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Mummy_of_Peanut
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10 Nov 2012, 3:15 pm

Kjas wrote:
It will also be converted immediately to sugar in the body, and any excess that is not used in the next 1-4 hours is stored immediately as fat. A complex carbohydrate is still essentially sugar once converted. There is nothing wrong with that, but most people already eat too much of that sort of thing - unless you have a lot of muscle or are extremely active, there is not much need for those things at every meal, - but if they are present, they should be the minority.
They definitely are in the minority in my meals. Last night, for dinner I had quorn (a fungus based meat replacement), broccoli, chestnuts and some brown rice noodles. For the 3 of us, I used the amount of noodles recommended for one portion. I'd say it made up no more than 10% of what I had. All my meals are like that (except for breakfast). The carb part is only a small fraction at lunch and dinner. I'm wondering what people on a lower carb diet eat for breakfast. I could up the nut/seed part and reduce the oats, but I can't see me sitting down to a bowl of just nuts and seeds for breakfast. I'm also a little worried about the high calorific content of this. I know the fats are good, but they are calorie dense and I would need to reduce my portion size even more. My husband eats more than double what I have and he has a banana too.


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Mummy_of_Peanut
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10 Nov 2012, 3:23 pm

ValentineWiggin wrote:
Mummy_of_Peanut wrote:
ValentineWiggin
I really have to disagree with you on this one. I'm not eating a lot of sugar. Carbohydrate =/= sugar.

8O
Mummy_of_Peanut wrote:
The carb in oats, rice and lentils is starch. It breaks down slowly and they're considered low GI foods.

The fact that it doesn't spike your glucose as much as a candy bar doesn't change that it's a relative distinction.


Mummy_of_Peanut wrote:
Do you only eat veg, nuts and seeds and no grains or legumes?

The vast majority of my calories don't come from carbohydrates.
Mummy_of_Peanut wrote:
That's too extreme for me, I'm afraid. I was vegetarian for 10 years and vegan on and off too, but I would never go to the extremes of excluding the best vegan source of protein.

It's virtually-impossible to be protein-deficient without also being calorically-deficient.

Mummy_of_Peanut wrote:
As I said, I'm not overloading on them anyway, my diet is way more than 50% veg.

Not by calories.
You've given me some food for thought (pardon the pun). I do know that I'm definitely eating less carbs and more veg than any people I know. The British diet is very wheat based, sandwiches or pasta for lunch and pies, pastries, breaded chicken, fish fingers, etc for dinner. And they tend to eat a lot of potato products as well. My parents have potatoes at every dinner. I don't eat like that at all and I think others see this as a bit weird. But, maybe I need to go even further than that and weird them out entirely. It's none of their business anyway and I'll prove them wrong for being ultra-healthy. Thanks for your insight.


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Kjas
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10 Nov 2012, 9:01 pm

Ahh I can see how you got confused. When I said coconut milk - I meant in things like curries, soups etc - not to eat as a replacement for soymilk! :lol:
If you wanted to switch the soymilk, you could try almond milk instead.

Makes sense if it's only 10-20% or so. :thumleft:

My breakfast generally consists of lamb (sometimes sauages, sometimes just cuts), mushrooms and baby spinach (or kale). Some days it's pork, fresh salsa, greens and I add a little bit of yuca with mojo if I know it's going to be a particularly active day. Sometimes if I'm lazy I just pull coconut and crab soup out of the freezer and have that for breakfast.

I won't go into ethical reasons here, but I do understand - I had a stage where I didn't want to eat it because I couldn't stand the idea of it.
My only concern with both vegetarianism and veganism is that in nutritional terms, taking a multi generally only 10-20% of what you need for the day, and often what they consider you "need" is only the bare minimum baseline - so much is left out of the equation that is necessary for us to not just function, but function well. There is a big dfiference between something working and something working well.


