#low carb bread vancouver | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

adventurecatalog2015 · 7 years

Text

In Retrospect

In May of 2015, I set out on a backpacking trip through Europe. It was supposed to last two months, but I came home after only five weeks.

While I still have a lot of mixed emotions about the trip, it did teach me a lot about myself. Namely, that it's not a great idea to go to backpacking when you're in denial about your eating disorder.

CW for descriptions of disordered eating behaviours, including bingeing and restricting.

The bus ride to Munich took five hours, and I cried the whole time.

For what it’s worth, it was a nice bus. I mean, it had wifi, and a USB plug in so I could charge my phone, which I took advantage of to watch the latest season of Orange is the New Black while I sobbed softly, occasionally looking up to wonder why no one was asking me what was wrong.

The tears had been building up in my chest for a while, and I’m not sure what specifically broke the dam—maybe watching the buildings of Prague whiz past the window in a daze and thinking gee, I’d like to go to Prague someday, even when I’d spent the past 48 hours exploring the city. Maybe it was the comfortable seat, or how when I finally sat down I could actually feel how twisted and bloated my stomach was. Maybe it was the knowledge that as tired and as sick as I felt, I still had four more weeks of what was supposed to be the best experience of my life stretching out endlessly before me. I tried to imagine Greece and Rome—the white sandy beaches I had been so looking forward to visiting, the ruins, the beauty of Cinque Terre that everyone had told me I absolutely had to see—but when I did I only felt lonely, and tired, and numb.

I don’t think I’ve ever truly experienced depression, but when checked into my hostel room in Munich later that day and sank to the floor sobbing before I could even take off my backpack, I was closer than I’ve ever been.

I had set out on my quintessential backpacking journey five weeks earlier, after months of planning. I had carefully budgeted $6000 for my two-month trip from Ireland to the UK, mainland Europe, and the Mediterranean. I was “winging it” as much as I could—I hadn’t booked any hostels or flights, and had only a loose idea of the things I wanted to do and see. This would leave me open to experiences, I reasoned.

For the record, I still like this approach to backpacking, and my chosen method of travel was not the problem.

The problem was that for the previous two years I had been fostering disordered eating habits that had lead me to lose almost fifty pounds in ten months while simultaneously descending into a hellish binge/restrict cycle that occupied most of my waking thoughts.

I’m still not comfortable saying I had (have?) an eating disorder; “disordered eating” feels better for some reason. I’ve always dealt with anxiety, and maybe OCD, so the way I see it, an obsession over food and exercise was just a fun new way for my mental illness to manifest. At the time, though, I didn’t see it as mental illness.

When I boarded my flight from Vancouver to Dublin, I still thought that my obsessions and anxiety were a flaw. Just like the way I sometimes opened the cupboards and ate everything in sight, my fears were something to be conquered. If I could just grit my teeth and get over my stupid neurosis about food, I could have a good time in Europe, god dammit. I mean, it’s Europe! Once I got there, I told myself, I would be so distracted by the cool things around me that I wouldn’t have time to have a panic attack because I ate a fucking French fry.

As soon as I boarded my flight, my thoughts turned to food. What would they be serving? Would it have protein? Would it be fried? If there was a dinner roll, could I resist eating it? If I couldn’t sleep, I would be hungrier—I would probably end up eating a whole extra meal just because of the time change. What if I ended up eating two breakfasts? I could always just not eat the protein bar I had stashed in my purse; that could make up for it… Shit, the mere thought of my protein bar made me want it. I wasn’t hungry, but I ate it, and then felt simultaneously terrible that I had caved and relieved that it couldn’t taunt me anymore.

I watched movies on the in-flight TV. The first meal came, and I ate the dinner roll, with butter. In the bathroom, I lifted up my shirt and studied my stomach. I’m still okay, I thought. If I don’t eat all of the breakfast meal, I’ll be okay.

I ate all of the breakfast meal.

By the time I had landed in Dublin and found my hostel, almost all of the shops were closed. I ended up getting Subway, because I still remembered how many calories were in my favourite sandwich. I ate it in the restaurant and thought about how many meals I had eaten that day—too many.

It’s okay, I told myself. If I just have a light breakfast tomorrow, I’ll be okay.

I did not have a light breakfast.

So here’s a thing about hostels—they’re cheap. And guess which food macro is the cheapest? That’s right: carbs! My hostel in Dublin offered several breakfast food choices: corn flakes, Muesli, and toast.

I avoided it for as long as I could. I thought of buying eggs from the shop next door and cooking them, but a quick tour of the hostel kitchen ruled that out—it smelled like garbage and there were flies crawling on all of the dishes.

I walked into the dining hall and surveyed my fellow travellers, eyeing their sugar-topped cornflakes and white bread with Nutella disdainfully. I resolved myself to have one bowl of Muesli with milk and a cup of tea. That would be okay. But after that I was still hungry, so I poured myself another bowl.

Fuck, I thought as soon as I sat back down. I really fucked that up, didn’t I? God dammit. Well, if I just eat this last bowl, I’ll be okay—I can still save this.

And then that thing happened. My heart started racing, and my brain was filled with two opposite sentiments: hey, when in Rome! You’re in Europe! Enjoy the food! and Fuck fuck FUCK you fucking failure, what the hell are you doing?

So what the fuck do you do then?

Well, you get another bowl. And another. And the whole time though your brain is screaming at you to stop, for the love of all that’s holy, STOP but you keep getting up, you keep pouring yourself bowl after bowl, and when you realize how spectacularly you’ve fucked up you just and pour yourself some cornflakes, too, with sugar, and make yourself some toast with Nutella, because if you’ve already failed so badly what’s 500, 1000, 2000 more calories anyways? The whole time you try to be casual about it, you hope no one notices, but you’re sure they do.

By the time I met up with my travel buddies I was so full I could barely move. And it only got worse from there.

Now, I’m not going to relive every time I binged in Europe—that wouldn’t be very interesting, because every time kind of looks like that. Every binge starts with me hating myself for eating, and every one ends with me in pain, short of breath, and promising myself that that this will be the last time.

I won’t relive every binge, but I will tell you about a few of the worst ones.

In London, I stayed with an acquaintance who I had met through a mutual friend, and who had graciously invited me to stay with her. While I was there she went to work as normal, and I filled my days with sightseeing in the big city. She also very kindly gave me permission to eat whatever was in her cupboards—a nice, normal thing to do. But for me, it was terrifying.

One day I got home before she did. I decided to have a snack—peanut butter on toast. The peanut butter was good, and slightly different from the stuff we have in Canada. Peanut butter has always been one of the things I am most afraid of—delicious and high calorie, it was one of my favourite binge foods. I had banned it from my house, and even got mad when my partner bought it solely for himself. Consequently, I hadn’t eaten peanut butter in a very long time.

So, I had another piece of toast. And another. And then I didn’t even bother toasting the bread. And then I started eating it by the spoon.

I paced the kitchen, spoon in hand, horrified at myself. Why was I doing this? This wasn’t even my fucking food. Surely my friend would notice how much of her peanut butter I had eaten. It was a smallish jar, and it had been almost full when I started.

