BASIC LCHF

This is for Group members

Having come to a point that you have decided to try, or are trying, a LOW CARB - HIGH FAT DIET here is my take on the subject. You may be calling it a Paleo diet or a Keto diet or again a Mediterranean Diet. I tend to say Low Carb - High Fat (LCHF) Way of Eating (WOE). Each diet or WOE has a little more of this or little less of that. From eating all vegetables to munching through all meat. It is quite hard to decide where you may find the best diet for you. So if you are just thinking about starting a LCHF WOE, or restarting as it has not seemed to be going anywhere, or you have come off of the wagon and wonder where you went wrong, I suggest you take it back to square one and start with a very simple WOE. Basic Low Carb - High Fat.

The first thing we must do is consider why we want to try this WOE, is it to lose weight or because you are so ill you will try anything. Or maybe it is both because obesity and chronic illness seem to be partners in misery. If it is chronic illness you may have to think carefully before starting. For instance if you have diabetes and are on medications you must be ready to reduce them. This does mean talking to your doctor who may or not be sympathetic. You may be on other medications so consider them and with luck you may be able to leave them behind. I did after one month and am now only on one small medication for thyroid.

ANY ADVICE GIVEN HERE IS TAKEN AT YOUR OWN RISK. I AM NOT A PROFESSIONAL. 

I ADVISE CONSULTING YOUR OWN DOCTOR AS TO ITS SUITABILITY FOR YOU.

Why is this different to all the diets that have gone before and will undoubtedly come again? Because it changes the way your body will fuel itself. We have been burning sugar in the form of Glucose from all the carbs we have been eating. When we feel tired, hungry and grumpy it is because we have run out of this fuel and need to stoke up again. Reach for that snack bar, eat that pie or sandwich. Or just pure sugar in the form of sweets and candy. If we don’t manage to get that carbohydrate what is the body going to live on? How will exist we until the next meal? Well it can exist quite well using your own body fat, food that you have already eaten and stored for future use. BUT your body has to remember how to get at those stores, how to burn them for fuel.  It knows exactly how to do it but something is stopping it happening. We have stopped the access to the fat by offering the body all those easy to eat carbs

Most of us having been enjoying all the wonderful looking, smelling, tasty food manufacturers have been offering us, accepted it with open mouths. We have left on the shelf good foods in their natural state and picked up the complete, easy to use, time saving, tasty products we all know and love so well. Some of them declare that they are healthy or have healthy ingredients. All your five a day, enriched with vitamins, made with organic ingredients they proclaim. What we haven’t realised is all the crap they have also put into it to produce it cheaply or ALL THE SUGAR THEY ADDED to everything. Sweet and savoury. 

The main thing these foods are full of is CARBOHYDRATE. And as our WOE is called Low Carbohydrate it obviously the first thing that has to go. Yes, even ‘healthy granola’. Until you have really come to terms with what this WOE is all about leave all the packet, tinned and manufactured stuff alone. This INCLUDES all types of bread, buns, pasta, pancakes, anything made with flour. PLUS TAKE AWAYS!!! Ready mades like pizzas in supermarket. Possibly the only one you can have is cold meats, bacon etc. Life is not much without bacon and it even makes vegetables taste better. There is disagreement about eating these cooked meats, you must research and choose whether to eat them or not.

The next hardest thing to not have is SUGAR. Oh I put honey/sweeteners/algarve in my tea/coffee, that’s not sugar is it? YES IT IS. Sugar comes in more that 50 different names and they are all sugar. If you really want to lose weight or be well again it is best to let it go. Put double cream in your coffee. Well the other bit of the name is High Fat. Go ahead have cream. (Some people are dairy sensitive. They can use Coconut cream or butter and Coconut oil).