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ValentineWiggin
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11 Nov 2012, 11:36 pm

"It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes. A vegetarian diet is defined as one that does not include meat (including fowl) or seafood, or products containing those foods. This article reviews the current data related to key nutrients for vegetarians including protein, n-3 fatty acids, iron, zinc, iodine, calcium, and vitamins D and B-12. A vegetarian diet can meet current recommendations for all of these nutrients. In some cases, supplements or fortified foods can provide useful amounts of important nutrients. An evidence-based review showed that vegetarian diets can be nutritionally adequate in pregnancy and result in positive maternal and infant health outcomes. The results of an evidence-based review showed that a vegetarian diet is associated with a lower risk of death from ischemic heart disease. Vegetarians also appear to have lower low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, and lower rates of hypertension and type 2 diabetes than nonvegetarians. Furthermore, vegetarians tend to have a lower body mass index and lower overall cancer rates. Features of a vegetarian diet that may reduce risk of chronic disease include lower intakes of saturated fat and cholesterol and higher intakes of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, soy products, fiber, and phytochemicals."

ADA

OP isn't even vegetarian, if I understand correctly.

I second the vote for almond milk- the unsweetened kind is between 30 & 40 calories a cup!


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Schneekugel
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13 Nov 2012, 6:12 am

First things first. Sugar = Carbohydrate but Carbohydrate =/ sugar. Sugar is a Carbohydrate but there are many others like starch, like fruit sugar (also different from pure sugar) and so on.

Lets get away from the actual diet hype, which is replaced every 5 years and not blindly repeat "carbohydratess are evil, carbohydrates are evil" like a marionette, but think about it and use scientific facts.

Carbohydrates supplies us with energy. We use energy to warm our body, to move our muscles and so on. Is there anything bad about moving our body, keeping our body temperature? No, this is very useful. So there is no prob eating some sorts of carbohydrates, as long, as our body is using the energy. Only if we eat more than we are actually using afterwards during the day, then they will be formed into body fat. So there is no different to normal fat. If you eat more fat then u need for energy, it will become body fat as well.

Starch do NOT the same blood sugar spikes as sugar. The problem with pure industry produced sugar is, that the energy of the sugar is immediately going into your blood. As example, i take a cup of sugar and then i empty it over my kitchen desk in one move. So the whole cup is sugar is there on my kitchen desk at once. Thats the blood sugar spike. Our body is able to remove the sugar. So every 10 minutes we are a allowed to give away one spoon of sugar from the kitchen desk. So the sugar will become less after time.

If you take starch then the body cant use it at once. So the energy of the starch reaches our blood in small amounts. In the kitchen example you have a full cup of starch, but instead of emptying it at once like the sugar, you are dripping the starch over a amount of time. Our body is able to remove the starch too, so we can give away a spoon of starch away from the kitchen table every 10 minutes. So you are using the same cup for both examples, having the same amount of carbohydrate, but the amount of starch on the kitchen table itself (the blood sugar spike) will not get as high as with the sugar.

Blood sugar spikes are a problem because our body is not used to blood sugar spikes, like industrial produced sugar provides us. And the pure sugar gives us too much energy in too short time. so its nearly impossible to use all the energy it provides us in the short amount of time until is formed into body fat. But if you eat 600 calories in form of long chained carbohydrates at breakfast, AND you are needing 600 calories in the next hours then there is no problem, everything is just working as intended. ^^

Every kind of blood sugar is removed with the help of insulin. So its correct when you say, that diabetic persons have to watch for all kind of carbohydrates. Still that doesnt form all carbohydrates into sugar. Our parents and grandparetns were eating lots of carbohydrates, and did not get all diabetes. The problem is, that your body produces insulin with the help of your pancreas. Whenever your blood sugar level is increasing your pancreas reacts to it, producing insulin to form the blood sugar into energy if needed or else into fat. The function of your pancreas is decreasing with time, depending on you getting older and how much your pancreas had to work until now, how much stress it had. If the function of your pancreas gets too low (or is too low by nature) and cant produce enough insulin on its own, than thats called diabetes. The problem why so many more people are getting diabetes nowadays is not that we are eating carboyhdrates itself (our parents and grandparents ate lots of these without getting diabetes with 35), but many of us are eating tons of useless carbohydrates, burdening our pancreas without use. There is first the pure industrial sugar, which is huge stress for our pancreas because our body is not used to have that high blood sugar spikes pure sugar gives us. So the blood sugar level is that high that our body sends "Defcon 2" to our pancreas, so instead of having nice cozy work with normal sugar level, for what it has been designed for, its like your chef coming into your office, throwing 40 files on your desk and telling you "All these must be done within the next hour! Hurry, hurry, hurry!" After 30 years of that useless stress your pancreas has burnout and retires.

