Atkins/Low Carbers Support

[Wifezilla]

Crustless unless you make an almond meal crust.

 

[Lunachick]

Lots of good ideas. What exactly is Jicama? I usually buy the lowcarb tortillas or pita pockets. But lately I've been getting the lowcarb bread & bagels at the health food store. Carb Krunchers makes them. I only eat them once in a while.

I love a good steak on the grill.

 

[brandytab]

How in the world did I miss this thread???

I'm a low carber myself, but I also keep my calories low. I started on Medifast, which was awesome, and then moved to "normal" food because MF is very expensive and I felt like I'd gotten myself back in control. So, I've stuck with the low cal/low carb idea of MF and I'm down almost 50 lbs.

I've got to read this whole thread - loving the ideas.

And I have to find that low carb lasagna recipe!

 

[Lunachick]

Here's one for you:

Pasta-Less Low-Carb Eggplant Lasagna


1 or 2 eggplants
Eggs
Grated parmesan cheese
One large can of no sugar added tomato sauce
2 lbs of ground beef
Packet of dry Italian dressing seasoning
Your favourite cheeses
Garlic powder, salt, pepper to taste

Cut eggplant into round slices, dip in egg batter, and then dip in parmesan cheese and fry in hot oil. These will become your lasagna "noodles" in the recipe.

Cook up the ground beef ahead of time and then work on your homemade spaghetti sauce by mixing one large can of tomato sauce, a dry packet of Italian dressing seasoning mix, garlic powder, salt and pepper.

Bring the spaghetti sauce to a boil for a few minutes and then add cooked ground beef.

Here's the layering pattern for the lasagna:

Eggplant
Homemade spaghetti sauce
Cheese
Grated parmesan

Repeat layering two more times and then bake at 350 degrees until the cheese is melted to a golden brown.

 

[TXmom]

Welcome aboard brandytab! Congrats on your weight loss so far!

Here's the No Noodle Lasagna recipe that I use. Actually, I've adjusted it a little bit to fit my tastes, but I started with this...

http://www.lowcarbluxury.com/recipes/recipe-combo17.html

www.lowcarbluxury.com has hundreds of recipes, but as I stated before, my ADD won't let me go through all of them...LOL. Wifezilla, I sometimes have to go back to your posts 2 or 3 times before I finally finish reading them...but that's OK...I love the great information!

Luna...I found this info about jicama - "Jicama looks similar to a turnip or a large radish, and it can be used as an alternative to the water chestnut. Its skin is thin and can be gray, tan, or brown in color. Additionally, it has a short root and contains white flesh. The skin is typically peeled before eating it raw. Raw jicama tastes similar to a pear or apple. It also does not discolor when exposed to the open air for awhile. Because of this, raw jicama is often used as an accompaniment to raw vegetable platters. When jicama is used in cooking it tends to take on the flavors of the ingredients that it is being combined with. Therefore, jicama is a nice complement to various stir-fry dishes because it blends well with many vegetables and seasonings."

I need to go find jicama!

 

[Wifezilla]

Remember that Jicama stays crunchy when cooked. I prefer it raw though.

 

[Wifezilla]

I am a subscriber to a newsletter by a former NASA flight surgeon. He was prescribed statins for high cholesterol a few years back. They ruined his health. He has great info on his site about statins, cholesterol and heart disease. The following is from a guest writer. VERY informative.

"The gigantic MONICA study, sponsored by the World Health Organization, analyzed the relation between cardiovascular mortality and blood cholesterol in 27 countries, in much the same way as the Seven Countries Study. The results are similar, showing that countries like Japan and China have low mortality and low cholesterol levels, and countries like Finland have high mortality and high cholesterol levels.

Yet countries like France, Germany, Switzerland, and Luxembourg have a low mortality rate and yet a high blood cholesterol value. This so-called "French paradox" is not a paradox at all, when examination of the data reveals great disparities in mortality between different regions with the same cholesterol levels.

Similarly the residents of Corfu have a 5 fold greater mortality than residents of Crete, despite identical dietary practices and identical cholesterol levels. Residents of the North Karelia regions of Finland have mortality rate of 493/100,000 and those in Fribourg France have mortality rate of 102/100,000, yet the cholesterol levels are identical at 245 mg/dl in both regions.