And still, it taunted me from the cupboard. My mouth watered. She wouldn’t notice one more spoonful missing, would she?

It took me just over an hour to consume the entire jar, and it was one of the worst hours of my life. I felt sad, sick, out of control, and guilty. At a certain point I decided the only way to fix what I had done was to finish the peanut butter altogether and buy another, identical jar to replace the one I had stuffed myself on.

I still remember lying on Kaitlin’s bed after it was over in the fetal position, in pain, clutching my stomach, yet feeling almost victorious. I had eaten it all. I had replaced the jar. She wouldn’t know what I had done and now I felt so sick and awful that I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt I would never, ever, binge again: this was the low point. The fever dream was over now; I could see clearly at last, and I would be better now.

In case you haven’t guessed it already, that’s not what happened.

Another version of this story: I’m staying with relatives in Holland. They’re distant cousins, all removed and various degrees of separated from me, but they’re some of the most welcoming and hospitable people I’ve ever met. One day they leave me alone in the house. In a daze I rummage through their drawers for food, stuffing myself on cheese, meat, cookies, chocolate, sprinkles—anything I can get my hands on. I pace the house, berating myself but unable to stop. I’m out of breath so I lie down and think this is it; it’s over; I’m done, but that lasts five minutes before I get up and eat another cookie. When they get home I wait for them to say something—to make some surprised comment at how half their food is missing—but it never comes.

Another version: I’m staying on a farm in rural Ireland. They eat mostly bread and potatoes, and I should be grateful that they’re feeding me but all I can think about is how much I hate that the nice old Irish grandma making my dinner insists on making up my plate herself. She sets it in front of me and I feel bile rise in my throat. After dinner they take me to a gathering with a few of their friends and I eat the meat and cheese and bread they’ve laid out until I feel like I might puke. In the bathroom I lift my shirt and stare at my stomach—to my eyes it looks distended, bloated, horrific.

Another: I’m walking through downtown Brussels with an American girl I met at my hostel, eating from a mixed bag of chocolates. I laugh about how I don’t even care that it’s my breakfast, lunch, and dinner but I feel panic rising in my throat, and because I don’t know what else to do or how to stop myself I eat the whole bag.

I’m sitting on the back steps of a hostel in Amsterdam. An Australian boy is sitting beside me, waxing poetic about British Columbia and its wonderful natural beauty, and I’m eating my fifth peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The calories are all I can think about.

I’m in the train station in Berlin, trying to find something to eat for breakfast. I get candy and cookies and eat them while I wait for my train. By the time I get on board I feel like I’m bursting out of my clothes; I give the remainder to the girls sitting beside me and silently congratulate myself for not finishing the bag.

I’m in a cat café in Prague. The cats aren’t very social but there are free snacks; I keep making passes by the table to grab fistfuls of peanuts and cookies before returning to the cats. I play with them as best as I can and try not to cry.

I hold out until an hour later, when I board the bus to Munich.

When I check into my hostel later that day, the boy at the counter looks at me with concern. I don’t quite know what I looked like then, but it couldn’t have been great after five solid hours of crying on a bus.

“Do you need anything?” he asks uncertainly as he hands me my room key. A few sad tears leak out of the corners of my eyes and I shake my head. As I walk away to the elevator, I wonder if he thinks something terrible has happened to me.

I make it to my room, but just barely: as soon as I shut the door everything I’ve been holding inside my chest spills out and I’m sobbing with all my heart, gasping, clutching my face with my hands. Somehow, I manage to call my mom, and she answers.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“I can’t do it,” I say between sobs. “I thought I could do this, but I can’t. This is so much worse than I thought—I’m so much worse—and I don’t know what to do now.”

“That’s okay,” she says. “You don’t have to—you can come home.”

“I can’t,” I say, thinking of the hotel I booked on a small Greek island and my return flight from Rome that doesn’t leave for another four weeks. Oh god. Four more weeks of this? It seems like an eternity, and the thought fills me with a deep, aching exhaustion I can feel in my bones.

“Don’t think about money,” my mom says. “If you need to come home, you need to come home.”

When I finally make the decision to cut my trip short, it’s the best I’ve felt in weeks. I find the cheapest—and soonest—flight back to Canada that I can, and book it before I can second-guess the decision. My hostel is noisy and uncomfortable so I check into a hotel for the last two days of my time in Munich.

Those two days are filled with more anxiety, more binges, and more pacing around my hotel room. Eventually I find my way to the airport and board my flight home.

I wish I could say that when I got back I was instantly better—that being back in a familiar environment with people I loved somehow fixed me. I wish I could say that, after some reflection, I realized that the good memories of my trip outweighed the bad, and I didn’t regret going.

The truth is, I shouldn’t have gone to Europe. Two years later, the memories are still painful, and even though there were some good times and cool experiences, what I remember more than anything else is my obsession with food. Thinking about it, fearing it, and bingeing till I couldn’t move or breath and I hated myself more than anything.

At the same time, that trip was a wake-up call. Would I have realized the extent of my eating disorder if I hadn’t gone? Or would I have just kept going—kept counting every calorie, measuring every spoonful, spending hours every day working out on an empty stomach until I couldn’t take it anymore and binged again, only to redouble my efforts to restrict in the morning.

I don’t know. But I think I’m glad things happened the way they did. The most valuable thing to come out of my experience was the realization that I wasn’t okay. The things I thought were simply character flaws ran much, much deeper, and it just wasn’t possible to grit my teeth and will myself better.

My journey back from that hostel room in Munich didn’t end when I got off the plane in Canada. Two years later, I’m still working to repair my relationship with food and my body and to figure out how to deal with my anxiety.

I haven’t shared this story too freely, because I think a big part of me is still ashamed. Not just because I bought into the toxic attitudes towards food and our bodies that society pushes on us every day, but because part of me still buys into them. Part of me still thinks my life would be better if I was thinner, even though I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that that’s not the case. This belief is the product of decades of messages telling me that the only way to be valuable is to be thin; decades of people all around me repeating this simple truth ad nauseum. Not always with their words, but with their actions, spurred on by their own self-hatred; their own attempts to strive for nonexistent ideals.

This is what I am trying to unlearn.

I haven’t weighed myself in years, but I’m pretty sure I’m back to where I started. It’s hard to make peace with that, especially now that I know what it feels like to be thinner, like I’ve wanted to be since I was eight. Every time I have to buy clothes in a bigger size I panic, and all the old feelings come up again—if I just eat less, if I just exercise more, if I just…

But if I did those things, I know I wouldn’t be happy in the long run. Whatever satisfaction I got from being thinner was hollow. Sure, it made me feel better about myself in the short term, but it was more like a fleeting ego boost than any genuine increase in self-esteem. Because no matter how smug I felt about losing weight, my sense of satisfaction was always, always coupled with fear. More more than anything, I was absolutely terrified that I would slip and lose control and gain everything back. That terror drove me to restrict, and it drove me to binge. I don’t want to be in that place again.