This brings us to Breakfast. To eat or not. If you already don’t have breakfast then don’t start eating it. If you do and it has been carb loaded with cereals, breakfast toast or biscuits, waffles or pancakes, if you happen to be American, then you have quite a big hill to climb.You are going to have to find something else to eat! If you have the time the obvious answer is eggs and bacon with perhaps an avocado, tomato or mushroom. No time, the usual rush out the door clutching toast. Here you will need to pre make something that you can grab from the fridge. But not a banana! We will discuss fruit later.

There, I have put the hardest things first in starting a LCHF WOE. Cutting out all the things thought to make life good. Is being fat good? Is being ill with multiple disorders good? Always tired, stomach cramps, and the worst, having to inject yourself with insulin all the time. My personal experience is that having been incontinent and agoraphobic about going out because my IBS I came back to a normal life of even going on holiday without fear of embarrassing things happening. Plus many other things that got better. Who would want to go back to that when all it means is not eating a few of these pleasurable but devastating foods. Not me. So now I take great pleasure in the foods I can eat and they are many. Not only do they taste good but they also keep me satiated and without hunger rearing its ugly head. When you are eating carbs you can get what is being termed being ‘hangry’. Hungry and angry.

So we come to what you do eat on a LCHF WOE. Here are the basic foods which we can look at individually later.

NOTE: please adjust to your requirement for instance if you are a vegetarian or sensitive to a  particular food. 

Meat, Fowl, Fish, (particularly oily fish) seafoods, eggs, dairy, nuts, seeds, fruit, and ABOVE GROUND  VEGETABLES.

Straight away we can see NO WHITE POTATO. A bit of potato is like eating a lump of sugar, absolute carbohydrate. Sweet potato is what its name implies, Sweet. Possibly it can be added later in small quantities but not at first. So let us look at vegetables first. 

ALL VEGETABLES ARE CARBOHYDRATE. (Avocados will be looked at under fats). There are three Macro nutrients, ProteIn, Fat and Carbohydrate. There are many Micro nutrients like vitamins, minerals etc. So if it is not a protein such as meat, fish, eggs and so on or a fat such as butter, lard or the fat in meat, then it is carbohydrate. The point being that leafy green vegetables grown above ground plus other veg like tomatoes, cucumber, have the least carbohydrates in them. This is simplifying it and there are some mixtures like nuts. But a good starting point can be ‘Is it grown above Ground?’ Add some of these veg to your meals so you will get their needed nutriments. At first you do not need to stint yourself on these veg, use things like long leaf lettuce as your bread to put cream cheese on. Salad is anything from radishes to lettuce, celery to bok choy. Try to have spinach and cabbage, kale is supposed to be a wonder veg but in truth I can’t eat it. Some smoothy it for breakfast. Lots of recipes on the internet.

This is NOT a high Protein way of eating like the Atkins Diet. It is Low Carb, MODERATE  Protein, High Fat. And then it does not mean you have to eats lumps of butter or have pints of Olive Oil. But we will come to fats later. Moderate Protein means a reasonable amount of meat, fish or seafood or dairy. Or it could be couple of eggs and bacon. Reasonable according to if you are male or female, large or small, old or young. There are internet sites and apps that will suggest measurement in this but meanwhile don’t  overdo protein but be sure that you get good quality protein every day. Like I said, it many be eggs which should be free range. 

For Fat, often the question is how much? You will notice I am not giving quantities. There are places you can find suggestions of how much. I find that if you cook with good fats, Olive Oil, Butter, Ghee and coconut oil it provides a fair amount. Add best Olive Oil as a salad dressing, have butter on your cooked veg, have meat that has fat rather than lean and you will have had plenty of fat to stop you from being hungry. Also good cream cheeses like Brie or Boursin. If that is not enough, cream in coffee and make some Fat Bombs. Recipe on group site. Fat is what stops you from being hungry, stops cravings and makes things taste great. Avocados are full of good oil, have two or three a week or more. Great with eggs and bacon.

DO NOT USE ANY OILS EXCEPT OLIVE OIL. No seed, canola, or man made oils. Particularly to cook with as heating them is very bad for your health.