The National Cholesterol Education Program is a quasi-governmental body sponsored by members of the National Institutes of Health, American Heart Association, and other supporters of the "diet-heart" hypothesis. This body recommends a low fat, high carbohydrate diet to prevent heart disease, in spite of the increasing incidence of diabetes, obesity, and hypertension that is linked to consumers of this diet.

They consistently advocate programs of extreme lowering of cholesterol levels by drug therapy, in spite of evidence of increased risk of mortality from heart failure, cancer, cirrhosis, and other diseases in older subjects with low cholesterol levels. They also recently recommended lowering the acceptable level of Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL) in the population by statin therapy, in spite of the fact that 8 of the 9 members of the advisory panel had a direct conflict of interest by accepting payments from the drug industry.

This body has popularized the concept that LDL is "bad cholesterol" and HDL is "good cholesterol" in spite of the marginal and sometimes contradictory data distinguishing these fractions from total blood cholesterol. This body also advocates "aggressive cholesterol lowering" in the population in spite of the fact that no cholesterol lowering trials have demonstrated reduced mortality or sudden death from such treatments in the otherwise normal population.

Kilmer S. McCully, M.D."
http://spacedoc.net/kilmer_mccully_cholesterol_1
http://spacedoc.net/kilmer_mccully_cholesterol_2

 

[Robin'sBrood]

Saw my Urologist today to follow up on the kidney ultrasound I had done on Friday. The good news... I did indeed pass the small stone in my left kidney, YEAH! The bad news... there is a second huge stone in my right kidney, about the same size as the 10mm one I had to have surgery to remove back in Feb.

So, surgery is scheduled for next Thursday.

This will be my 2nd kidney surgery in 4 months. Once again, my Urologist said Atkins IS known as the kidney stone diet in his profession. Please be careful, you do not want kidney problems due to the diet, I can promise you that!
http://www.atkinsdietalert.org/index.html

 

[Wifezilla]

Since this is a LOW CARB SUPPORT thread and you have already gave us the " 'sploading kidney" speech, why don't you start your own "Low carb made my kidney's explode" thread? k thanx bi

From Dr. Mary Vernon answering a question about kidneys...
"Now, about the kidney stones--

The kidney stone formation is linked to the underlying metabolism with the high insulin levels just like the trigylcerides are. It's not the protein, it's the carbs that cause the kidney stone formation in susceptible people. The Atkins diet gets blamed, I think, because if you cycle on and off of it, as your husband did, then you might form stones when you are off of the diet.

When you begin to control carbs enough to lose weight, usually one loses the extra water that high insulin levels pull into your body. This causes increased urine production and "washes out" the stone. So it seems to happen on the diet, but really happened before. I've followed lots of patients and I have only had one patient with "new" kidney stones in all these years!

OK, so let's hypothesize that my data and I are both wrong. What if some folks do form kidney stones on the diet? Potassium citrate can be used as a preventative. I discuss this with anyone who has a history of kidney stones because I want my patients to be healthy and feel good. Passing a kidney stone does not feel good.

So, check out the glucose tolerance test, get your husband to discuss potassium citrate with his physician, and keep the carbs controlled. Patients with the metabolic response to carbs like your husband has will always have it. Losing the weight doesn't make the tendency to have this problem go away. So make the changes lifestyle changes.

He is at risk for blood vessel damage based on what you have told me--so if he has chest pains take them seriously and get medical attention immediately.

Hope you find this helpful.

Mary Vernon"

 

[Lunachick]

Quote:
Sorry Robin - I agree with Wifezilla. My own experience tells me the kidney thing is false, many studies prove it. (There is an option for coincidence, btw) Plus I know doctors and nurses are trained in one way, and it's hard to see the facts on the other side of the coin when you are trained in such a rigorous manner.

My brother and SIL are both nurses in critical care, and boy oh boy, I hate to mention anything medical to them. Even my dying mother didn't want them to know the particulars of her medical condition (terminal).

No offense to nurses/doctors, we need them. Sometimes it's just the mind set of certain careers, and I always hesitate and not trust the medical community, but that's me.