Ketogenic diet

[blueeyetea]

Your doctor is right. It can be dangerous. http://www.atkinsexposed.org/

Doctors have, at most, 1 day of training in nutrition over 4 years of medical training. It's an undisputible fact that obesity rates among Americans have steadily gone up for the last 40 years, coinciding with the flip-flop in medical advice that fat and protein should be reduced and replaced with carbohydrates.

Gary Taubes, author of "Why We Get Fat" makes a compelling case for following a low-carb diet for losing weight. (He also addresses the benefits of a low-carb for other medical conditions, but only to make a point of how two branches of medicine, endocrinology and nutrition, look at the effects of carbohydrates on the human body.) Before writing the book, he wrote this excellent article for the NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/ma...%20lie?&st=cse

On top of that, a study was conducted at Stanford University to determine the benefits between 4 different diets starting with Atkins at the low-carb/high protein end of the scale to Ornish, a vegan diet at the other end. The study was conducted by a vegetarian scientist, no less, who believed eating all that meat was detrimental to one's health. His study didn't prove his point:

http://med.stanford.edu/news_release...arch/diet.html

[DH666]

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[blueeyetea]

I find it funny that the folks advocating a low-carb diet are mostly overweight themselves. http://www.drmcdougall.com/video/low...based_diet.htm

Another article on Atkins lie. One of the is from Stanford University, the one you quoted above.

http://www.cspinet.org/nah/11_02/bigfatlies.pdf

So how do you explain an opinion piece from 2002 is more credible than the research paper Standord published in 2007? BTW, the scientist they quote in the article above is not the one who conducted the study.

If you read any of Gary Taube's articles and books, you find out he comes at it from the side of a scientific journalist and the "good" advice we think we're getting from our doctors and diet experts is often based on bad science. Quite a few of the gospels we hear about diet and nutrition is not based on the facts that were revealed by studies, but often a jump to conclusion based on theory even though the studies didn't result in any conclusive findings supporting the hypothesis.

Knowing how insulin works in treating carbs and fats in our bodies, it's not hard to believe that any successful weight loss plan involves cutting carbs at some point, even for vegans. There's just no way around it, but somehow, it's never explained properly when diets are pushed forward.

[TaraF]

DH666, vegan, eh? I'm not sure I could do vegan *eek* that's awesome that it's worked so well for you. I was just at my Endocrinologists yesterday and I'm now on 8 units of insulin at bedtime with my diabetic pills during the day. *grumbles* perhaps I will discuss the vegan option with my dietician though.

[DH666]

DH666, vegan, eh? I'm not sure I could do vegan *eek* that's awesome that it's worked so well for you. I was just at my Endocrinologists yesterday and I'm now on 8 units of insulin at bedtime with my diabetic pills during the day. *grumbles* perhaps I will discuss the vegan option with my dietician though.

Don't be surprised if they do not reccomend it. From what I see out there, there, most doctors do not know much about nutrition and even dieticians and nutriionists are not quite up to speed on the vegan diet. They will say that the protein in plants is not complete, (myth), you need dairy for calcium (myth), among their many objections.

I hate taking medication so if I can do something to avoid it, I will. That's my motivation to stay on the diet. It works for me as well as for a lot of other people on the site I frequent. I won't promise that you will get off your meds, but odds are, there's a very good chance that you will be able to at least reduce the amount you take. I thought it would be hard to switch, but I didn't have any problems. You crave a few things in the beginning, but after a while you adjust. I love cheese, yogurt and tzatziki, but I don't miss them. I know that if I have these things I will have to go back on medication, so I don't. Meat was even easier than dairy. I don't crave any of that at all. The only thing I have trouble giving up is technically vegan, but it's full of fat. It's the dreaded chips. Curse them for tasting so good!

Here are some of the sites I get inspiration from:

http://www.drmcdougall.com/

http://heartattackproof.com/

http://www.forksoverknives.com/

http://engine2diet.com/

Some of the sites have recipies too. That helps a lot in the beginning.

Good luck!

[DH666]

BTW, VeeVee also went vegan. Look at Lynn49's post on the Furman diet.

[lecale]

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[DH666]

Lecale, I am scheduled for bloodwork in December and that includes the B12. I take a 500mcg a day pill plus there is some in the almond milk as well as in the nutritional yeast so I should be good unless I was already deficient. If I was OK before going vegan, it apparently takes up to 3 years to deplete your B12 stores.

[lecale]

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[Patty Smyth]

[DH666]

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[blueeyetea]

Did you not suffer any detox from switching to a vegan diet? If brain fog is a reason to stop from using a low-carb diet, also know that headaches and brain fog are also symptoms you'll likely have to suffer through when switching to a vegan diet.

[DH666]

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[DH666]

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[blueeyetea]

I eat as much as I want and as long as I avoid dairy, meat, eggs, added oils and processed foods, I maintain my weight. I went from 225 to around 155 so it works very well.

So how can you be positive that your weight loss is in relation to animal products as opposed to just the fact you removed processed foods from your diet?

Although the vegan diet is working for you, it seems very likely you would have had good results if you had continued to eat meat but removed processed foods along with high carbs foods (like white pasta) that make your insulin spike.

It's not exactly fair to say eating animal products is bad for you when in fact you removed animal products, plus processed foods. Unless you were diagnosed with a dairy intolerance, the blame is placed equally between animal products and processed foods, when processed foods were the likely culprit.