The second problem is, that we are eating lots of "empty carbohydrates" nowadays. So we are eating every day to get the energy we need (lets say about 2000 calories) and to get the nutrients, vitamins, ... we need. With empty carbohydrates we mean food who has lots of carboyhdrates and nearly no useful nutrients. So if i eat 1000 calories a day in empty carbohydrates, i still need my whole amount of nutrients and vitamins, but I only have got food for 1000 calories left to get them which is pretty hard. Most emtpy carbohydrates are also having comparatively short rather non complex carboyhydrate chains that your body must work on until the glucose is getting into your blood, so again you are reaching higher blood sugar levels when eating too much of them. (But still not as much as with sugar which goes instantly into your blood) This empty carbohydrates are for examples: White rice, white flour which leads us to a lot of products based upon white flour: Most sorts of bread u can buy in supermarkets, hamburger buns, pizza dough, there are tons of it.

So you should avoid that kind of carbohydrates absolutely, because they are completely useless. They are working against your diet, because it should be about loosing weight healthy, meaning you have to watch to get all the nutrients and vitamins you need. When you are eating half of your needed energy in form of empty carbohydrates that leaves not much food left to receive your nutrients. And you are giving your pancreas useless work to do, not as stressfull as with sugar, but still useless, using up the lifetime of your pancreas. But the fact, that we have an organ, designed to provide us with energy from eating carbohydrates means that eating carbohydrates itself is normal to our body. Actually the problem is, that we are eating carbohydrates way beyond average that we should, and in forms of pure sugar or short chained carboyhdrates. Thats the problem, not the carbohydrates itself. With fat its equal. Our body is used to get energy from fat and this is ok, as long as we do not eat more, as our body is needing. Just like the pancreas with sugar, the bile is doing a similar job with fat. And if you eat more fat than average your bile will get in problems too, leading to high cholesterin, gout, ... This are all illnesses regarding of eating too much fat. That doesnt make eating fat itself unhealthy, just like carbohydrates its just about eating TOO MUCH of it.

These extreme diets with "eat no fat", "eat no carbohydrate", "dont eat that with that", changing every 5 years, are all based to existent facts, but instead of telling us to eat just normal, as our body is used to, they are going to oppoiste extremes. The cause is pretty simple: With "Too much fat and carbohydrate are not useful. Just eat normal and balanced." you cannot earn much money, because who needs a book to tell him how to eat normal? Inventing the hyper this and that called diet, based on this and that secrets, and so on... is much more easy to advertise. ^^

So lets go back to eat healthy and balanced. When you are vegetarian, even refusing milk and so on. than legumes are normally a good option (in an average amount) because they are full of protein, vitamins, nutrients. In addition the carbohydrates are extremly long chained, so its nothing about "the same blood spike as sugar", "in 1-4 hours the energy has to be used" and so on. They are of the healthiest carbohydrates we can eat, just like fish and nuts are one of the healthiest fat supplies. Fat isnt evil as long as we eat it in average portions and look to eat healthy fat supplies and the same goes for carbohydrate. The fat used in McDonalds to frie fries: Its evil and there is absolutely no use to eating it. The fat u get from nuts or avocados and so on? In average amounts normal part of our nutrition, a needed energy source and absolutely healthy and a profit for your body. The sugar used in candy bars: Completely useless. Legumes? In average amounts normal part of our nutrition, a needed energy source and absolutely healthy and a profit for your body.

As long as its about real, natural food, there is no "this and that is evil". There is just "too much of this and that is evil." As long as you eat everything balanced, everything is ok. Personally i would not reduce the legumes because specially when you are on diet you have to watch your protein balance. Protein is important for your body. It is used for your body construction, to built muscles, connective tissue, ... and on the other side for a lots of metabolism actions (being part of the blood-oxygen tranpsort system and so on). So if your body gets not the amount of protein it is needing for the metabolism activities, which is a danger for your whole body, it has an emergency plan. To keep the more important metabolism actions going it is starting to build down body cells to free protein which was used to built that cells. So the proteins gets free once again and your body can use them instead for your metabolism.

