The FastDay Forum

TML -OMG - I thought it was a grain, but according to the dictionary it's birdseed!! Well, apparently it's a seed - anyway I make a kind of pilaf with it, and it's god to ring the changes. I like buckwheat and amaranth too. I find it stops me craving potatoes, my downfall, and bread. I cannot eat a very low carb diet, but eating these seeds and grains deals with my carb cravings. You can even make a kind of porridge with it, sweeten to taste with whatever and add a bit of cinnamon maybe and berries. I use a wee bit of splenda and I use your mum's tip of adding a wee bit of brown sugar too and have it instead of my regular pinhead oats sometimes. tastes good!

I'll look it up!!! I like grains and seeds!

I just saw Izzy's reply.
I've been thinking that one of the reasons why Greeks haven't totally fallen off the wagon is the -happy- fact that bad foods are more expensive than good ones.
Pulses, veggies, grains etc are cheaper than frozen pizzas and ready meals. If that changes, we're screwed.

Damn - Izzy, I just sent you a reply and it got lost in the ether. Or maybe i'm on drugs, ha!Ha! Anyway, yes cooking is key to eating like this. I can't go too low carb, I end up sabotaging myself by going on a carbfest, so I'm eating all these different things, but in small quantities, like amaranth, quinoa, millet, barley etc. and it stops me from craving bread and potatoes (my downfall). If anyone had told me I could have a meal without bread, toast, rice, pasta or spuds being the star I would have been disbelieving, never mind go without them almost totally now. It's great to hear how well you're doing having ditched the "bad" carbs - just go easy with the crack!

Hi all,
I am one of the carb lovers although my carbs are mostly homemade wholegrain bread, potatos, vegatables and fruit. I simply cannot live without them.
One thing I am wondering about all the protein eaters. Are you not afraid of eating too much protein? More than the 0.8 to 1.0 g per kg?
Without any carbs I would definitly go over this threshold which is unhealthy too?!?

Abby, you are right, it 's so easy to go mad with protein when you eat less carbs. I eat no more than one egg for breakfast say, or half a small tin of tuna for lunch and 4oz. chicken or fish?seafood with dinner. Sometimes I have something like walnuts in the salad for lunch, and cashews in a stirfry in the evening. My increase is mostly veggies and salad ingredients, like fennel, chicory, lettuce, radishes, cucumbers etc. and an increased fat consumption. I use avocado oil, olive oil, coconut oil and a bit of butter. I also eat more berries and some kefir and yogurt. I can honestly say this has stopped me from snacking and craving sweets.

OK, so far we haven't established if we have millet in Greece, we probably don't. We don't have barley either.

I don't measure what I eat either. But remember the "not enough protein on the Med diet" discussion? I just read that 100 grms of feta has all the protein and half the calcium that a man of 185cm needs.

TML unless it's low fat it has almost 400 cals!

We usually eat the low fat editions, it's the traditional feta that is full fat. Besides, since feta usually accompanies vegetables, even 380 cals of feta (that's the calories for 100grms of the most fatty feta) added to a 200 calories serving of veggies and 90 calories of olive oil is not bad for a main meal. Although the usual portion of feta is 60 grms.

I eat the same amount of protein on Atkins as I did before, but without the potatoes!

The only problem is, because I have fine-tuned my body by eating low-carb stuff, the minute I eat a piece of cake (very rarely), I find it hard to keep awake, and can feel a bit nauseous.

Yesterday was a fast day, and I have just flown back to the UK. I didn't suffer with my usual anxiety, and felt so much more relaxed than normal.

Combining Atkins with this WOE seems to be working well.

Tomtank, that's interesting. I always eat something sweet if I want to stay awake and I'm too tired to rely on just coffee. A combination of sugar and caffeine can keep me going for hours!

TML13 - it just goes to show how different we all are!

I used to eat all kinds of foods, and was really addicted to sugar. It took me 7 weeks to get over the cravings.

My passion these days is Camembert cheese and strawberries. Very nice, and there are no after-effects!

I'm addicted to coffee but I don't mind because I like it too much, LOL!

There are so many posts on the forum now and it is so easy to miss the good tip or recipe. I just discovered that I didn't check out the earlier link to the grain recipes that Izzy posted earlier. Am planning to do the lemon saffron Millet pilaf tonight, sounds yum! Thanks for the link, the info on different grains is great and the recipes scrummy!

Hi:

This seems to be and interesting carb/low carb thread, and Atkins is mentioned quite a bit. I am interested in Atkins, as I participated in a 5 year clinical study comparing Atkins with a low fat diet (DASH). I was a 'lab rat', as they took my blood, weighed and measured me, gave me full body scans and measured my body fat for 2 1/2 years. I also kept food diaries of everything I ate, daily, for 2 1/2 years.

I have books worth of information on the results, but in short, Atkins won. Atkins participants had better blood work, as much or more weight loss, and kept weight off better than low fat. It was totally healthy.

But before I make my point (which is Who Cares?), I will say Atkins was a very low cal diet. When I checked my food diaries, when I could eat all of the fat, protein, eggs and cheese I wanted at any time, and when I was losing 35 pounds in 3 months, I found my average daily calorie intake was about 1200 calories. Despite being able to eat 'as much as I wanted', because of the nature of the food I could eat, I just could not eat that much. (I also ate more salads on Atkins than at any other time in my life, before or since.)

So, to get to my point, I could not stay on Atkins because it did not allow me to eat foods I grew up with and loved - white bread and potatoes. (Atkins in a nutshell is don't eat processed flour, sugar, potatoes, rice or pasta. In my opinion, all diets are variations of low fat or Atkins. South Beach, Paleo, Dekum [?] etc., are just variations.)

5:2 allows me to eat the foods I love, and still lose and maintain my weight loss.