Need suggestions on carb replacements

Peabody wrote:

I thought we covered this before. *I hate almost all
vegetables. *Just detest them.

A consideration for someone not low carbing -

What's a fruit? In most cases it's a vegitable in a prom dress
and added sugar. I take it you don't detest fruits? Item for
item it works just fine for a non-low carber to put fruits in the
place of veggies.

Adults eat their veggies. Think of it as a growing up experience.
A chance to "man up". The process will be entirely mental and
not nearly as hard as quitting tobacco. Maybe as slow, but
there is no hurry. Decide today that starting now your thoughts
on the topic will be different. Use affirmations if you want.
Decision about thought becomes habit of thought. Habit of
thought becomes emotion. Emotion becomes taste. Taste
becomes maturity. So what if it takes 2-3 years. The years
will flow either way and you'll be the better man for the project.

The exceptions are raw
spinach (but not cooked) and tomatoes, both of which I eat a
bunch of every day.

So you have a starting level with which to gradually move your
world. Lean on that lever and let you mind do the work to
start the movement.

Besides, none of that stuff has any calories.

Root veggies have plenty of calories. Adding carrots and rutabagas
to a stew adds as many calories as potatoes.

Hollywood says...

I appreciate that you've made some large changes. I
dunno where your numbers were when you started,

I went back an looked at the detail from a few years ago:

Total calories - 2966

Protein - 123g 17%
Carbohydrate - 496g 65%
Fats - 59g 18%

So I've cut the carb percentage in half. Probably not
coincidentally, triglycerides are down by one-third.

You might want to get a C-reactive protein test if
you're really wigged, as that's a better predictor than
even your cholesterol ratios.

Is there a test readily available for LDL particle size? Is
the apo-b test a stand-in for that?

That said, your attitude is one of impossibility.
Nothing is ever solved or improved by talking about what
cannot be done before you even really think about it.

If you buy into Taubes, you should be eating egg yolks.

Well, it's not impossibility, just caution. I don't
necessarily "buy into" Taubes, or Eades, or Atkins. At
least not to the extent of nearly eliminating carbs from my
diet. I know many of you are comfortable with that, but I'm
too much of a skeptic, about everything, and the more
extreme it appears, the more skeptical I am. The fact that
Taubes is logical, internally consistent, and rigorous
doesn't mean he's right.

So, it's not a question of not being able to do it, just of
not being sure it's a good idea. I'm pretty good about
carrying through with things once I decide to do them. I
was able to quit smoking, I go to the gym every day it's
open, and I haven't been to a McDonalds, or anything like
it, in two years. But I just think in a area where nothing
is really certain, and where a new unintended consequence
seems to appear monthly, I doubt I'll ever get to the point
of buying into a very low carb diet. But I'll keep an open
mind about it.

Doug Freyburger says...

I thought we covered this before. *I hate almost all
vegetables. *Just detest them.

A consideration for someone not low carbing -

What's a fruit? In most cases it's a vegitable in a
prom dress and added sugar. I take it you don't detest
fruits? Item for item it works just fine for a non-low
carber to put fruits in the place of veggies.

Well I already eat a lot of fruits. And berries. And nuts.

Adults eat their veggies. Think of it as a growing up
experience. A chance to "man up".

The process will be entirely mental and not nearly as
hard as quitting tobacco.

I understand that point of view, but I don't agree with it.
Vegetables - broccoli, asparagus, etc. - really taste bad to
me. It's not just that I don't like them. They make me
want to throw up. They have a very strong, bitter
taste that's really very unpleasant.

There may be no scientific basis for this, but I believe
these things taste different to me than to most others. The
idea that a fruit is just a veggie with sugar on it is
preposterous to me. Nothing can hide that awful taste - not
suger, not butter, not hollandaise sauce. Nothing.

On the other hand, I love liver. Go figure.

To me, raw spinach has essentially no taste. But cooked
spinach is a completely different world. That awful odor -
I don't want to be anywhere near it, let alone eat the
stuff.

The bottom line is that at my advanced age I'm just not
going to sit down to every meal and eat things that make me
gag, particularly since I see no compelling need to do that.

