carbs are a fast way to refill glycogen stores and, in some cases, they are yummy. but we dont actually need them. our livers can make glucose out of protein.

the problem for most is the amount of carbs. eating lots of varied meat, fruits, and vegetables, will give you plenty of carbs, and every thing else you need. add in starches, and you can easily get into too much with no health benefit over leaving them out.

I am on board with the refined carbohydrates (such as white breads, white pasta etc) being not fantastic for you. This is what the video describes. The video does not describe the effects of whole grain breads and pasta which is a bit different.

You see, the rate at which your body turns carbohydrates into simple sugars can be measured by the glycemic index. Something high on the glycemic index (such as white bread) results in a quick spike in blood sugar whereas a whole grain bread is lower on the glycemic index and releases glucose at a slower rate.

It really depends on the carbohydrate. Also, breads and pastas (the good kind) contain important nutrients for the body such as fiber and iron. Humans have been eating bread for thousands of years and giving it up completely is a matter of personal preference, it’s certainly not the only way to have a health diet. If you enjoy bread and still want to lose weight and be healthy, read the label.

You do need carbohydrates to survive and they should take up the larger part of your diet. Fruits and vegetables fall into the carbohydrate part of the recommended diet ratio which you find so ridiculous. =)

A lot of people try new crash diets and lose a few pounds but it’s impossible to continue doing it for a longer duration and as soon as they stop they gain even more weight when they started out.

First of don’t trust all the big health and diet companies/magazines; they’re only after your money, only a few of them are real. Because of all the media you see today about weight loss most people are misinformed, one source say one thing and another source says the opposite.

First things first. Before you start a diet, I strongly recommend that you commit to making a lifestyle change. Many people who began a program simply just do whatever the program is… and that’s it. Unfortunately, this is not going to work. The reason why is because you have to also ensure that you are exercising at least 3 times a week, drinking a lot of water, cleansing your body (detoxifying), getting plenty of sleep, etc.

Second, eat at least 5 servings of fruits and vegetables per day Fruits and vegetables are packed with beneficial fibres, vitamins and antioxidants. They fill up your stomach fast so you feel full earlier. They are also low in calories and helps to keep your calorie count low.

Third, most people get caught up with the typical mindset that in order to lose weight, all they have to do is the “eat less move more” approach. My friend, please do not think that this is all that it’s going to take to get in shape. I thought the same thing, and the only thing that ended up happening was my metabolism slowed down and I had a loss of energy!

The best thing to do is to stop going on crazy crash diets and go the natural way so you can still enjoy what you’re eating, say no to weight loss pills and say no to multimillion dollar companies that are trying to scam you with their latest myths. Stick to a simple diet plan that you can still enjoy and you will see results before you know it.
You can also learn how you can lose your first 8 pounds in one week and discover The 5 foods that fight the Abdominal fat that has helped thousands of people including me to lose those extra pounds of the Abdominal fat.

http://www.howtolosetheabdomianfat.blogspot.com

and you can also contact me on carltonlucas@hotmail.com I’ll be more than happy out there to help

Two years ago I weighed 210 lbs, (I am a 5’4″ woman). I had been sick for decades. I had been diagnosed with a variety of things: Fibromyalgia, endometriosis, chronic bronchitis, chronic sinusitis, diverticulitis, sleep apnea, arthritis, on and on – and I had been a migraine sufferer since I was 5 yrs old. My regular meds cost about $1300/month without insurance.

Five years ago I spent a week in the hospital because of breathing issues and was told after a week of tests that my lungs were atrophying because of the Fibromyalgia. I was also on oxygen at night because of the sleep apnea. I never felt truly well and I had no idea what a sense of physical vitality felt like.

A year and a half ago I experienced what I can only call a miracle and most of my physical symptoms disappeared within a matter of days, including the migraines. That’s another story, but I will say that I take no medicines of any kind anymore.

I thought THAT was enough of a miracle – and it was – but what has happened since blows me away on a daily basis.

After I started feeling better physically, I started dropping weight. I lost 20 lbs before I knew it. I was probably moving more just because I felt so much better than I had before. Once I realized that I was losing weight, I started putting thought and effort into it and I lost another 10 lbs. But it was all dietary changes, mostly just eating a lot less of the same old foods I had been eating. I was losing, but my body fat content was still way too high.

Eight months ago the real revolution started. I moved to a place over a mile up and on the edge of a wilderness area and started hiking the trails on a daily basis. I also really started to look at and change what I ate. And I did join a gym last May – mostly because I realized that after being sedentary for 2 decades, I had lost an incredible amount of muscle mass and had horrible balance – not good for trail hiking in mountainous areas. I started working specifically on building balance and core muscle strength – and it has worked.