I don’t count calories anymore, nor do I restrict or over exercise, and I haven’t binged in a long time. I finally enjoy eating out at restaurants again, and panic doesn’t grip me when my coworkers bring treats to work. That didn’t happen overnight, and some days are still hard. But you know what? I think that’s okay.

Truthfully, I’m afraid to share this. I’m afraid that you will judge me, or think less of me, or maybe that you won’t even believe me. But maybe someone will see themselves in my story. To you I say: please know that you are not a failure. Please know that it is okay to ask for help. And if you want, I’d love to talk.

#eating disoder recovery #binge eating #restricting #disordered eating #mental health #world mental health day #travel #backpacking #mine #my writing

3 notes · View notes

stregisfinewine-blog · 5 years

Text

On a Keto Diet? Here’s What You Can Still Drink

Keto diet has gained popularity in the past few years because of its weight loss abilities. The gist of the keto diet is you lower down your carbohydrates and sugar intake. Aside from cutting things like rice, pasta, bread and sweets from their diet, many people also shied away from liquor in Vancouver.

However, if you are on a keto diet and you are craving for a drink or two, there are still certain liquors that are keto-friendly.

Beers

As you know, beers are high in carbs. Just one serving of a regular beer can already set you back by 9 grams in carbohydrates content. Switch to low or no carb alternatives instead such as the Big Head No Carb Lager from the Burleigh Brewing Company. The Trailblazer beer from Green’s is also great with only 0.5 grams of carbs per bottle.

Wine

When it comes to wines, always go for dry wines. Sweet wine will surely kick you out of ketosis. Dry red wines such as Pinot Noir, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon, dry white wines like Pinot Grigio, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc and champagne like NV, Extra Brut and Brut are some of your best choices.

Spirits

For spirits, you can’t go wrong with gin, vodka, rum, tequila and whiskey. Just make sure you don’t add artificial sugars. Be careful on fruit juices as well. Choose berries instead of you are adding something sweet.

When buying liquor in Vancouver BC, check the back label for the carb and sugar content. At liquor stores like The St. Regis Fine Wines & Spirits, you are bound to find one that you can indulge in from time to time.

To know more about Wine Vancouver please visit our website: stregisliquorstore.com

#liquor in Vancouver

0 notes

24hourchampagnediet-blog1 · 5 years

Text

Keto diet: weight loss and disease treatment

New Post has been published on https://bestrawfoodrecipes.com/keto-diet-weight-loss-and-disease-treatment/

Keto diet: weight loss and disease treatment

At first, the cravings were like “a drug withdrawal,” Jay Wortman recalls.

Lying on a hotel bed in Ottawa one night, he’d had to white-knuckle his way out of eating Ferrero Rocher chocolates he’d spirited off a flight. A recent Type 2 diabetes diagnosis had prompted the Vancouver-based family medicine doctor to cut out nearly all carbohydrates — sweets, pasta, bread, even fruit — in an attempt to manage his blood sugar while he waited to start medication. But he couldn’t stop thinking about those chocolates, or his favorite breakfast: waffles doused in syrup. “I think I was a full-fledged sugar addict,” he says.

Four months later, the sugar pangs had eased. He got through the early weeks by stocking up on artificial sweeteners and focusing on how much his 2-year-old son needed a healthy dad. With sugar off the table, he says, all that was left was “the non-carby foods” — bacon, eggs, steak, and vegetables. Soon, he started sleeping better and feeling less fatigued. Weight was coming off at the rate of a pound a day, until he was down 30 pounds and no longer overweight. “I had to get my pants taken in,” Wortman says. “And then I had to get them taken in again.”

More than 16 years later and still following the ultra-high-fat, low-carb regimen that’s become popularized under the name keto, Wortman has never taken a diabetes drug. He hasn’t needed to. He feels stronger and is skiing the most ambitious slopes of his life. “At 68, I’m far fitter than I was at 52 when [my diet] started,” he says.

Transformation stories like his — and the thousands of seemingly hyperbolic claims of dieters losing dozens of pounds, complete with Instagrammed before-and-afters — have made keto the biggest diet phenomenon today. The most Googled diet of 2018, it has eclipsed household names like Weight Watchers (now known as WW) and the other low-carb regimens, Atkins and Paleo.

Keto is a Silicon Valley life-hacking fixation (see author Tim Ferriss’s keto videos), a Hollywood trend (see Kourtney Kardashian’s and Halle Berry’s keto journeys), and fodder for numerous online communities. Devotees can meet at low-carb keto cruises, keto conferences, and keto cafes. While there’s no leading figurehead, a cadre of evangelists sell books and pseudo-medical supplements and devices to help dieters check whether they’re truly in “ketosis,” the holy grail fat-burning state keto dieters are after.

Beyond all the hype, the chance that keto — a minimalist variation on the diet promoted by cardiologist Robert Atkins — can solve the obesity crisis is vanishingly slim. On average, low-carb diets look a lot like others when it comes to long-term weight loss: Most people can’t stick to them. There’s tremendous variation in how humans respond to nutritional and dietary tweaks, and let’s not forget that the promises keto boosters now make are reminiscent of the overhyped claims that fueled the recent gluten-free craze.

But how do you explain results like Wortman’s? He expected that avoiding carbs would help manage his blood sugar in the very short term, not that his other diabetes-related symptoms — thirstiness, frequent urination, and blurred vision — would vanish. And he definitely didn’t anticipate that the diet would allow him to control the disease long-term, without any medication.

Keto might not be an obesity panacea, but it would be a mistake to dismiss the diet as just another fad, in part because of results such as Wortman’s. Along with all the dubious keto supplements and the weight loss books has come a growing body of science exploring keto as a potential foil for Type 2 diabetes and other illnesses. It’s part of a fascinating broader examination of how we might use nutrition to treat disease.

“It’s anti-establishment”

Keto isn’t just low-carb — it is practically no-carb. Its followers avoid ice cream and pizza, as well as whole grains, fruits, and legumes such as brown rice, apples, and lentils. No bakery-fresh bagels, homemade apple pie, birthday cake, or even juicy watermelon.

But what people eat in America — and around the world — is carbohydrates. They account for roughly half the calories on average in the American diet, come highly recommended in national nutrition guidelines, and feature prominently in the traditional diets of everyone from pasta-munching Italians to rice-loving Indonesians.

According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, of the world’s more than 50,000 edible plants, “Just three of them, rice, maize and wheat, provide 60 percent of the world’s food energy intake.” All three of those staples are carbs.

To follow a keto diet is to reject this culture and history. And while keto forbids processed junk foods — something common to just about every diet — it also severely limits the fruits, grains, and legumes suggested by the US Department of Agriculture as essential parts of a healthy diet. Keto adherents believe the conventional nutrition wisdom is not only wrong but actively harmful.

This rejection of mainstream thinking helps explain why keto went viral at this moment, and why it’s more than just a diet. It’s a cultural identity.

