First 2 Weeks - Low Carb Reference: Low Carb Reference, #9

By Lisa Shea

** Revised for 2015! More Information! **

This 268-page book gives you everything you need to know for those first two weeks of your low carb diet. It explains what you're getting yourself into and how to prepare. It guides you through stocking your pantry, your fridge, and your herb cabinet. It discusses how metabolism works, how fat burns, and how fiber is used.

The book provides detailed information about those first two days where you break your addictions, and the first two weeks.

It provides 83 delicious low carb recipes to get you rolling along the right path, including photos.

A must have for anyone looking to begin a low carb diet!

Perfect to carry with you and have as a constant reference! You can easily check notes and menu ideas while shopping!

Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions! I frequently update all my low carb books based on your recommendations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lisa Shea
• Release date: Jan 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781507050132

Lisa Shea

I love writing in a variety of genres. I currently have over 300 books published in all lengths from full 500+ page novels down to short stories. I love writing series. Some are with unconnected characters, like the 14 full-length medieval novels with a sword being passed from heroine to heroine. Some have connected characters, like the 31 mini-mysteries featuring a detective in Salem, Massachusetts. All of my books are written "clean" with no explicit intimacy, no harsh language, and no explicit violence. All are suitable for teens and up.For a full listing of my books please visit:http://www.lisashea.com/lisabase/writing/gettingyourbookpublished/lisalibrary.html

Book preview

Introduction

Welcome to the delicious world of low carbing!

The first two weeks of any diet are often the make-or-break time, where you get the hang of what you are doing or give up in frustration. It can be confusing to start any new system - whether it’s going to a new college to learn programming or moving to a strange town to start a new job. You have to figure out what the rules are, what works, and what doesn’t work. It can be difficult to get going. But once you do, your new lifestyle will become second nature and not require any thought at all.

Low carb diets are primarily about avoiding sugar and starch. They are about eating healthy, balanced meals. Our ancestors one hundred years ago didn’t have to think about eating low carb. They simply did. They weren’t stuffing their faces with Big Macs and downing several glasses of soda a day. They didn’t have large helpings of ice cream at the end of every meal.

Most of our ancestors had healthy meals from the foods grown in their own back yard. They grew spinach, broccoli, and cauliflower. They often raised chickens and ate the eggs too. They caught fish and grilled them up, fresh and flavorful. They made whole grain breads, rich in fiber. They drank water and, when older, wine.

It’s time for us to remember just what healthy eating is all about. It’s not about supersizing. It’s not about packaged foods full of sugar, salt, and soy. Healthy eating is about taking the fresh vegetables, adding in a healthy mix of other nutrient-rich foods, and feeding our bodies. This is what helps you maintain a healthy weight, and live a long, happy life.

With 83 recipes, step by step instructions, and a full arsenal of solutions, this book will get you on the right path towards a new, healthy lifestyle.

It’s time to take that first step!

I want to make a quick note about the layout of this book. I begin with a fair amount of background information to help you understand how your body burns fats. This is good to understand so you know why you’ll be eating the way you do.

I aimed to keep that material non-technical so it can be understood – and at the same time using the right words so if you read other websites you know what they’re talking about. I also tried to bring up important topics multiple times, in a variety of contexts, so if the first mention didn’t quite make sense that the second one could. We all learn in different ways and we might get something if just the right phrasing is used. Sometimes it’s when something is explained the third way, with just the right twist, that it suddenly all makes sense.

I’m very open to feedback on the entire book. My aim is to help you succeed. If something is confusing, or too technical, or doesn’t make sense, please email me. I’m happy to explain further. I strive for my material to help as many people as possible, understanding that my readers have varied backgrounds and varied levels of base knowledge.

Together we can help our entire community thrive!

Carbohydrates

No matter what sort of healthy eating system you are on, it is important to understand what you are eating. Just what are carbohydrates, and how do they affect your body?

Carbohydrates are one of the four main types of nutrients that your body is physically able to burn for fuel. The other three nutrient types are fats, proteins, and alcohols. This is basic human construction and biology.