Fast forward to today. I have now lost 65 lbs in the last year. My hiking pace on the trails is about 4 mph – and that’s while gaining and losing elevation on some fairly rough trails. I work out regularly on free weights, which I absolutely love. My weight and BMI are now well into normal range for the first time in my adult life and my body fat is under 28% – which is great for a woman my age. I went from a size 20 to a size 8.

My diet has evolved into the Paleo diet, although I did not know what that was until today. I don’t eat much – I actually have come to believe that we eat way too much anyway. Cultures with the most centenarians typically eat much less than Americans do, as well as eating much fresher, unprocessed food.

Meats, nuts, fresh veggies, very little fruit, Greek yogurt, cheese, and eggs make up the majority of my diet. If I want something else, I don’t stress about it. I eat what I want. But the amazing thing is what I no longer want! I don’t want crap in a package. I don’t want sugary stuff – I look at something tempting and it takes about 15 seconds to realize that I just don’t want it because it represents how I used to feel – and I sure as Hell don’t EVER want to feel like that again!

I am 60 years old and feel better than I felt at 30. I am adding running and ballroom dancing to my activities – because they give me joy, and I can do them!!

I really believe joy is a huge part of this – you can’t really succeed at this if you view it as punishment – find what gives you joy and work at it!!

Blessings to all!

This is based on 16 meals a week, b/c I know that 3-5 meals will either go skipped or be with friends or coworkers. At an average of $3.12 / 500 cal tasty healthy home-prepped non-processed non fried low/no-carb meal, I only ever eat out with friends occasionally (and I can keep it light and under $10-15 b/c I know I have tasty leftovers at home in the fridge). Even with a splurge of $70 / week for nicer fruit and meat (say, lamb chops), that's still only $4.38 / 500-600 cal meal.

Trail mix: student mix is one of the best / cheapest I've found. For $5 / lb, you get raisins and a good variety of nuts. It's a yuppier version of the Boy Scouts' tried and true GORP — good old raisins and peanuts. My girlfriend likes non-HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) dried cranberries and sunflower seeds. I use old feta cheese containers or single serving tupperware to pack a couple approximate servings on the go.

Time: We have 168 hrs in a week, less 10 hrs a day for maintenance and upkeep (sleep, shower, poop, etc.). That leaves us 100 hrs for everything else — work, play, meals. If your work is your passion, you can sustain long-term up to 50-70 hrs (or 50-70%) work / week.

For the rest of us who work merely to fund our play and meals, 30-40% work is about what we can handle.

That leaves about 50-60% time for play and feeding. Considering how many of us will short ourselves 1-3 hrs of sleep / night, or 5-10 hrs a week, just to get in one more level or round, or movie or TV episode, why not make it up with less meal time and more sleep / play time?

If eating actually takes about 30 mins or 1 hr for a leisurely evening / weekend outing, then that leaves 45-60 minutes of restaurant selection (the dreaded “Where do you want to eat today?” debate), driving, ordering, etc. etc. that we can now choose to reduce to 15-30 mins of cook prep time.

Assuming a Mickey D's or equiv breakfast order takes 20 minutes to drive, order, and receive, my breakfast can save me about 15 mins; this excludes the 10 mins to actually eat either one. Lunch and dinner, about 30 mins each in “prep” time. We leave in 3-5 meals as dining out for work or social outings (1.5 hrs each on avg, for 6 hrs).

Groceries are a one-time weekly cost of 2 hrs. Let's assume the best indulgences and worst pocketbook hit at $70.

Assume eating out costs $5 for breakfast, $10 for a minimal lunch and $20 for dinner.

All meals out all week: 24.5 hrs; $245.

16 meals home-prepped, 5 meals out: 16.75 hrs + 2 hrs groceries; $70.

(Plus a one-time $50-100 for stuff to cook / eat with at home. My estimates are based on 1 good knife, a cutting board, 1 pot, 1 saucepan, a baking tray, tableware, and 1-2 days' worth of plastic / pyrex microwaveable storage containers.)

You save almost 6 hrs and ~$173 / week and still get to hang out with your friends on the weekend when they go out to eat.

Is it worth it?

That's how much time I spend training and fencing longsword every week. It's 6 TV shows. Or an extra hour of sleep almost every night.

Or as dollars: US median income is approx $19 / hr, ($38,940 2009 annual). The money saved is equivalent to working 9 extra hours *every* damn week, 50 weeks a year.

Plus there's the intangible benefit of working towards being a sexy cooking machine who's comfortable with serving up a candle-lit dinner worth at least $40-80 at a restaurant — for only $15-20 out of pocket.