Now if you are not or never have been a cook it is no problem. Most meals are very simple protein and veg or protein and salad. It is mostly preparation of the veg either for a salad or to cook. Wash all veg well to remove pesticides if not organic. Don't chop veg and meat on the same board or cut with the same knife. Many of these foods you can cook in a frying pan and a saucepan to boil the vegetables. Even living with a small cooking ring it is possible. Yes, I have in my time cooked on one gas ring. For instance, a chicken breast can be fried rather than baked. If you have a kitchen then you can spread your wings and make a cream cheese sauce to add to your meal.

Here is a suggested meal menu. It is only an idea to start you off. You can change it round but not add more things. In the first two weeks it is good to have something to abide by rather than wondering what to do. Look at the suggestions and make a shopping list. Do not go popping in granola bars on the pretext that they are healthy if you get hungry. Have small bits of cut cheese or slices of cooked meat or nuts ready if you feelings hunger, or more likely craving, grab you. Try very hard not to snack. Have coffees and tea but NO soda drinks, not even zero calorie drinks. Have fizzy water and lime juice.

	Breakfast	Lunch	Dinner
Sunday	Bacon & egg, + Tomato /mushrooms. Fried in butter.	Tin Salmon or Tuna & salad	Roast Pork & veg
Monday	Natural Live Yogurt (NLY) + Blue Berries or boiled egg, or bit of omelette veg frittta	2 Egg  & Cheese salad	Cauliflower rice & veg or meat curry
Tuesday	NLY + Blue Berries as Monday	Ham Omelette cook and take with you cold or heat in micro.	Chicken & veg
Wednesday	NLY + Blur Berries as Monday	Cauliflower rice salad and packet corn beef (or other packet meat.	Chicken breast and veg. Roast two one for tomorrow lunch
Thursday	NLY + Blue berries as Monday	Chicken salad	Fresh Salmon and veg
Friday	NLY + Blue berries as Monday	2 Cheese Salad	Small Beef Steak and veg
Saturday	NYL + Blue Berries or egg and sausage, bacon and avocado if not working	Egg and Bacon omelette if you didn’t have it for Breakfast. If not a homemade soup with veg in it.	Lamb burger & salad

NOTES: if you need a dessert after dinner then have berries of any kind and cream, possibly Live Yogurt as well. Yogurts MUST NOT BE LOW FAT. They have too much sugar in them. While we say it FULL FAT EVERYTHING from now on, cheese, milk, cream…..

Fruits should only be berries, leave all others alone for a while as they have too much sugar in them. So No bananas. Yes I know, hard and I do miss them too.

TREAT. DARK CHOCOLATE. You can have three small bit of dark chocolate in the evening, they must be more than 65% better over 70%. Green and Blacks very good or Lindt. 

Plus, if really necessary a small glass of red wine. This latter is not so good as it can quickly lower your resistance to coming off the wagon. If you do come off the wagon don’t beat yourself up about it. Get yourself quickly back on the wagon and keep going. You will only get that wonderful land of not feeling hungry, losing weight and feeling good by sticking with it. 

Copyright Julie Gale 2017
ANY ADVICE GIVEN HERE IS TAKEN AT YOUR OWN RISK. I AM NOT A PROFESSIONAL. 

I ADVISE CONSULTING YOUR OWN DOCTOR AS TO ITS SUITABILITY FOR YOU

ALL FOODS ARE POISON?

Julie’s Blog 14th May 2017

One never knows if we are eating the right thing, the thing that will give healthful results or blast us into nutritional hell. I remember reading some years ago that in truth “All foods are poison to our bodies”. It is just that our bodies have learnt over aeons of time how to deal with any particular food. When I have studied lately how our body works, the amazing chemistry it produces with the nutrients that enter, I am amazed. And now I have to rethink that it is not all my body but just over half consists of microbes, according to Rob Knight Phd on a talk from University of California Television (UCTV).  Each of these microbes being chemical factories on their own.

