am losing. :)

Yah, maybe, but any dietary change you can't maintain for the rest of your life is frankly pretty useless. You aren't envisioning that once you lose however much you desire you will just be able to stop right? That is why diets fail.

Amy, what I don't understand is why you are unable to fathom that people can dislike or grow tired of steak, eggs, and bacon. If you hated what you were eating, would you keep it up?

I hate steak. Bacon is delicious, but two pieces is enough to last me for an entire month. I eat maybe four eggs per week and don't want any more. I'm totally down with buttered veggies, cheese, salad with dressing - this is what I eat every day. I don't eat much meat so I snack on nuts and fruit and eat a LOT of beans.

I exercise a lot and so I find that intact grains like brown rice and barley are necessary for me to feel good. (When I don't run, like when I'm sick, I don't crave the grains.) Lovelysoul stated above that she doesn't enjoy eating meat or eggs. Would you agree that different preferences and different lifestyles might make for different dietary needs?

Amy I think it is great that you put this information out there because there are so many people who are needlessly depriving themselves or unsuccessful at losing weight that need to hear it! At the same time, I think it's to disingenuous to imply that it's an all-or-nothing choice between eating zero carbs and being fat.

Personally I eat relatively low carb: no starches but a moderate amount of carbs from fruit, vegetables, and greek yogurt. By eating this way I can easily maintain a 15 pound weight loss (went from average size 6 to thin size 2) without ever feeling hungry or deprived.

And I'm willing to bet that this is what the majority of people want: they don't really care about knowing all the science or being the thinnest or the ultimate healthiest they can be, they just want to look good and feel good without feeling like they have to be on a diet for the rest of their lives. And yes it absolutely helps to know the science and the research, but ultimately there's more than one way to achieve this.

I can still follow an LC diet and not eat steak and bacon. There are plenty of LC vegetarians. However, this requires even more planning and cooking ahead. It's also a bit harder to keep the carb counts down, as all veggies have some carbs, unlike meat.

I also don't eat this way ALL the time. I have my splurge moments. It's never good to be totally deprived. It's one reason I'm trying to introduce more fruit.

I also find that carb cycling works, though I'm not entirely sure why. If I go all day with almost zero carbs, then in the evening, I can have some limited quantity - maybe a potato or brown rice or whole wheat pasta - and I still lose weight, sometimes even more dramatically.

This is Jay Robb's method. I have no idea what Eades thinks of it, but supposedly athletes have long used it to drop pounds.

But I use all these methods just to keep my weight in check. I'm generally comfortable with the weight range I'm in, but I employ the LC diet when I notice the scale creeping up, as it tends to more easily do past 40.

Amy, what I don't understand is why you are unable to fathom that people can dislike or grow tired of steak, eggs, and bacon. If you hated what you were eating, would you keep it up?

What always strikes me whenever Amy talks about her diet is the different attitudes people have toward eating and food. Amy sounds very happy with her diet and it's ideal for someone who does not cook but I could never stand the lack of variety. My husband and I love to cook. In the past week, we've had: lamb meatballs with pita, hummus, and baba ganoush; pot stickers and Thai glass noodle salad; chicken enchiladas with red chile; Jungle curry with sticky rice; and a lemon tart for Mother's Day. All homemade, cause we think it's fun. If sugar and flour are poisons then I will treat them as I do alcohol: an indulgence that is part of good living.