But it's your call. My virtues could be your inconveniences and vice versa. I hope this gives you some food for thought.

I think my previous comment on the diet coke post probably should've gone here.

I never knew about the paleo approach back when I made the switch. It was just some conversations about nutrition, common sense about crucial food for body fuel, and a gradual process of incremental improvement.

I love salty savory food. Chips, dry salami, dry rub Texas BBQ. These were my nemeses that I had to shut out.

Everyone has their own personal reason for losing weight. I wasn't looking for weight loss so much as quality of weight — shifting my proportions from fat to muscle. For me, being out of shape and mildly overweight was like lugging around a regulation 35-lb airline carry-on all the time. *I* was the monkey on my own back. So I was looking for a diet shift, not a diet reduction.

I looked at my budget and made a plan of attack that coincidentally fits the “outside wall” diet. I allowed myself $50 / week, picked up lean meat, fruits and veggies, milk, yoghurt, OJ, bulk trail mix, and by then I was out of money. I was also out of hands, as $40-60 will buy you just enough to carry in bags and two hands (I started parking mid to far in the lot and boycotted shopping carts in favor of handbaskets).

I started by substituting one undesirable or relatively expensive (i.e. processed and packaged) item each week for something fruit / veggie / meat that I liked. e.g. Drop all the bottled juices (even 100% juice with no high fructose corn syrup are still expensive for the empty sugar calories they provide) in exchange for a fillet of sockeye salmon. Ditch the ground beef for a personal sized watermelon. Lose the beloved potato chips, pick up a pork chop. Etc.

After about 3 months of aggressive substitution (with a few lapses of will), I'd converted over my entire weekly grocery haul and was mostly consistent.

During that time, I taught myself one new thing to do with each new substituted food, each week or two. The transition was tough at first — and I already knew how to cook without poisoning myself. What I didn't know was how to cook routinely and how to cook certain new items well, like chicken. I could take an hour or two to make some pretty good dishes, but anyone who works full-time and/or has a life can't spare that every day.

To reduce my time spent, I boiled all my cooking down (har har) to two kinds: veggie and meat. I settled for roughly one meal of each per day, lunch and dinner. All three meals of the day had to be quick to make.

Breakfast took some time to divorce me from my Cap'n Crunch and Cocoa Pebbles. I'm still compromising half the week with frosted mini-wheats. I use soy milk b/c I'm lactose-intolerant and my butt trumpet is quite vocal if exposed to cow juice. The rest of the time, I drink half a bottle of kefir yoghurt and eat 1-3 seasonal fruit (apples, tangerines, bananas, pears, kiwis) at work.

For reference, that's about 450 cal, which is more than a recommended ideal 300 x 8 per day. But I only eat/snack about 5x / day. You do what you can.

Veggie lunch was easier for me: Salads. And not your crappy iceberg lettuce with thousand island dressing. I had always hated restaurant salads.

Components are: Foundation, texture, sweet, savory, protein, dressing. Everyone is different. My implementation was spinach, carrot matchsticks (julienne?), peeled tangerine wedges, sliced roma tomatoes, raisins or dried cranberries (no high fructose corn syrup!), crushed walnuts or pecans, crumbled feta cheese, a salmon fillet or some grilled chicken, and a dash of olive oil, fine vinegar, and OJ (for a crude orange vinaigrette).

Sound complicated? It is and it isn't! Just keep the component list in mind, and you can leave most of that stuff out. Almost everything is optional and for taste. At a minimum, leaves and feta cheese are enough (though hideously boring). With 2-3 days' practice I was able to assemble spinach, dressing, and any other 2 optional components in a lunch container ready to go in about 7 minutes. Plus 15 minutes if grilling salmon or chicken, but you can do that once for 3 days' worth of meat, the night before.

Moving into more complicated lunch/dinner stuff…

Steamed veggies are really easy and a good side dish to the meats (see below). Sprinkle a pinch of salt over a bowl of roughly chopped fresh veggies (broccoli, green beans, etc.), some garlic powder, pepper, whatever, then microwave for about 2-3 minutes.

Meats, now:

The oven / broiler is my best friend. At a minimum, the same seasoning treatment for steamed veggies, applied to a salmon fillet, chicken breast, pork chop, whatever will work. A moderate pinch of salt per serving is good — you can always add more for taste, but you can't take out salt easily. Broiling takes about 4-6 mins per side for a fish fillet. 1-2 lbs of chicken and pork cooks in about 45-60 mins at 325 F. With either pyrex bakeware or foil lined metal oven pans, clean up is a lot easier, compared to pots and pans and spattered stovetops for stewing, frying, or sauteeing.

