What's OK to eat . . .

Sometimes the difference between cooked and raw is that they include common
additions, for instance they might assume that mashed potatoes are prepared
with milk or cream added or that fried eggs accumulate whatever fat they are
fried in.

Aaron Baugher wrote:
| "Not so Slim Jim" writes:
|
|| "Aaron Baugher" wrote in message
||| And get a book or two. I've gotten all my low-carb books for $1 or
||| less from thrift stores. If you're doing Atkins (as I think you
||| said in a later post), you shouldn't be asking this question
||| because the Induction list already told you what foods you can eat.
||| If you're doing Protein Power, it gives you a chart where you can
||| lookup all these foods for yourself and make sure you're under 10g
||| per meal. Every book will give you some sort of guidelines to
||| follow. You don't really want to have to come ask us about every
||| new meal you encounter, do you?
||
|| Of course not, I have only asked this one question. I am not going to
|| plague this group for them to rubber-stamp every meal I eat. The
|| problem I get with the books, is that several years ago, I read one
|| book which said that the carb value of something eaten raw was X
|| carbs but that after cooking it was significantly more. Furthermore,
|| I didn't mention Atkins, it was the very helpful post by em which
|| included the acceptable foods.
|
| I'd love to know which book that was, because, as far as I know,
| cooking never affects the carb count of foods in any significant way.
| If it did, we'd all be eating our foods raw (or cooked, depending on
| which way cooking changed it). At most, cooking might make a food
| more or less digestible, slowing or speeding the conversion to
| glucose, but it's all still going to count the same.
|
|| Also the post by Jim which states that an onion could be as much as
|| 10 carbs and that one tomato is 9 carbs is astounding. I'd never have
|| thought that.
|
| Yeah, it's surprising sometimes what's high and what isn't. Fruits
| are the most shocking: the sweetest ones like berries are lowest in
| carbs while sour fruits like oranges are packed with them. If you're
| adding onion to something for flavor, it probably won't be enough to
| cause a problem, but if you're eating roasted onions, it certainly
| could. Shallots are often suggested as a lower-carb replacement.
| Tomatoes are borderline; I stay away from them most of the time.
|
|| Thank you for your unput one and all sorry if I have burdened you..
|
| Nah, no burden at all. We get a lot of new people who heard about
| low-carbing from a friend or something, and usually have a very skewed
| idea of what it means, so the best first piece of advice when someone
| clearly doesn't have a LC book is to get one. (Some people will say
| "the" book, meaning Atkins, but I think "Protein Power" is excellent.)
| But any of the popular ones should have charts of foods, in most cases
| with "net" carbs after fiber has been subtracted. There are also web
| sites like fitday.com that are handy for looking up the nutritional
| values of foods.

Not so Slim Jim wrote:
"Aaron Baugher" wrote in message
...

"Not so Slim Jim" writes:


Low Carb works very well for me but I keep on slipping back to my old
bingeing ways and eating loads of sweet things and find myself putting
the weight back on - obviously. However, I am now feeling
uncomfortable in my clothes. My working lifestyle means lots of hotel
stays which means that it is difficult to find low carb foods. I
wonder whether you more experienced can tell me the carb values of the
following which have started eating for the last 3 days.

Breakfast is two eggs fried in extra virgin olive oil together with
three thin rashers of bacon with six or seven button
mushrooms. Everything I fry is done in Extra Virgin Oil (if that makes
any difference).

I generally don't want/need to eat until about 6pm in the evening when
I have been having an average sized lamb steak, 8oz Sirloin Steak
(both fried as above) with the fat cut off mid cooking, with button
mushrooms fried in butter with two crushed garlic segments. On the
side I have a salad garnish of lettuce, one diced tomato and some
diced cucumber. I also gently fry a whole onion, sometimes with half a
red chillie to give it a bit of a kick.

Mmmmm, lamb. That menu sounds fine for most people. If you still have
carb cravings after a couple weeks of that, you're probably either A)
not eating enough, or B) very sensitive to carbs, in which case you may
need to eliminate the onion and/or tomato. Those two are both somewhat
borderline as carbs go, and I don't think they're on the Atkins
Induction list for that reason.

Skipping lunch might not be the best idea either. Even if you're not
hungry, having a little snack -- or at least having one available -- can
help prevent cravings later in the day. If you're a good-sized guy,
that breakfast you describe isn't really all that much, especially to
last until supper. I usually have 4 eggs (in lard) and 4 slices of
bacon, and that barely gets me up to 1/3 of my calories for the day.
It's common for low-carb to suppress your appetite, which is great, but
going overboard with the not-eating can cause cravings and metabolic
slowdown, so be careful with that.