Take Wortman. He’s been on two of Jimmy Moore’s low-carb cruises, sailing across the Caribbean, downing steak after steak. His wife started keto shortly after he did and remains on the diet. He calls their daughter, who was born seven years into their keto lifestyle, “a product of a keto gestation.”

The diet didn’t just change Wortman’s life; it changed how he thought about medicine and nutrition. He believes there’s a conspiracy by a “matrix of agendas” to promote a plant-based diet. The “whole fiber thing is a myth,” he tells me. He also thinks the concerns about a meat-heavy diet’s impact on the planet — that cows produce too much methane — are hugely overblown (they aren’t), and that the link between cardiovascular disease and saturated fat has been “debunked” (it hasn’t).

In a time when black is white, up is down, and discussions of fake news dominate the news cycle, it’s no accident that keto went viral, says Alan Levinovitz, a James Madison University religion professor who studies diet beliefs. “It’s anti-establishment,” mirroring other strains of rebelliousness in our politics, he says. He experimented with the carnivore diet (a form of keto) and says he experienced no health improvement.

Americans are living in the aftermath of the low-fat experiment — where the public learned about guidelines and studies that have often been muddied by food industry interests. With its emphasis on fat, keto is the antidote to the Snackwell’s era. You can gorge on butter and bacon and stay in ketosis. It’s the perfect fuck-everything-you-know-about-nutrition diet.

A diet to heal disease?

Keto’s potential to heal has captured the imagination of people like Columbia University oncologist and author Siddhartha Mukherjee, who has been studying the diet’s effects on cancer. “We are trying to steer clear of any diet crazes,” he says. “For me, it’s thinking of the diet as a tool or drug,” one that may work when used in tandem with traditional cancer medicines in “a very particular population of cancer patients.” Keto’s effects on insulin and glucose levels — and how they may interfere with cancer cell growth — are what intrigue Mukherjee and other scientists.

He’s only tested the cancer hypothesis in mice. And he has other concerns, echoed by many in the medical field, including that keto may not be safe for the cardiovascular system since it can drive up cholesterol levels.

Wortman, the keto evangelist, is gratified that other doctors are at least opening their minds to keto as a therapy, something he didn’t expect to happen in his lifetime. After his high-fat and -protein diet controlled his blood sugar, he started reading about keto in Atkins’s books and scientific papers and became convinced of its potency.

The diet’s potential for treating Type 2 diabetes is the aspect of keto that has long obsessed Wortman. More than a decade ago, he started lecturing on the subject at medical conferences, only to be lambasted. Other health professionals believed the high-fat regimen would damage people’s kidneys, arteries, and brains.

Wortman felt vindicated when, this spring, the American Diabetes Association came out with a consensus statement — intended as guidance for doctors across the country — suggesting a very low-carb diet could be a nutritional treatment option for some patients with diabetes.

Today, Wortman prescribes keto to all his patients who have Type 2 diabetes. (The standard medical interventions include weight loss, exercise, medication such as metformin, and insulin therapy, as well as regular blood sugar monitoring.) He’s even experimented with using the diet to treat northern British Columbia’s aboriginal people, who are disproportionately diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. Though he never published anything on the experiment in a scholarly journal, it was the subject of a 2008 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation documentary. “People lost weight, improved their diabetes, and got off their medications,” says Wortman, who does not profit from advocating for the keto diet.

“The obvious failure of the conventional approach has also been getting too big to ignore,” he adds. “I often say to my patients and colleagues now, ‘What’s the most important thing you do about your health? It’s your diet.’”

The burning question

The reason for shunning sugars is that eating more than the equivalent of a slice or two of bread each day can knock dieters out of ketosis. Dr. Atkins reportedly liked to say that ketosis is “as delightful as sunshine and sex.” (With his four-phase plan, he promised to help people “stay thin forever” by eating more fat and fewer carbs — the same way the now-popular Keto Reset Diet book promises to “burn fat forever.”)

To understand how ketosis works, consider how the human body uses fuel. On a typical high-carb diet, we’re fueled primarily by glucose (or blood sugar), much of which we derive from carbohydrate-rich foods. When we eat a bagel or a bunch of grapes, for example, the glucose levels in our blood rise, and the pancreas secretes insulin to turn glucose into an energy source, moving it from the blood into our cells.

But the body only evolved to store enough glucose to last a couple of days. So if we forgo eating carbs, it finds other ways to keep going.

One of those ways is a process called ketogenesis. In ketogenesis, the liver starts to break down fat — both from food and from the reserves stored in our fat tissue — into a usable energy source called ketone bodies, or ketones for short. Ketones can stand in for glucose as fuel when there��s a glucose shortage. Once ketogenesis kicks in and ketone levels go up, the body is in ketosis and burning fat instead of the usual glucose. (Whether this actually leads to increased calorie burn or fat loss is a matter of scientific debate.)

There are a couple of avenues into ketosis. One is through fasting: When you stop eating altogether for an extended period of time, the body will ramp up fat burning for fuel and decrease its use of glucose (which is part of the reason people can survive for as long as 73 days without food).

Another way to reach it is by making your body think it’s fasting — by eating only about 20 to 50 grams of total carbs per day. At the low end, that’s equivalent to a slice of bread or a small potato.

People on a keto diet generally aim to get about 5 percent of their calories from carbohydrates in foods such as berries and salad, about 15 percent from proteins like salmon and sardines, and 80 percent from fats including coconut oil and avocado. And ketosis is a quantifiable state. Dieters can measure their ketone levels with blood tests, breathalyzers, and urine strips (with varying degrees of accuracy — blood tests are considered the gold standard for now).

This data-driven aspect is part of what appealed to Ethan Weiss, a University of California San Francisco professor of cardiovascular research. Initially, he was skeptical when he was invited to consult for Virta Health, a company selling lifestyle counseling on ketogenic diets for Type 2 diabetics. A second-generation cardiologist, he says his family had “nothing that resembled fat in the house” when he was growing up.

The more he learned about keto, however, the more intrigued he became. He says he was excited by “the idea that we can give [patients] an option that’s going to get them off medication reliably. The only other intervention that’s done that was bariatric surgery,” he says.

Eventually, Weiss co-developed a breath sensor, called Keyto, to help people track how their diet affects their ketone levels. Playing around with the prototype, he realized he’d made the diet a kind of game. “I was trying to see if I could get my ketone levels to go up. And because I’m naturally competitive and like games, I got obsessed.”

Within two months, he dropped nearly 16 pounds he hadn’t intended to lose and saw his blood sugar levels, which had been high, normalize.

Still, he concedes there’s a lot we don’t know about the effects of the diet. “There are two questions: Is it safe to be in ketosis long-term? And is there something else about this diet that’s potentially dangerous or harmful long-term? We can’t really answer either one in a rigorous way today,” he says.

One concern is that some people on keto will see their cholesterol levels increase, which is linked with a heightened risk of heart disease. In a recent op-ed criticizing low-carb evangelists for their “cheerleading,” Weiss wrote of the cholesterol problem: “It’s a classic issue of balancing benefits and risks, one complicated because it isn’t clear if, how much, or in whom an increase in cholesterol even matters. That’s why there is general consensus that rigorous clinical trials are needed to answer this critical question.”