And the best part is you can set the timer, then go check your e-mail or catch up on news online for fish (I prefer bbc.co.uk) making sure to flip it over after 4-6 mins, play about 2-3 rounds of your favorite shooter (Borderlands or Left 4 Dead 2), or 1 round of an RTS game (Dawn of War 2).

These instructions are brutally rough and ready. These are working dishes, not win-a-girl's-heart dishes. Chefs and foodies alike will lynch you if they found out your dirty dishes. But I walk in the door coming home from work, preheat the oven, prep and broil fish complete with a veggie side dish steamed while I wait to flip the fish, ready to eat on my plate in 20 mins. That beats choosing, driving, parking, waiting for a table, ordering, waiting some more, eating, waiting for the check, and driving home from any low-end sit down restaurant you care to name.

Chicken and pork take about 15 mins to prep, but then you can leave it in the oven and multitask for about 30-50 minutes. So that's still about the same hands-on time required as for fish.

After you get good at this in about 1-2 weeks, you'll be ready to explore and expand into lamb chops, turkey meatballs, grilled shrimp, etc. And for seasoning, cayenne pepper, oregano, and whatever else.

This is based on 16 meals a week, b/c I know that 3-5 meals will either go skipped or be with friends or coworkers. At an average of $3.12 / 500 cal tasty healthy home-prepped non-processed non fried low/no-carb meal, I only ever eat out with friends occasionally (and I can keep it light and under $10-15 b/c I know I have tasty leftovers at home in the fridge). Even with a splurge of $70 / week for nicer fruit and meat (say, lamb chops), that's still only $4.38 / 500-600 cal meal.

Trail mix: student mix is one of the best / cheapest I've found. For $5 / lb, you get raisins and a good variety of nuts. It's a yuppier version of the Boy Scouts' tried and true GORP — good old raisins and peanuts. My girlfriend likes non-HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) dried cranberries and sunflower seeds. I use old feta cheese containers or single serving tupperware to pack a couple approximate servings on the go.

Time: We have 168 hrs in a week, less 10 hrs a day for maintenance and upkeep (sleep, shower, poop, etc.). That leaves us 100 hrs for everything else — work, play, meals. If your work is your passion, you can sustain long-term up to 50-70 hrs (or 50-70%) work / week.

For the rest of us who work merely to fund our play and meals, 30-40% work is about what we can handle.

That leaves about 50-60% time for play and feeding. Considering how many of us will short ourselves 1-3 hrs of sleep / night, or 5-10 hrs a week, just to get in one more level or round, or movie or TV episode, why not make it up with less meal time and more sleep / play time?

If eating actually takes about 30 mins or 1 hr for a leisurely evening / weekend outing, then that leaves 45-60 minutes of restaurant selection (the dreaded “Where do you want to eat today?” debate), driving, ordering, etc. etc. that we can now choose to reduce to 15-30 mins of cook prep time.

Assuming a Mickey D's or equiv breakfast order takes 20 minutes to drive, order, and receive, my breakfast can save me about 15 mins; this excludes the 10 mins to actually eat either one. Lunch and dinner, about 30 mins each in “prep” time. We leave in 3-5 meals as dining out for work or social outings (1.5 hrs each on avg, for 6 hrs).

Groceries are a one-time weekly cost of 2 hrs. Let's assume the best indulgences and worst pocketbook hit at $70.

Assume eating out costs $5 for breakfast, $10 for a minimal lunch and $20 for dinner.

All meals out all week: 24.5 hrs; $245.

16 meals home-prepped, 5 meals out: 16.75 hrs + 2 hrs groceries; $70.

(Plus a one-time $50-100 for stuff to cook / eat with at home. My estimates are based on 1 good knife, a cutting board, 1 pot, 1 saucepan, a baking tray, tableware, and 1-2 days' worth of plastic / pyrex microwaveable storage containers.)

You save almost 6 hrs and ~$173 / week and still get to hang out with your friends on the weekend when they go out to eat.

Is it worth it?

That's how much time I spend training and fencing longsword every week. It's 6 TV shows. Or an extra hour of sleep almost every night.

Or as dollars: US median income is approx $19 / hr, ($38,940 2009 annual). The money saved is equivalent to working 9 extra hours *every* damn week, 50 weeks a year.

Plus there's the intangible benefit of working towards being a sexy cooking machine who's comfortable with serving up a candle-lit dinner worth at least $40-80 at a restaurant — for only $15-20 out of pocket.

But it's your call. My virtues could be your inconveniences and vice versa. I hope this gives you some food for thought.