The carbohydrate is the easiest thing for your body to burn, so if your body has the choice of burning through that Ring Ding you ate or the fat on your thighs it’ll burn the Ring Ding - and probably add more extra fat to your thighs afterwards, too. On the other hand, if you eat fats or proteins, your body has to first convert those things into carbohydrates, and then use the carbohydrates for energy. So even if you eat more calories on a fat-rich diet, you still lose more weight, because your body is doing extra work to use those fats.

Living on an alcohol diet is not recommended for many reasons. :).

Let’s learn more about how carbohydrates work!

Types of Carbohydrates

There are three types of carbohydrates. These are sugars, starches, and fiber.

Simple Carbohydrates – Sugars

Sugars include the white table sugar stuff (sucrose) as well as fruit sugars (fructose), milk sugars (lactose) and so on. Sugar is extremely easy for your body to use, so your body doesn’t have to do much work in order to take in sugar and turn it into fat.

Sugar spikes your body’s blood sugar levels, causing large mood swings. When you get the flood of sugar, you get energy and a mood boost for a short period of time. When the sugar rush is gone, all the excess sugar is packed into your waist, hips, and thighs for storage as fat. Your body sees that drastic drop in blood sugar levels, gets hungry immediately, and craves more food. It is these swings and the easy-to-fat cycle that low carb diets are trying to break.

When human beings were evolving, they did not have Yodels and chocolate-covered donuts hanging on their trees. The amount of sugar we now eat - in everything from breakfast cereals to breads and TV dinners - is staggering. No matter what style of healthy eating you choose to follow, it undoubtedly recommends cutting out soda, junk food, and excess sugar.

Complex Carbohydrates – Starches

Starches are those rich carbohydrates found in bread, potatoes, pasta, and french fries. Starches cause the exact same problems that sugars do. They spike your blood sugar levels, giving you a quick boost of energy, but setting you up for a big loss of energy once the spike is gone. You feel hungry again after the spike falls because the blood sugar levels drop so drastically.

Many foods such as American-buffet-style Chinese food are cooked in very starch-rich sauces, which cause the hungry-shortly-afterwards issues.

Dietary Fiber

When you look at a nutrition panel on processed food, you’ll often see that Dietary Fiber is listed under the total carbohydrate listing. Fiber is an immensely healthy thing to eat and helps keep your digestion system regular. Eating fiber daily is very important to your health. Better yet - fiber does not impact your weight situation at all.

Fiber doesn’t turn into fat or energy - it just goes through your stomach and intestines, helping to keep it clean and running smoothly. So in short, fiber does not count as a carb. Technically it is part of the carbohydrate family, but in terms of impact on your body, fiber is not processed at all.

It’s important to be clear about a key issue involving carbohydrates. Participating in a low carb lifestyle is not about avoiding vegetables. It is about avoiding foods that are high in junk carbohydrates. So that means staying away from things like white bread, potatoes, pasta, candied yams, and the like. I’m not sure there is any dietician that would tell you that eating white bread is healthy for you.

It might be true that high-energy foods like potatoes were necessary for farmers in the 1700s who were out in the field working hard. Those intrepid souls needed a supply of high-powered energy to get through the day. But for the typical person in the modern developed world, that high powered energy simply equates to thick thighs and a round stomach.

Effective Carbs vs Total Carbs

When you look at the back nutrition panel of a processed food, it lists Total Carbohydrates. But then it lists dietary fiber and sugars. What is the final, effective carb count?

First, carbs are the white sugars, the starchy pastas and potatoes in life. To reiterate an important point, avoiding carbs is not about avoid avoiding vegetables. You should eat large amounts of healthy vegetables on a low carb diet. Avoiding carbs is really about avoiding unhealthy sugars and starches.

The point of counting carbs is to figure out how many carbs in a given dish will have an impact on your blood sugar levels and your potential fat gain or loss. You want to keep your blood sugar levels even so you do not have hunger cravings or interrupt your fat loss. You normally want to keep your carb intake below a certain number that for you represents the amount of carbs your body needs to get energy for the day. That way the remaining energy will come from your fat cells that you are trying to get rid of.

Because of that aim, the only carbs you count are the ones that can turn into fat. Any carb that just goes in one end and out the other end doesn’t count towards your Effective Carbs, because those carbs will not impact at all how your body gets energy or burns fat.

