Best low-carb diet please?

[BorisJohnsonsHair]

I've just read The Food Doctor diet, which sounds very sensible. I've been put off low-carb diets before (such as Atkins) because they're so full of saturated fats, and I'm not a great meat-eater anyway.

I've heard good things about The South Beach Diet too. Basically I think I want to eat low carb, so I know I can just cut out stuff, but I do need a bit more structure to keep me on the straight and narrow .

Could anyone recommend a low carb diet, which allows veg, olives, nuts, seeds etc? Thanks in advance

if you dont like fat, then the atkins will suit you perfectly, because you will be eating a lot more fish, fruit veg, and chicken. of course that just might be what the food doctor is. I dont know. But youdont have to eat meat and saturated fat if youdont want to.

Why do you need someone else's diet?
You can easily eat all the right things just by drawing up your own plan.

When I am trying to lose a few pounds, I eat carbs just once a day- that might be a bowl of porridge for breccie, or one slice of toast, or if I have eggs only then I'll allow myself some carbs for lunch or dinner- few boiled potatoes, small spoonful of brown rice, etc.

it's easy to devise your own eating plan that fits in with your lifestyle.

Mine goes like this..

breccie either 2 eggs and 1 slice toast, or porridge with semi skimmed milk and prunes.
lunch will be a home made soup, sometimes a small piece of cheese, some fruit, or a salad with cold meat, prawns, tuna...( not all- just one) Sometimes an open sandwhich- 1 slice of bread- with chicken or fish , and salad topping
Dinner will be meat or fish with vegetables then fruit and maybe a small amount of plain yoghurt.

I snack morning and mid afternoon on a few nuts, sometimes an oatcake with humuus.

Boris - any low carb diet will allow you to eat those things. And you don't have to eat a tonne of red meat - you can stick to fish, White meat etc. Do remember though, that there is no good evidence to support the dogma that sat fat is harmful or associated with heart disease...

The Idiot Proof Diet by India Knight and Neris Thomas works well for a lot of us and is pretty flexible if you want something 'book based'.

Surely though, there is little point in following a book for what to eat?
This just leads to yo-yo weight -gain-loss.
It's much better to develop a permanent healthy eating regime that you will stick to forever.

Diet books just make the authors money.

India Knight is a writer- not a nutritionist.

If you want to lose weight you just need to eat less and exercise more. Eat less= fewer carbs mainly, and fill up on everything else, within reason.

Well, the OP asked for advice on low carb and said she felt she needed a structure. Everyone is different and some do better with guidelines etc. Plus, the low carb route can be counter intuitive when you first start out - it's in opposition to a lot of accepted 'advice' and a book can be helpful.

I think most people are aware India Knight isn't a nutritionist! However, a lot of people also find the advice in that book (and others) helpful, healthy and sustainable.

What Amelia said. I think that there is a hell of a lot going for low-carb ways of eating (they undeniably work, for instance), but they all rely on you completely changing your eating habits. If you actually want to drop an entire food group for the rest of your life, that's fine, but on the whole it seems better (to me, who cannot live without carbs) to find a sensible way of eating that allows you to indulge occasionally without throwing your weight loss off, and which can be continued once you have actually lost the weight.

Try Rose Elliot's Low Carb Veggie.

Agree with Tea everyone has different requirements and different levels of knowledge, dh is following my advice but he'd struggle to lose weight going at it alone because he didn't have a clue to start with....if you want to follow something with more structure what the problem?

hopefully - I know of no low carb plan that suggests you 'drop an entire food group for the rest of your life'. No intelligent one, anyway!

A good low carb plan works to reduce the dependence on refined carbs and sugars. it doesn't mean you can never eat a slice of bread again. just not 6 slices a day

It's a shame there is so much misinformation about what is fundamentally a very smart and sensible way of eating. IMO, of course...

Tea I phrased that badly. But you will accept that it requires you to drastically reduce your intake of a very very common food group in Western diets. I'm not saying it's necessarily a good food group (although as someone who exercises a lot, I do think it's a very valuable food group), but that it exists and is there every single day! In order to lose weight you need to really abstain from eating many carbs (my understanding is you need to be well under 100g per day, preferably under 50g for ketosis, but I may be wrong about this? And there can be 17g in one slice of wholemeal bread). If you don't abstain stringently enough, you end up eating a high calorie, high fat, high carb diet, which definitely isn't the way for weight loss. I think most people could stand to lose a few carbs from their lives, but I think low-carbing as a long term way of eating isn't necessarily right for everyone.