Susan wrote:
Peabody wrote:
I thought we covered this before. I hate almost all
vegetables. Just detest them. The exceptions are raw
spinach (but not cooked) and tomatoes, both of which I eat a
bunch of every day. Besides, none of that stuff has any
calories. I know that's supposed to be a good thing, but I
need the calories.

I forgot the vegetable hatred, sorry. Some veggies have calories, like
broccoli. All you have to do to get the calories is dump some butter or
oil on it.

That's my issue with this question... nearly every suggestion I can
think of for upping calories has to do with slathering fat on veggies
one way or another.

Well, and then there's nut butters. IME, I can eat an INSANE amount of
calories worth of nuts if they're ground to a butter. Almond butter,
cashew butter, pistachio butter, brazil nut butter, hazelnut butter,
etc. IME, it's pretty easy to eat a few hundred calories worth of nut
butter just with a spoon without even trying at all.

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

Peabody wrote:
That's an interesting idea. I'll give it a try. Actually,
I do drink one whey protein shake every day, and I guess I
could mix some of that into watered-down regular glasses of
milk. The problem is that every whey protein I've tried is
just grossly over-sweetened and over-vanilla'ed, and don't
taste like milk at all.

I don't like whey. I buy milk isolate protein powder. And I buy it
unsweetened and unflavored so I can do with it what I want.

mocha shake: leftover cold coffee, heavy cream, unsweetened cocoa and
stevia and protein powder

strawberry shake: frozen strawberries, heavy cream, water and protein powder

any-flavor shake: a TB of sugar-free pudding mix, heavy cream, water and
protein powder


The brand I use now is Optimum Nutrition "Natural" vanilla,
which doesn't use artificial sweeteners. It contains
stevia, which I thought would be ok. But on closer
examination of the label, there's 5 grams of carbs along
with the 24 grams of protein, and guess what - in addition
to the stevia, it has fructose - all the carbs come from
that. But, alas, the un-Natural version just tastes awful.

The unsweetenedm unflavored stuff is he
http://www.trueprotein.com/Product_D...?cid=22&pid=70

It has... almost no taste really. Vaguely milk-like. You have to add
stuff to get the taste you want.

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

Peabody wrote:

I understand that point of view, but I don't agree with it.
Vegetables - broccoli, asparagus, etc. - really taste bad to
me. *It's not just that I don't like them. *They make me
want to throw up. *They have a very strong, bitter
taste that's really very unpleasant.

I hate bell peppers and parsnips. I have no idea how many
dozen types of vegitable you've tried over the years; I only
know that so far you've listed fewer types than are currently
in my fridge.

There may be no scientific basis for this, but I believe
these things taste different to me than to most others.

Genetic differences in taste are well established. Back in
junior high school a science teacher handed out test strips
and stated that ability to detect the taste was genetic.
Some in the class would find it quite bitter others flavorless.
We were to gather in a circle and watch each others faces
when we all tasted the strips. It was amzing to watch the
different expressions.

Stuff I've since learned about - avocados aren't flavorless
green goo to some, paprika is hot to some, asparagus
gives urine a smell that some find obvious.

On the other hand, I love liver. *Go figure.

Then try various brands and recipes of pate'. Wonderful
stuff.

Peabody wrote:

Well I'm not sure what stuff you're referring to. Since I'm
not overweight or diabetic, I'm primarily interested in the
CV effects. I'm not very well-read on all this, but I
haven't seen that you have to get below what would be, for
me, 7.5% of calories to be healthy.

A good source for learning about heart disease is Dr. Davis's blog:
http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/


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

On Jan 4, 12:12 pm, Nina wrote:
On Fri, 04 Jan 2008 11:59:36 -0600, Peabody



wrote:
Doug Freyburger says...

I thought we covered this before. I hate almost all
vegetables. Just detest them.

A consideration for someone not low carbing -

What's a fruit? In most cases it's a vegitable in a
prom dress and added sugar. I take it you don't detest
fruits? Item for item it works just fine for a non-low
carber to put fruits in the place of veggies.

Well I already eat a lot of fruits. And berries. And nuts.

Adults eat their veggies. Think of it as a growing up
experience. A chance to "man up".

The process will be entirely mental and not nearly as
hard as quitting tobacco.