Why is that so important when you are in diet? Because your daily needed calories are depending on three basics. The basic amount of energy you need for just being alive. Your heart beating, your brain activity, your lung breathing and so on. Even if you stay in bed all day, this energy is needed. Second comes the energy u are needing for doing actions. When walking, when moving, brain works also needs energy. So this part depends on action.
And then as third part you have your muscles. Even if you do not use them a day, so even when resting they need a small amount of energy. The more muscles you have, the more energy they need. Even when you are just lying in bed a whole day long a person with more muscles needs more energy than one with less muscles.

So the worst thing during a diet that can happen to you, is to eat that less protein that your body starts to remove muscles to provide your metabolism with protein. Because the less muscles you have, the more calories you have to reduce to loose weight. And that sucks. Alternative the needed protein can also be won by destroying connective tissue inside your body. Loosing 10 pounds but getting a limp butt isn´t much fun either. ^^

If you like to reduce your carbohydrates, even healthy carbohydrates, its your decision but i recommend that you try to find an alternative protein base in your diet, because if not your diet will become harder and harder.

And no, i´m not possessed with food or diets and it isnt my SI -.-, but my greater sister, who studied medicine, had unfortunately anorexia, so she trashed me with that knowledge every day. For myself i´ve got some food issues, so i am avoiding gluten, sugar, industrial oiled food like deep fried food and so on... by myself, eating much vegetables, lesser fruits and flesh, and my carbohydrates supplies are based on whole grain products, potatoes, legumes and so on. And regarding to my yearly medical check, my body age is younger then my real one and my pancreas is absolutely fine and my BMI is lower than 20. :)

So from my oppinion, everything you eat is ok, as long as you watch that the amount of the calories (the size of your portions) you consume with your food are lower than the one you need. And sure you should avoid "empty carbohydrates" just as you should try to avoid "emtpy fat". Eating calories without having anything useful from it (nutrients, vitamins, protein) is never useful in any way. Avoiding healthy food because of the actual trend diet, without knowing the facts behind it, isnt useful either.



GoonSquad
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13 Nov 2012, 11:14 am

Mummy_of_Peanut wrote:
ValentineWiggin wrote:
Mummy_of_Peanut wrote:
ValentineWiggin
I really have to disagree with you on this one. I'm not eating a lot of sugar. Carbohydrate =/= sugar.

8O
Mummy_of_Peanut wrote:
The carb in oats, rice and lentils is starch. It breaks down slowly and they're considered low GI foods.

The fact that it doesn't spike your glucose as much as a candy bar doesn't change that it's a relative distinction.


Mummy_of_Peanut wrote:
Do you only eat veg, nuts and seeds and no grains or legumes?

The vast majority of my calories don't come from carbohydrates.
Mummy_of_Peanut wrote:
That's too extreme for me, I'm afraid. I was vegetarian for 10 years and vegan on and off too, but I would never go to the extremes of excluding the best vegan source of protein.

It's virtually-impossible to be protein-deficient without also being calorically-deficient.

Mummy_of_Peanut wrote:
As I said, I'm not overloading on them anyway, my diet is way more than 50% veg.

Not by calories.
You've given me some food for thought (pardon the pun). I do know that I'm definitely eating less carbs and more veg than any people I know. The British diet is very wheat based, sandwiches or pasta for lunch and pies, pastries, breaded chicken, fish fingers, etc for dinner. And they tend to eat a lot of potato products as well. My parents have potatoes at every dinner. I don't eat like that at all and I think others see this as a bit weird. But, maybe I need to go even further than that and weird them out entirely. It's none of their business anyway and I'll prove them wrong for being ultra-healthy. Thanks for your insight.


I second Val's recommendations...

Don't be so afraid of fats and cut your carb consumption.

I gained 25lbs eating a carb rich Med. Diet. I recently lost 35lbs by eating a sensible, low carb diet.