Checking your blood sugar is another option. When a craving hits, check
your blood glucose level and see if it's outside the normal range
(70-100). If it's high (the usual cause of cravings), something in your
last meal could be a problem. That'll help you determine whether your
carb binges are coming from a specific trigger in your diet or just you
not being committed enough to success.

And get a book or two. I've gotten all my low-carb books for $1 or less
from thrift stores. If you're doing Atkins (as I think you said in a
later post), you shouldn't be asking this question because the Induction
list already told you what foods you can eat. If you're doing Protein
Power, it gives you a chart where you can lookup all these foods for
yourself and make sure you're under 10g per meal. Every book will give
you some sort of guidelines to follow. You don't really want to have to
come ask us about every new meal you encounter, do you?


Of course not, I have only asked this one question. I am not going to plague
this group for them to rubber-stamp every meal I eat. The problem I get with
the books, is that several years ago, I read one book which said that the
carb value of something eaten raw was X carbs but that after cooking it was
significantly more. Furthermore, I didn't mention Atkins, it was the very
helpful post by em which included the acceptable foods.

Also the post by Jim which states that an onion could be as much as 10 carbs
and that one tomato is 9 carbs is astounding. I'd never have thought that.


Thank you for your unput one and all sorry if I have burdened you..



1 cup of raw green beans will have fewer carbs than one cup of cooked
green beans because when cooked, it takes more mass of green beans to
fill up the cup. They are all soft and pack together much more.

However, the cook cup of green beans will weigh more.

So.... how to "measure" the food is important.

I can imagine that some water soluble sugars can drain from food when
being cooked, so I can imagine carb loss from cooking. Just because I
can imagine it, of course, doesn't mean it actually happens.

On Oct 26, 6:39 pm, "FOB" wrote:
Sometimes the difference between cooked and raw is that they include common
additions, for instance they might assume that mashed potatoes are prepared
with milk or cream added or that fried eggs accumulate whatever fat they are
fried in.

Aaron Baugher wrote:

| "Not so Slim Jim" writes:
|
|| "Aaron Baugher" wrote in message
||| And get a book or two. I've gotten all my low-carb books for $1 or
||| less from thrift stores. If you're doing Atkins (as I think you
||| said in a later post), you shouldn't be asking this question
||| because the Induction list already told you what foods you can eat.
||| If you're doing Protein Power, it gives you a chart where you can
||| lookup all these foods for yourself and make sure you're under 10g
||| per meal. Every book will give you some sort of guidelines to
||| follow. You don't really want to have to come ask us about every
||| new meal you encounter, do you?
||
|| Of course not, I have only asked this one question. I am not going to
|| plague this group for them to rubber-stamp every meal I eat. The
|| problem I get with the books, is that several years ago, I read one
|| book which said that the carb value of something eaten raw was X
|| carbs but that after cooking it was significantly more. Furthermore,
|| I didn't mention Atkins, it was the very helpful post by em which
|| included the acceptable foods.


And there is the problem. No one can tell you what is an acceptable
food list without knowing what specific LC diet, if any, your are on.
The most popular is Atkins. Get a copy of his Dr Atkins New Diet
Revolution or a copy of whatever diet you are following. If you
were following Atkins, in the first 2 weeks or so, the whole onion
definitely wouldnt; be appropriate during induction. A slice of
onion and/or tomato as part of a green salad would be OK.

If you;re doing some roll your own diet, which I would not recommend,
then what you're eating, including the tomato and onion are LC
compared to the typical diet.

You can pick up small, thin, pocket size books that have a list of
the most common foods and carb counts. If you want an online source
for carb counts, google for USDA food database.

On Fri, 26 Oct 2007 16:51:47 -0700, "
wrote:

|| I didn't mention Atkins, it was the very helpful post by em which
|| included the acceptable foods.


And there is the problem. No one can tell you what is an acceptable
food list without knowing what specific LC diet, if any, your are on.

True -- but didn't the OP mention Induction in a subsequent post?


--
BlueBrooke
254/225/135

Not so Slim Jim wrote:
Of course not, I have only asked this one question. I am not going to plague
this group for them to rubber-stamp every meal I eat. The problem I get with
the books, is that several years ago, I read one book which said that the
carb value of something eaten raw was X carbs but that after cooking it was
significantly more.

It depends on when you measure it. If you measure a cup of raw spinach,
it has a certain amount of carbs, cooking won't change that. But if you
measure after cooking, you will have a lot more spinach in that same
cup, so more carbs.

There's a lot of variation like that, you choose based on when and how
you're going to measure the food.