Dietary Fiber

One of the values listed on a nutrition panel is dietary fiber. While fiber is a carb, it is not used by the body for energy and is not processed. Fiber is critical to keeping your digestive system clean and working smoothly. Luckily for us, it doesn’t get turned into energy or fat, so it is non-impactful as far as your weight loss goes.

So if for example the zucchini chips bag has 8g of carbohydrates - but 5g of those are dietary fiber - it actually only has 3g (8-5) of meaningful or effective carbs. If you ate a serving of chips, you would only count that you had ingested 3g of carbs.

Sugar Alcohols

Sugar Alcohols like maltitol, sorbitol, and isomalt are often not counted by low carb dieters. This is because sugar alcohols flow through your system without being processed. Your body doesn’t recognize them as sugar. It should be noted that some people are sensitive to sugar alcohols and have ‘gastric distress’ when eating them. It’s always wise to start with a very small portion of a food containing sugar alcohols, to see how your body reacts to them.

Bodies do tend to get used to sugar alcohols over time. So if you have a small amount the first time, and then more the next, you build up a tolerance to them and can enjoy larger portions.

Glycemic Index

The glycemic index of a food is in essence how quickly the body absorbs the sugars found in food. Examples of foods with high glycemic indexes are white potatoes and white bread.

While many different types of foods contain sugars in them, in some cases the sugars are very slow to be absorbed. Your body might not even absorb those sugars before they pass through your system. In other cases, however, the sugars get into your body with amazing speed and get stored away in the fat cells for later use.

If you eat foods with high glycemic indexes, the easily available sugar in them triggers your body to release insulin. Insulin tells your fat cells to start absorbing all the sugar to get it out of your blood system. Once the wave of sugar is gone, your body goes down into a ‘trough’, with low insulin and blood sugar levels - and you get hungry again. The binge-eating then continues.

A good example of high glycemic index food is Chinese Food, in the traditional US take-out way. Note that authentic traditional Chinese food is quite healthy, with fresh fish stock and vegetables. However, the way many non-Chinese people tend to eat Chinese food, they eat piles of white rice, chicken soaked in a sugar-sauce, and breaded dumplings filled with sugar-mix. All of that food has an incredibly high glycemic index. The body is overwhelmed with sugar. It releases massive amounts of insulin and all of that sugar goes straight into fat cells. And then the body reacts to the subsequent sharp lowering of blood sugar levels as a danger sign and becomes hungry again.

While low carb dieters were among the first to point out the hazards of high glycemic foods, most other diet systems have now followed suit and recognize that foods such as white bread and white rice have lots of sugar and very few nutrients. Every diet plan I’ve studied is now recommending that people switch to the healthier varieties of whole wheat bread and brown rice.

In a shorthand way, foods with high carb counts usually have high glycemic index counts as well. But to understand more why you are avoiding high carb counts, it’s important to learn about the glycemic index, and to begin to look for that information on the foods you eat. Hopefully soon this information will be printed on every label you pick up and read!

Glycemic Load

While the glycemic index simply says how quickly the sugars in a food get into your fat cells, the glycemic load takes into account how much sugar is in a food to do this.

First, let’s recap what the Glycemic Index is. It is in essence how quickly the sugars in a food get into you. The sugars in fruit juice would get into you quickly. The sugars in broccoli would get into you slowly.

But just the glycemic index information isn’t enough when you are eating healthily. Let’s say you had Food A, in the shape of a slice of bread. Let’s say the sugars in it were high in glycemic index, so they would get into you extremely quickly. But let’s say there is only 1 tiny speck of sugar in that entire slice of bread. Even though that sugar was high glycemic index, the total load of that bread slice would be extremely low. That slice of bread would have practically no impact at all on your blood sugar levels or fat gain.

On the other hand, let’s say you had Food B, also in the shape of a slice of bread. Let’s say this also had sugars that were high in glycemic index in it. But in Food B’s case, the entire slice was wall to wall sugar. So the total load of this slice would be huge. If you ate that slice, your blood sugar would soar, and you would get lots of sugar stored away as fat.

So even in both cases the glycemic index of the food was the same, the glycemic load of those foods would be vastly different.

A commonly used comparison is fruits versus fruit juices. Both have the same sort of sugar in them - fructose. So in both cases that fructose sugar is just as quick at getting into your system. For a specific example, let us look at eating pineapple fruit compared with drinking pineapple juice.