Other doctors, writing in JAMA Internal Medicine, list “keto flu,” cardiac arrhythmias, constipation, and vitamin and mineral deficiencies among keto’s documented side effects in the pediatric scientific literature. But the diet’s greatest risk, they write, may be the opportunity cost of not eating enough high-fiber, unrefined carbohydrates.

I ask Weiss why he’s so excited about keto, even willing to promote it, given those risks, and the fact that sustained weight loss on keto doesn’t look all that different from other diets. “[We] can’t let perfect be the enemy of great,” he answers. “That is, what we are doing now sucks.”

The frontiers of keto science

Oncologists are also looking past keto’s big unknowns and exploring the potential benefits of the diet as part of cancer therapy. While they warn that it’s far too early to prescribe the diet for any specific cancer type, they’re excited about the possibilities.

For a study published in 2018 in Nature, Mukherjee and his co-authors tested whether PI3-kinase inhibitors — a class of drug used to treat cancers, which has the side effect of driving up blood sugar and insulin levels — would perform better in mice when they also ate a keto diet or took a drug that suppressed insulin levels. The idea they wanted to test, Mukherjee explained on Weiss’s keto podcast, was: What if “the drug causes a physiological side effect — high sugar, high insulin — and that high insulin is now what is bringing the tumors alive again … like a malignant circuit.”

In the study, the combination of the drug and the diet shrank 12 types of tumors in mice — even pancreatic cancer, which is very difficult to treat in humans. But keto caused the leukemia to worsen, meaning researchers still need to work out where the diet is helpful and where it’s harmful.

Marcus DaSilva Goncalves, a co-author on the study and endocrinologist at New York’s Weill Cornell Medicine, says we’ll learn more from a human trial, scheduled to start later this year, that will build on the mouse research.

For now, it’s way too early to know whether this research will translate to humans, despite all the YouTube videos and blogs suggesting that sugar “feeds” cancer. “We are in the Stone Age of understanding which diet is best for each type of cancer site,” Goncalves said.

He’s also concerned about heart health. “We don’t know what it’s doing to cardiovascular risk factors. But cancer’s unique — people are willing to accept a more hazardous condition in order to cure the cancer.”

Much better-established are keto’s effects on epilepsy. For nearly a century, doctors have been prescribing the diet to treat epilepsy, an idea that came about in the 1920s, when researchers observed that people who fasted experienced fewer seizures. Researchers still aren’t sure why the diet can work, but a few mechanisms have been proposed, including making neurons more resilient during seizures. And today, studies have shown that children and adults whose epilepsy doesn’t respond to medications seem to experience a pretty large reduction in seizures when following a ketogenic diet.

That doesn’t, however, mean that the diet works for other conditions. There are still many questions about even the most talked-about keto applications, such as keto for Type 2 diabetes. While researchers have found the diet can reduce people’s hemoglobin A1C (a measure of blood sugar) and their reliance on medication, the effects tend to wane after one year.

Virta Health, the keto counseling company Weiss consults for, recently published data from a two-year evaluation of the Virta program. Through telemedicine, Virta’s clients get nutrition support and health coaching about how to prepare low-carb foods and stick to the diet. In the trial, people’s A1C and weight crept up between one and two years — but 38 percent saw their diabetes reverse and 15 percent were in remission. “Those results are dramatically better than anything else anybody’s published at two years with diet or lifestyle regimen,” Steve Phinney, a founder of Virta who has been studying (and living on) keto for decades, says.

Skeptics, such as the cardiologists turned diet gurus Dean Ornish and Joel Kahn, argue that keto’s potential heart risks are too great. Others note that it’s not clear whether it’s the keto diet itself or the weight loss it can induce that helps control Type 2 diabetes.

To begin to answer the latter question, Phinney and his colleagues ran a study that cycled 16 patients through a low-carb (keto), moderate-carb, and high-carb diet during four-week periods, with two-week reset periods in between. During the diet, the participants were fed enough to keep their weight stable. At the start of the trial, they all met diagnostic criteria for metabolic syndrome, a constellation of conditions — excess fat in the abdominal area, high blood sugar, low HDL (or “good”) cholesterol, and high blood pressure — that are linked to an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, and Type 2 diabetes.

The results were just published in the journal JCI Insight. After one month on the high-carb diet, one of the 16 people no longer met the criteria for metabolic syndrome. On the moderate-carb diet, three of the 16 reversed their metabolic syndrome. On keto, that number rose to nine out of 16. This suggests that it’s carbohydrate restriction, not weight loss, that helps control metabolic syndrome, including high blood sugar.

The study will have to be replicated. It’s also worth noting the high-carb group ate a lower-quality diet (with foods such as marshmallow fluff and barbecue sauce) while the lower-carb groups stuck to whole foods, which could have muddied the results. And it was funded by a grant from Dairy Management Inc. and the Dutch Dairy Association, and co-authored by researchers with a financial stake in showing keto’s benefits.

But Phinney believes the work is nothing short of revolutionary. “A guy named Thomas Kuhn pointed out that scientific revolutions don’t happen overnight, they happen over time,” he says. “We’re using a non-pharmaceutical, very powerful tool to hopefully halt and turn back an epidemic that is threatening our ability to provide health care because it’s such a dramatically expensive disease.”

And there are other ways the diet may be used. Researchers are currently exploring the benefits of keto for Type 1 diabetes. There’s preliminary research suggesting an ultra-low-carb diet could have a role in treating neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. A lot of the brain research, however, was done in mice or cells, so we still need evidence of human response. When we have better studies, keto might look as ineffectual as gluten-free — or maybe it’ll be the diet miracle we’ve been hoping for. That is, if we can stick to it.

CREDITS Editor: Eliza Barclay Visuals editor: Kainaz Amaria Designers: Amanda Northrop and Christina Animashaun Copy editors: Tanya Pai and Tim Williams Cover designer and graphics: Javier Zarracina Photographer: Scott Suchman for Vox Food stylist: Lisa Cherkasky for Vox

Source link Keto Diet Diabetes

0 notes

fuckyeahtattoogirls-blog1 · 5 years

Text

Keto diet: weight loss and disease treatment

New Post has been published on https://bestrawfoodrecipes.com/keto-diet-weight-loss-and-disease-treatment/

Keto diet: weight loss and disease treatment

At first, the cravings were like “a drug withdrawal,” Jay Wortman recalls.

“It’s anti-establishment”

This rejection of mainstream thinking helps explain why keto went viral at this moment, and why it’s more than just a diet. It’s a cultural identity.

A diet to heal disease?

The burning question

But the body only evolved to store enough glucose to last a couple of days. So if we forgo eating carbs, it finds other ways to keep going.