I understand that point of view, but I don't agree with it.
Vegetables - broccoli, asparagus, etc. - really taste bad to
me. It's not just that I don't like them. They make me
want to throw up. They have a very strong, bitter
taste that's really very unpleasant.

There may be no scientific basis for this, but I believe
these things taste different to me than to most others. The
idea that a fruit is just a veggie with sugar on it is
preposterous to me. Nothing can hide that awful taste - not
suger, not butter, not hollandaise sauce. Nothing.

On the other hand, I love liver. Go figure.

To me, raw spinach has essentially no taste. But cooked
spinach is a completely different world. That awful odor -
I don't want to be anywhere near it, let alone eat the
stuff.

The bottom line is that at my advanced age I'm just not
going to sit down to every meal and eat things that make me
gag, particularly since I see no compelling need to do that.

I read some article somewhere about people who are supertasters, who
essentially have more taste buds or better developed taste buds. This
supposedly is why many kids don't like vegetables... taste buds are
fresher or something like that. (You can see that I remember the
details of this really well....)

So anyway, perhaps you could write it off to overdeveloped taste buds!

As a picky eater who tastes things many people cannot (the sweetness
in
Brut & Brut Sauvage Champagne for instance), I don't buy the super
taster argument, as there are people who have highly developed senses
of taste but eat everything. It's not about taste for a lot of
pickies. It's
about anxiety, texture, food xenophobia, and possibly compulsive
disorder. Oh yeah, and I have some childhood trauma centered around
punishment and new foods. If you read the really pick eaters, some
will blame super tasting, but most never taste anything. And while I
can
find the sweet in things that are like six sigma sweet tasting (Extra
Brut
Champagne, fer instance), I enjoy (when not LC'ing) pineapple and
jelly beans (though I like Coke over Pepsi, in Diet and regular).

What about raw cauliflower? That's another vegetable, like spinach,
that has very little taste uncooked (I think) and a much different
taste cooked.

Cauliflower is one I'm still learning. Cauliflower gratin is not bad.
Might
be able to make it stand in for pasta in a mac and cheese type
setting.
Eggplant/aubergine is pretty non-flavored. Zuke is pretty lightly
flavored
too. Canned greenbeans are pretty much salt flavored. And, if you
boil asparagus, it's pretty mild in flavor too. I like mine grilled or
broiled
now, but I'm learning. Mushrooms, some, can be pretty mild in flavor,
though conceptually difficult for some folks.

As someone who's working on eating more veggies, and it's a work in
progress (like Building a Cathedral, really), it's about finding a
comfort
zone and finding ways to expand it. For me, travel has been the best
way to try new things. 2 weeks in Italy resulted in 13 new foods
tried,
2 added to the regular rotation, a few to things worth trying again,
and at least one that is good, but too expensive to do regularly. I
dunno where I'm going with that, other than I'm going to Curacao in
April and hoping to have similar results. But, if you take a Cathedral
approach (accept that it's not gonna happen overnight, but it might
take steady progress), maybe you can get to where you want to be
eventually. And the journey is always half the fun (unless you fly
Al Italia, in which case it's half the misery).

"Nina" wrote

Anyway, I think its absolutely true that anything that changes brain
chemistry takes a huge amount of time to adjust to, and that doesn't
even count the sheer habit bits of it.

Nina, it's my opinion that this also occurs, for some people more than
others, in changing from high-carb to low-carb eating. There are major
adjustments, because the change affects many hormonal and signalling systems
pretty profoundly. While a lot of the change occurs pretty quickly - a week
or two to a couple months - full adjustment seems to take longer in certain
people.

It's true that for some of us, overload of carbs was used in a kind of
self-medicating way. It's kind of like being a recovering addict, though not
as intense, when you abruptly change to a low-carb diet that eliminates that
kind of carb-heavy self-medication.

HG

"Hollywood" wrote

Cauliflower is one I'm still learning. Cauliflower gratin is not bad.
Might
be able to make it stand in for pasta in a mac and cheese type
setting.

Mmm, definitely. My mom used to steam a whole head of cauliflower, then top
with lots of cheddar cheese sauce. I do the same, but usually very coarsely
chop the cauliflower before adding cheese sauce, then top with minced
parsley. Use a good cheese that you like, and it will be way better than any
mac 'n cheese.

HG