Much better, IMO, to be fitter and have more muscle, which you can feed a sensible balanced diet of carbs, protein and fat, and have great long term health. It is hard to have the energy for serious workouts on a low-carb diet, and exercise means building some lean muscle mass, which means burning more calories just staying alive.

I'm trying not to be harsh on the Op here, but as a slight "by the way" is this another reason for cookery to be taught properly in schools as it was until the 70s and early 80s?

it was part of my education to learn how to cook a proper meal with a balance of carbs, protein etc etc.

And since then you can find a huge amount of info on the web with all you need to know about eating healthily.

It's fairly basic stuff knowing the main food groups, and as long as you reduce the carbs and fill your plate with mainly veg and a small amount of lean protein, the weight will come off.

But longer term, experts say that for health you need some carbs at each meal- just a small amount- and ideally not refined.

Betty the problem if you follow someone else's book/plan is that you avoid taking real responsibility for planning your own food intake. It means you never learn. Once you abandon the book or diet, you don't know what to do.

Amelia what's the difference between finding information on the web (as you suggest) and finding it in a book? All advice is 'someone else's plan' - it just depends which someone else you choose (and all 'experts' are not necessarily equal!)

Bit patronising to suggest people can't manage without diet books. Most people use them as a jumping off point, ime.

There is a big difference Tea between info on the web and a book.

Info on the web will give you the foundations to develop your own diet/eating plan.

A "diet" book is presumably prescriptive telling you what to eat each day and at each meal, rather than educating you more generally.

I haven't read the book you mention, so if I wrong, sorry.

But I just think that the whole diet industry is a con- it makes money out of people's unwillingness to do a little bit of very basic, simple research and take responsibility for what they eat.

Sorry if you find this patronising- but I speak my mind.

I disagree Amelia you have to get the info from somewhere - usually from a book or an internet forum such as this, what's wrong with getting info from a book - surely that's what those of us who can read have been doing for centuries. Following a plan/book usually provides you with helpful information enabling you to continue the diet on your own - it's part of the learning process - a first step to regain control of your eating through a diet which is unfamiliar to you, not a refusal to accept personal responsibility for your diet. I could read Idiot Proof Diet and understand how to translate that into everyday life - who couldn't? But before I had read a Low Carb Diet book and read some posts on here I was pretty clueless about low carb.

ok, so are you seriously suggesting that anything found on the web will be appropriate advice for healthy eating? have you looked on the Internet recently??! anyone can write anything there, you know

and no, the book I mentioned very definitely does not tell you what to eat every day and for each meal. sheesh. give people some credit.

though I agree that the diet industry is, in the main, a moneymaking con. it's pretty exploitative. some of the stories on here of endless yoyo dieting make me weep. but I'd direct my ire towards setups like Weight-watchers, slimming world, and the like, that focus on selling a product rather than putting forward an idea. basically all low carb says is eat natural foods and avoid starchy sugary processed shite. not much to argue with there, I'd have thought...

anyway, excuse lack of caps. am at work on iPhone in between patients. am health professional with MSc btw, but that doesn't mean you should take my thoughts on nutrition seriously

Tea why do you find it necessary to pull rank, by quoting your degree after saying I was patronising? Bit pathetic really.

And I think you are being terribly patronising TBH about what can be found on the internet. If you are a health professional then you should know about being able to access the abstracts for all sorts of research, and info from the BMJ etc etc etc. hardly " made up" evidence.

There is plenty of solid evidence on the web from organisations who support health and healthy eating, and who are not writing to make money.

I would've thought it was clear I was joking. Being tongue in cheek. Y'know, what with the wink, and my saying you shouldn't trust me, and all...

Never mind though, eh?

Thanks for all your comments and suggestions. (slightly miffed at the idea of not knowing how to cook, mind you ).

I have been trying to lose weight slowly and sensibly (1 lb a week) by calorie counting and exercising 5 times a week. This worked to a point and I lost a stone, but having read about low-carbing it seems to be far healthier (in terms of keeping your insulin level) and also includes lots of "proper" food. With calorie counting, there's always the temptation to "save" calories for a few drinks in the evening, which I know isn't the most sensible choice. Basically, I need a bit of structure and possibly bullying to keep on the wagon.

I'm not a stupid person, just a one with bugger all little self-discipline

For interesting and useful info on low carbing and health I'd reccommend reading 'Why we get fat and what to do about it' by Gary Taubes and then for the diet structure and cheerleading get India and Neris' Idiot Proof Diet. It really doesn't matter that they are not nutritionists. Their actual diet is pretty much the same as any other low carb plan but the friendly 'girls in it together' approach and fairly straight talking makes it very readable and quite inspiring. I've noticed quite a few people on the Low Carb threads like their cook book too.