I eat a lot of meat, eggs. cheese, but also a lot of vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, squash (yellow/green), and carrots), leafy greens, nuts, berries and a little bit of rice.

I don't eat grains, bread, high sugar/low fiber fruits (like bananas), potatoes, legumes or any type of refined sugar.

There is some good science to back up this sort of diet.... especially if you are becoming insulin resistant.

The Stanford A to Z diet study.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eREuZEdMAVo[/youtube]
This is LONG, but worth the time to watch.


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13 Nov 2012, 1:24 pm

Schneekugel's post is one of the most sensible I've seen on this forum!



Kjas
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13 Nov 2012, 11:05 pm

ValentineWiggin wrote:
"It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes. A vegetarian diet is defined as one that does not include meat (including fowl) or seafood, or products containing those foods. This article reviews the current data related to key nutrients for vegetarians including protein, n-3 fatty acids, iron, zinc, iodine, calcium, and vitamins D and B-12. A vegetarian diet can meet current recommendations for all of these nutrients. In some cases, supplements or fortified foods can provide useful amounts of important nutrients. An evidence-based review showed that vegetarian diets can be nutritionally adequate in pregnancy and result in positive maternal and infant health outcomes. The results of an evidence-based review showed that a vegetarian diet is associated with a lower risk of death from ischemic heart disease. Vegetarians also appear to have lower low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, and lower rates of hypertension and type 2 diabetes than nonvegetarians. Furthermore, vegetarians tend to have a lower body mass index and lower overall cancer rates. Features of a vegetarian diet that may reduce risk of chronic disease include lower intakes of saturated fat and cholesterol and higher intakes of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, soy products, fiber, and phytochemicals."

ADA

OP isn't even vegetarian, if I understand correctly.

I second the vote for almond milk- the unsweetened kind is between 30 & 40 calories a cup!


Again - they are stating that used the bare minimum baseline - the minimum baseline is nowhere near enough for optimum performance.
This problem exists regardless of veganism and vegetarianism, I see it all the time when I used to dance, people thinking they are fine because they meet the minimum only to find that they cannot perform long term to their best, or meet their goals while doing so - I'm not saying it's not possible, I'm just saying it does make it more difficult to meet even that baseline - especially for vegans. You have to pay much more attention to get the same results for performance. Not saying that it cannot be done - just saying it is more difficult. Just like it's difficult to meet them if you decide to live off fast food and buy your food out - while you definitely can do it because there are healthier options available - it requires much more attention and effort to do so.


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Schneekugel
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14 Nov 2012, 4:38 am

Quote:
Don't be so afraid of fats and cut your carb consumption.


I eat a lot of meat, eggs. cheese, but also a lot of vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, squash (yellow/green), and carrots), leafy greens, nuts, berries and a little bit of rice.


If i understood everything, she´s vegetarian, including animal products. So this leaves only plant based fats (nuts, avocados, seeds...) and some sorts of fish like carp left (many fish do not have much fat within them). Many seeds also provide fats within them, but normally you get them only in industrial produced form like oil to use for cooking and so on. Personally i have no problem with fat, as i have not problem with carbs, but when not eating animal products there are not too much fat supplies left.

At least if a diet needs to be functioning, it should not be a torture for you. If you dont like it, you will give up the diet sooner or later and a diet only functions if you constantly changes your food. The threadstarter already posted, that she would not like to increase the amount of nuts instead something else. Personally I see no problem to increase the fat instead the carbs, because many fat based foods also provides protein as well (Flesh, milk products and so on), but if you dont like plant based fats and do not eat animal products, there is not much left. You could adds some seeds to the salad (sesame, sunflower, ...) but this isnt a big change either.

Personally i´d add a bit more vegetables, instead of some ot the carbs, but at least only the thread starter can decide what he likes/dislikes. There are many european recipes based on vegetables so if you´d like to trie maybe a ratatouille (http://allrecipes.com/recipe/ratatouille/), letscho (http://easteuropeanfood.about.com/od/hu ... /lecso.htm) or minestrone (http://allrecipes.com/recipe/classic-minestrone/) would be to your liking. :)