One of those ways is a process called ketogenesis. In ketogenesis, the liver starts to break down fat — both from food and from the reserves stored in our fat tissue — into a usable energy source called ketone bodies, or ketones for short. Ketones can stand in for glucose as fuel when there’s a glucose shortage. Once ketogenesis kicks in and ketone levels go up, the body is in ketosis and burning fat instead of the usual glucose. (Whether this actually leads to increased calorie burn or fat loss is a matter of scientific debate.)

Within two months, he dropped nearly 16 pounds he hadn’t intended to lose and saw his blood sugar levels, which had been high, normalize.

The frontiers of keto science

Source link Keto Diet Diabetes

0 notes

newscitygroup · 5 years

Text

Cookbook highlights gallstone-friendly recipes | Vancouver Sun

The Gallstone-Friendly Diet: Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Gallstones (And How to Keep on Their Good Side)

By Juliet Sullivan

Hammersmith Books Limited | $9.99

Juliet Sullivan vividly recalls the moment when she had her first gallbladder attack.

“I was sitting on the beach one day, and about half-an-hour after eating lunch, a sudden and excruciating pain ripped through my chest and stomach,” she says. “Once I was sure I wasn’t having a heart attack, I put it down to indigestion, and didn’t think any more of it.”

That is, until a few days later when the agonizing experience occurred again. And, then again.

“The third time, I ended up at emergency, but the doctors were baffled,” she recalls. “The fourth time, I had a round of tests including a CT scan, which is where they discovered my collection of stones.”

Gallstones are hard, pebble-like particles typically made of cholesterol or bilirubin, that develop in the gallbladder, according to Sullivan. They can range in size from a grain of sand to a golf ball.

“Gallbladder disease is an incredibly common problem in western cultures. But there seems to be a lack of awareness and understanding generally about (it),” Sullivan says. “I myself had never heard of gallstones before I was diagnosed.

“Some people can have gallstones without ever knowing they have them.”

Triggers for gallstones attacks can differ from person to person, Sullivan explains. Hers were brought on after digesting fat — regardless of whether it was a ‘healthy’ fat or a ‘bad’ fat.

“Fat doesn’t necessarily cause gallstones to form, but it certainly is the enemy once you have them,” she says. “In my case it was olive oil and almonds.”

Following the diagnosis, Sullivan jokingly remembers feeling “very sorry” for herself.

“At the time it was very difficult,” the British-born author who now lives in the Lower Mainland, says. “The only way for me to avoid the agonizing pain of a gallstones attack was to eat very little fat, and so my diet changed overnight.”

The diagnosis and new reality of her diet forced Sullivan to learn a lot about gallstones and gallstone-friendly food — very quickly.

“After my doctor told me to cut fat from my diet, I started researching how to eat without using fat, and realized there were very few cookbooks available in this genre — mainly because it is not healthy to cut fat from your diet,” she says. “But there were also very few books about gallstones either.”

Juliet Sullivan.

Paul R Stevens /

Handout

So, she decided to create one of her own.

“I have been flirting with writing a memoir type book for years, as memoir is my writing style, and so I incorporated a few chapters of ‘my story’ into the book, to add a context, and also to show the funny side of gallstones. There isn’t one, of course, but I tried anyway,” she explains of the book, which she originally self-published before the title was picked up by a publisher for its second edition.

By a process of trial-and-error Sullivan came up with a collection of recipes that met the criteria for cooking and eating with gallstones in mind. The recipes are given a star rating to identify the approximate fat content of each dish — three stars for “ultralow fat” (about less than three grams of fat per serving); two stars for “low fat” (about less than five grams of fat per serving); and “lowish fat” (about five grams of fat per serving plus the protein).

“Being British, I grew up on my grandma’s shepherd’s pies and apple pies. Lots of pies, actually, which does go some way to explaining how I ended up with gallstones,” she says good-humouredly. “(But), I love food, and I was not prepared to live on dry toast and apple-cider vinegar for six months while I waited for my operation to remove my gallbladder.

“So I set about creating recipes that mirrored the kind of food I love, without some of the offending ingredients.”

The book includes a variety of dishes including breakfast, lunch, dinner, side dishes and dessert options.

When asked to pick a personal favourite, Sullivan pointed toward recipes that show just how close she was able to keep her dietary restriction-abiding dishes to her food heritage roots — albeit with a few thoughtful (and in some cases, inventive) modifications.

“So that I didn’t feel too hard-done-by, I created homely recipes such as Veggie Shepherd’s Pie using lentils and sweet potato, and it is delicious. It is easily as delicious as the meat version. And it uses no fat. It is a healthy comfort food,” she says. “The apple pie is another story, because you can’t have an apple pie without the pie part. I just retrained myself how to think about desserts and treats.

“In this case, once you ditch the pastry, it is actually quite surprising how tasty a baked apple can be, especially if you throw a bit of zero-fat yogurt on top.”

Sullivan hopes that readers — whether those who are simply curious about discovering healthy alternatives to their favourite dishes or those who are suffering from gallstones themselves — better understand the impact that a proper diet can have on their health. As well as earn a greater understanding (and maybe a healthy dose of fear) of what exactly gallstones are, who can develop them and, most importantly, how to avoid them.

“There is a common belief that the only people susceptible to gallstones are female, fair, fat and over 40,” she says. “Whilst there is some evidence that all of these factors can play a part, the fact is that anyone can develop gallstones, even children. Cutting back on refined carbs and increasing fibre intake has been suggested to be the best way to avoid forming gallstones.

“Because, believe me, if you can avoid forming gallstones, you really should. They are evil.”

RECIPE: Fiery Fajita Bowls

1 cup (250 mL) brown rice

Coconut or olive-oil cooking spray or water for steam frying

1 onion, sliced

1 medium courgette (zucchini), cut into sticks

1 red pepper, sliced

1 yellow pepper, sliced

3 medium mushrooms, sliced

1 tsp. (5 mL) smoked paprika

1/2 tsp. (2.5 mL) cayenne pepper

1/2 tsp. (2.5 mL) ground cumin

Salt and pepper

Simple homemade salsa

2 large tomatoes, diced

1 spring onion, finely chopped

2-3 sprigs fresh coriander (cilantro), finely chopped

Salt and black pepper

To assemble

Fresh coriander (cilantro)

Chopped spring onions

Hot sauce

Salad

Low-fat sour cream

Method

Boil the brown rice in plenty of water, until cooked to your liking (around 20 minutes), then drain.

Meanwhile, heat a large frying pan or wok over medium heat, then thinly coat the bottom with cooking spray, and add the chopped vegetables.

Add the spices, and a pinch of salt and pepper.

Cook over high heat, stirring regularly, for about five to 10 minutes, until the vegetables are soft.

To make the simple homemade salsa, place the diced tomatoes in a bowl with one chopped spring onion and a sprinkling of fresh coriander; add a pinch of salt and pepper. Mix.

To assemble your veggie fajita bowls, serve the cooked brown rice into three bowls, top with the vegetable mixture and add the homemade salsa.

Finish with a dollop of low-fat sour cream (if using), some chopped coriander and spring onions, and a dash of hot sauce.