Personally, I find it easiest to measure veggies either as the whole
fresh vegetable (a whole onion) or as a fraction of the whole in a salad
(1/4 head lettuce, 1/2 tomato, 1/2 avocado, 1/4 cucumber). I usually
package meats in 1 lb packages, so measure them in 1/4 pounds by
eyeballing. Cottage cheese and yogurt I measure in cups cause the
package sizes I buy are 2 cups, so easy to figure for half as a portion.
I buy frozen veggies in 1 lb packages so can easily measure half pound
servings. Pints of berries contain 2 1-cup servings (or 4 1/2-cup
servings for blueberries). And so on. The basic idea being to not need
to pull out a scale and measuring cups every time I eat, but to
"measure" by the way I buy foods.

Also the post by Jim which states that an onion could be as much as 10 carbs
and that one tomato is 9 carbs is astounding. I'd never have thought that.

Here's a good source I use:
http://www.nutritiondata.com


--
http://www.ornery-geeks.org/consulting/

On Oct 27, 2:22 pm, Jackie Patti wrote:

Also the post by Jim which states that an onion could be as much as 10 carbs
and that one tomato is 9 carbs is astounding. I'd never have thought that.



That' why if you ever watched the low carb cooking shows, like George
Stella, he frequently talked about limiting the amounts of these in
cooking, onions in particular. He recommended using one onion among
a couple of dishes and not over do it. Which usually is pretty easy
to do. If you're making something like onions and peppers, you just
use a lot more peppers thatn onions. With some other seasoning thrown
in, it works out very well.

I have made onion soup with onions and zucchini and portabello mushrooms
which reduces the carbs from regular onion soup.

Onion Plus Soup


5 medium onions, sliced
2 large portabello mushrooms, cut in small slices
2 medium zucchinis, sliced (not peeled)
6 cups water
1.5 Tablespoons Minor's Beef Base
2 teaspoons Minor's Mirepoix
About 6 Tablespoons butter


Cook the onions and mushrooms in butter, stirring frequently, until the
onions are soft and brown around the edges. Remove from pan and do same to
the zucchini with more butter. Add water and beef base and mirepoix. Bring
to boil and simmer for about 10 minutes. Put in bowls and put some cheese on
top. I figure about 8 net carbs per cup, had about a cup and a third for
supper.


You could use any kind of beef broth instead of the Minor's, it is the best
base/broth I have ever used and cheaper and easier to store than canned
broth. The Mirepoix is optional, if you have it, it adds a nice flavor.


I make this in my Wok as it is much easier to stir the vegetables in it than
a regular pan.



wrote:
|
| That' why if you ever watched the low carb cooking shows, like George
| Stella, he frequently talked about limiting the amounts of these in
| cooking, onions in particular. He recommended using one onion among
| a couple of dishes and not over do it. Which usually is pretty easy
| to do. If you're making something like onions and peppers, you just
| use a lot more peppers thatn onions. With some other seasoning thrown
| in, it works out very well.

Jim writes:

I can imagine that some water soluble sugars can drain from food when
being cooked, so I can imagine carb loss from cooking. Just because I
can imagine it, of course, doesn't mean it actually happens.

I can imagine that too. I've seen TV chefs say that rinsing beans as
you cook them takes out some of the "starch" that causes flatulence, for
example, but I've never heard whether they really mean starch or how
much it actually removes. If it were a significant amount, I figure
people with BG testers would have discovered it by now.



--
Aaron -- 285/254/200 -- aaron.baugher.biz

Not so Slim Jim wrote:
Low Carb works very well for me but I keep on slipping back to my old
bingeing ways and eating loads of sweet things and find myself putting the
weight back on - obviously.

Cut calories down, take L Glutamine and Chormium Picolinate with your
supps, and get some exercise....and strctly stick to the LC way for
one week, don't eat anything off course....your ketones will kick in
and hunger will vanish - then you start burning it up. Any sweet
deviations mean you have to start all over again.

"Not so Slim Jim" writes:

Low Carb works very well for me but I keep on slipping back to my old
bingeing ways and eating loads of sweet things and find myself putting
the weight back on - obviously.

One thing that really helped me stay on track this time was tracking my
food for about a week so I could make sure I'm getting at least 65% of
my calories from fat. That simply turned off the cravings like a
switch. I sat at a birthday party a few weeks ago and watched everyone
else eat cake, cheesecake, and ice cream, and really didn't feel the
slightest temptation to cheat.

That wasn't the case before I upped the fat, so I think I was getting
enough excess protein to tweak my blood sugar just a bit, and tests
after some high-protein meals did bear that out. If cravings continue
to be a problem for you after you've been on-plan for a couple weeks,
increasing the fat could be something to consider. I started putting
butter on more things (get a cookbook from before 1970, and it'll tell
you to put a pat of butter on your steak, yum!) and snacking on nuts.



--
Aaron -- 285/254/200 -- aaron.baugher.biz