RECIPE: Nearly No-Fat Banana Bread

Coconut or olive-oil cooking spray

1 1/2 cups (375 mL) gluten-free, whole-wheat flour

3/4 cup (180 mL) caster sugar

1 1/4 tsp. (6 mL) baking powder

1/2 tsp. (2.5 mL) bicarbonate of soda/baking soda

1/2 tsp. (2.5 mL) ground cinnamon

2 egg whites

3 ripe bananas, mashed

4 tbsp. (60 mL) apple sauce

Method

Preheat oven to 180 C (350 F).

Lightly grease a 8×4-inch (20×10-centimetre) loaf tin with a few pumps of cooking spray.

In a large bowl stir together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and cinnamon. Add the egg whites, bananas and apple purée and stir just until combined.

Pour the batter in the preheated oven for 50-55 minutes, until a skewer inserted into the centre of the loaf comes out clean.

Turn out onto a wire rack and allow to cool before slicing.

[email protected]

Source link

The post Cookbook highlights gallstone-friendly recipes | Vancouver Sun appeared first on News City Group.

from News City Group https://newscitygroup.com/cookbook-highlights-gallstone-friendly-recipes-vancouver-sun/981943/

0 notes

justgetfitnikki · 6 years

Photo

60 minute meal prep! 🔸M1: 1 egg, 3 egg whites with avocado toast using protein bread and topped with chia seeds and sweet chili sauce 🔸 M2: #justgetfitovernightoats with rolled oatmeal, 2% Greek yogurt, unsweetened almond milk, 1 Tbsp. peanut butter and frozen raspberries 🔸M3: 2 mini burgers #justgetfitnakedburgers with lettuce, tomatoes, onions, ketchup and mustard and cucumber 🔸M4: zoodle soup with onions, garlic, mushrooms, tomatoes (made daily) with baked chicken meatballs 🔸Snacks: 2% cottage cheese, 1 protein shake, 1.3 oz almonds ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Some weeks I prefer to consume most of my carbs post workout like 👆. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Meal prep question? 👇 Ask away! ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ Don't forget to check your inbox this afternoon to see: 🔹 my low carb vegan stir fry recipe 🔹what ingredients I always have in my fridge/freezer and pantry ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ #postworkoutmeal #lowcarb @justget.fit #overnightoats #caloriecounting #highproteinlowcarb #intermittentfasting #mealprep #zoodles #lowcarb #eeeeeats (at Vancouver, British Columbia)

#postworkoutmeal #caloriecounting #mealprep #lowcarb #justgetfitovernightoats #zoodles #eeeeeats #intermittentfasting #overnightoats #highproteinlowcarb #justgetfitnakedburgers

0 notes

haveagreatmeal-blog · 6 years

Text

Low Carb Bread And Gluten-Free Blender Is Ideal For Dukan Diet

The dukan diet restricts carbohydrate consumption and is the eating plan of many people who wish to lose weight and adhere to a healthy lifestyle

However, abandoning carbohydrates means saying goodbye to bread, darling of 9 out of 10 people

Check step by step to make Low Carb Bread Ingredients

3 eggs

50 g grated parmesan

3 tablespoons water

20 g linseed flour

15 g coconut flour

3 tablespoons…

View On WordPress

0 notes

gastropostvancouver · 8 years

Photo

From Gastroposter Cherub Lum, via Instagram:

Italian sausage white wine bean stew with rosemary. Because of the recent cold and chilly weather in Vancouver, my body has been craving something warm and comforting. This easy stew recipe is great with amazing flavours from the sausage, wine and fresh rosemary. It's a satisfying healthy meal that is low carb to help you stay on track with your healthy eating before all the holiday meals. It can be served on whole grain pasta/rice/bread or even quinoa or zoodles for an even healthier option. I

0 notes

24hourchampagnediet-blog1 · 5 years

Text

Keto diet grocery list: How to follow a high-fat, low-carb diet

New Post has been published on https://bestrawfoodrecipes.com/keto-diet-grocery-list-how-to-follow-a-high-fat-low-carb-diet/

Keto diet grocery list: How to follow a high-fat, low-carb diet

Low-carb eating is not always cheap.

“We probably spend about 60 bucks a month on nuts alone,” a kinesiologist and cancer researcher named David Harper, who’s been on a high-fat ketogenic diet for six years along with his wife, Dale Drewery, recently told Business Insider.

But Harper believes that buying pricey, keto-diet-friendly staples, such as local grass-fed butter (Harper pays 20 Canadian dollars a pound) and ribeye steaks will pay off for years to come.

“You can pay maybe another buck and a half a day to eat healthier food, but if you don’t do that, the cost in terms of healthcare is going to be enormous down the road,” he said.

Harper and Drewery recently published a how-to keto guide called “BioDiet.” In it, the couple describe the food they eat on their high-fat diet, and not all ingredients are expensive. They like chicken, eggs, and pork, for example, which are not as pricey per pound as nuts, butters, and seeds.

“We eat organ meats and that sort of thing, like liver, and those are just really cheap,” Harper said.

He and his wife gave us a rundown of what’s on the shelves in their kitchen, and the list shows that the keto diet, when done well, is not a high-protein, bacon-and-cheese-fueled eating plan.

Not all keto diets are created equal

Keto diets involve a lot of butter, oil, and other fats: Dieters get more than two-thirds (70-80%) of their daily calories from fat, while generally getting no more than 5% from carbs. The goal is to enter a metabolic state called ketosis, in which the body breaks down fat for fuel instead of using carbohydrates. It’s the same state that is triggered when people starve.

Olives being poured from a bucket on the West Bank, near the Mediterranean Sea.

AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen

Sugar and other carbohydrates are essentially banned at Harper’s home in Vancouver, British Columbia. That aligns with guidance that most nutritionists agree with, whether they endorse keto diets or not: Too much sugar is not good for our bodies, our brains, or our long-term health.

“We’ve been vilifying fat, especially saturated fat, for the last 30 or 40 years, when in fact we should have been vilifying sugar,” Harper said.

The keto diet has been shown to be helpful for treating epileptic seizures, fueling weight loss, and combatting Type 2 diabetes. The regimen has also gained something of a cult following in Silicon Valley and among some elite Hollywood stars like Kim Kardashian and Halle Berry.

But some keto dieters tend to rely too much on protein-packed foods like red meat and cream, while not getting enough essential nutrients from plants. That could up one’s odds of developing health problems like gout and put extra stress on the kidneys.

To avoid those risks, Harper said, he and Drewery make sure to eat plenty of veggies and nuts.

“We have a little bit of animal protein every day of some sort or another, but not a lot,” he said. “A steak or something we would probably share, because we’re trying to get most of our calories from fat.”

A list of healthy, keto-friendly foods Harper and Drewery keep at home

Harper and Drewery don’t skimp on fresh produce, even though it contains some carbs.

David Harper/BioDiet

Here’s what’s in their keto kitchen:

Vegetables

“Anything that grows above the ground that’s not a grain, or a fruit, or a bean, other than green beans,” as Harper describes it. “Whether you’re eating a pepper or a bit of summer squash or zucchini, you’re going to get a little bit of carbs. But that amount is negligible in terms of staying in ketosis, so I don’t worry about it.”

Some of his favorite keto-friendly veggies include (in alphabetical order) artichokes, asparagus, avocados, bell peppers, bok choy, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, eggplant, green and yellow beans, kale, lettuces of all kinds, mushrooms, olives, onions, radishes, snow peas, spinach, summer squash, tomatoes, watercress, and zucchini.

Unsaturated Oils

These are liquid at room temperature and high in monounsaturated fat. Olive oil and macadamia oil are Harper’s go-tos.

Saturated fats

This category includes ghee, coconut oil, and Harper’s preferred 20-Canadian-dollar grass-fed butter.

Cream

“I eat full-fat cream in everything,” Harper said. Regular milk isn’t a great option for people on the keto diet because almost all of the carbohydrates in milk come from lactose, which is a sugar. There’s barely any lactose in cream.

Eggs

Harper sometimes cooks a quick breakfast egg “muffin”: He mixes cheese, ham, and almond flour or coconut flour in with eggs, then sticks the concoction in the oven in muffin tins.

A stash of nuts

Pecans, macadamia nuts, Brazil nuts, hazelnuts, and walnuts are all staples at the Harper-Drewery household, as is almond butter.

Seeds

The couple keep a stock of sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, and sunflower seeds around. Drewery told Business Insider that she also baked some keto “breads” using nuts, seeds, and psyllium husks.

Berries and very small doses of other fruit

Many fruits aren’t keto-friendly because they contain a lot of fructose (fruit sugar). But berries are fine on the plan, so Harper and Drewery often buy raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, and blueberries. They’ll occasionally indulge in a few apple slices but probably wouldn’t eat a whole apple in one sitting.

Full-fat yogurt

Harper said he also liked to buy kefir and cheeses like goat, Brie, blue, and cheddar.

Meat, poultry, and fish

Harper opts for marbled, fatty cuts of steak, and he eats chicken with the skin on. He said fatty fish like salmon and halibut were also favorites in his house, along with canned tuna, sardines, and shellfish.

Nonanimal protein sources

This includes tempeh, tofu, and textured vegetable protein.

Of course, many of the things on the list above make for healthy, unprocessed additions to any diet, whether it’s low-carb or not.

But since the keto diet is so restrictive, Drewery said that keeping the freezer stocked with berries, eating most meals at home, and enjoying leftovers often makes it easier not to think too much about what she eats each day.

“The idea that you would be counting your calories or counting your carbs for me is just a complete bore,” she said. “Because, you know, I’d rather just eat.”

Keto isn’t for everyone

Many doctors and nutritionists caution that keto diets come with risks. Those considering going keto should talk to their doctor, since some people have medical conditions, take drugs, or have other circumstances (like a baby in the womb) that could make the diet unsafe for them.

Plus, not all carbs are necessarily bad for our health. Instead, a wealth of studies have shown that people who adhere to Mediterranean diets, which feature fatty oils, fish, and nuts (like keto) but also include lots of fruit and whole grains tend to live some of the longest, healthiest lives.

What’s more, the keto diet may not be much more effective for weight management than other healthy, more well-rounded eating plans. In fact, a roundup of studies published earlier this week suggests that keto diets are “associated with less than a kilogram of additional weight loss over high-carbohydrate, low-fat strategies” when they’re used in the long term.

To date, there hasn’t been enough rigorous study of healthy people following the keto diet to know whether the high-fat plan is completely safe over long periods.

“I think the vast majority of people who go on this diet will have no trouble with their cholesterol,” the San Francisco cardiologist Ethan Weiss recently told Business Insider. “But I’m not going to tell the people that do have trouble with their cholesterol that it’s not a problem.”

Read more: We tried Burger King’s new $1 tacos and found they were nothing like what we expected

Source link Keto Diet Diabetes

0 notes

fuckyeahtattoogirls-blog1 · 5 years

Text

Keto diet grocery list: How to follow a high-fat, low-carb diet

New Post has been published on https://bestrawfoodrecipes.com/keto-diet-grocery-list-how-to-follow-a-high-fat-low-carb-diet/

Keto diet grocery list: How to follow a high-fat, low-carb diet

Low-carb eating is not always cheap.

But Harper believes that buying pricey, keto-diet-friendly staples, such as local grass-fed butter (Harper pays 20 Canadian dollars a pound) and ribeye steaks will pay off for years to come.

“You can pay maybe another buck and a half a day to eat healthier food, but if you don’t do that, the cost in terms of healthcare is going to be enormous down the road,” he said.

“We eat organ meats and that sort of thing, like liver, and those are just really cheap,” Harper said.

He and his wife gave us a rundown of what’s on the shelves in their kitchen, and the list shows that the keto diet, when done well, is not a high-protein, bacon-and-cheese-fueled eating plan.

Not all keto diets are created equal

Olives being poured from a bucket on the West Bank, near the Mediterranean Sea.

AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen

“We’ve been vilifying fat, especially saturated fat, for the last 30 or 40 years, when in fact we should have been vilifying sugar,” Harper said.

To avoid those risks, Harper said, he and Drewery make sure to eat plenty of veggies and nuts.

A list of healthy, keto-friendly foods Harper and Drewery keep at home

Harper and Drewery don’t skimp on fresh produce, even though it contains some carbs.

David Harper/BioDiet

Here’s what’s in their keto kitchen:

Vegetables

Unsaturated Oils

These are liquid at room temperature and high in monounsaturated fat. Olive oil and macadamia oil are Harper’s go-tos.

Saturated fats

This category includes ghee, coconut oil, and Harper’s preferred 20-Canadian-dollar grass-fed butter.

Cream

Eggs

Harper sometimes cooks a quick breakfast egg “muffin”: He mixes cheese, ham, and almond flour or coconut flour in with eggs, then sticks the concoction in the oven in muffin tins.

A stash of nuts

Pecans, macadamia nuts, Brazil nuts, hazelnuts, and walnuts are all staples at the Harper-Drewery household, as is almond butter.

Seeds

The couple keep a stock of sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, and sunflower seeds around. Drewery told Business Insider that she also baked some keto “breads” using nuts, seeds, and psyllium husks.

Berries and very small doses of other fruit

Full-fat yogurt

Harper said he also liked to buy kefir and cheeses like goat, Brie, blue, and cheddar.

Meat, poultry, and fish

Nonanimal protein sources

This includes tempeh, tofu, and textured vegetable protein.

Of course, many of the things on the list above make for healthy, unprocessed additions to any diet, whether it’s low-carb or not.

“The idea that you would be counting your calories or counting your carbs for me is just a complete bore,” she said. “Because, you know, I’d rather just eat.”

Keto isn’t for everyone

To date, there hasn’t been enough rigorous study of healthy people following the keto diet to know whether the high-fat plan is completely safe over long periods.

Read more: We tried Burger King’s new $1 tacos and found they were nothing like what we expected

Source link Keto Diet Diabetes

0 notes