This then makes sense that as we move ever further away from simple real foods that our bodies start saying “Hell I don’t know how to deal with this or that particular food”. And our body talks to us by making us unwell, allergic to something, intolerant of another or just plain overweight. It has been talking to me over many years as this went wrong, then that and later having to have an operation to change or lose something. I always say I have gone to heaven a bit at a time, or hell I suppose if you are into such things. I think I can say that almost everyone of the episodes, as the doctors like to call them, have been because I ate the wrong things. But I only know that NOW! 

Then again I did really know because I lived at a time when we knew that too much sugar, white bread, biscuits etc. were not good for you. I lost my first extra weight by following a booklet in the early 1960s that said “eat only meat and veg” And I lost weight. They didn’t mention fats at that time. I berate myself now that I listened to all the Low Fat nonsense that followed. But even then the booklet did not say continue to eat in this way until required weight and just add a bit more to be stable. No all the poison of 40 or more years is in my body, or been removed, even though I now follow a fairly strict LCHF Way of Eating I will have to deal with some problems to the end. I now can never eat bread again. The last time I did I had an horrific reaction. Boy, did my body tell me. Some foods are now real poisons for me and my body cannot deal with them any more.

I suspect this has happened or is happing to many here on our Support Group. We ate the wrong things and some of them our bodies cannot deal with any more. It is very hard when it is something you particularly like, when you know it will upset you. Some of us have a harder road to walk than others and that is the main reason for this group. To support each other and be offered ideas of where you can study and learn more. I really find that the more I learn about the body and its nutrition the easier I find it to follow a LCHF Way of Eating.

JULIE BLOG May 7th 2017

Giving up Dairy!

Hi there, welcome to all our new members, I hope you are finding things here interesting and helpful. You may not know that I occasionally put up a blog which I then put up on on http://lchf81.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/ sequentially where you can find them when they get lost miles down on this page. This time I am going to talk personally about my own fights with LCHF Way of Eating. 

I have plateaued in weight loss for a long time. I do need to lose about stone. It would help the weight on my knee joints which were replaced about ten years ago. I am not obese but definitely overweight. In one of the videos I put up this week on this subject the doctor in it advised stop having dairy. Aggh! No cheese! I am a cheeseaholic. Milk I can take or leave but cheese and yogurt. It has been said to me before 'give up dairy, and I always answer I have given up enough to eat this way. 

The doctor in the video said try it for two weeks and see if you start to lose weight again. I lost at the start of eating this way. I had a think and came to the conclusion nothing else had worked, less fat, less protein, less carbs, all tried individually. What is a fortnight? What is not having cheese? I gave up sugar, nothing surely is harder than that. I will give it a go. So I finished the last bits of my particular cheeses at lunch and milk yesterday. I allow myself a half table spoon, measured, of cream for my coffee as I have heard its not quite as bad as milk. Yogurt pot half full and shall finish it soon. So an experiment of one N=1.

I have substituted the fats in cheese with walnuts, brazil nuts, only a few, seeds toasted and put on my salad. I shall make sure my meats are fatty and I have olive oil every day. Also have about a table spoon of Coconut oil with a teaspoon of almond butter most days. I don't think I shall go short on fats. What does anybody else think? Open to suggestions. The rest of my diet is all the usual fish eggs etc. Oh but I shall miss our homemade cream cheese sauces. 😢 I'll report how it goes.

I am also thinking of having a go at Cron-O Meter app to measure my foodstuff. Never used it before. Tried My fitness Pal but got lost somewhere along the line. I would really like to know for   advising new people to LCHF,  if it is worth paying for and using so another experiment N=1. Anyone else used it, believe it is very American. Why are there no British apps or are there?

UK upport group https://www.facebook.com/groups/LCHFsupportUK/
https://www.facebook.com/LCHF81/

So this was me last December and I am still about the same. OK front on but turn sideways on OMG. Yes all in the bum, tum and hips.

Celebrating one year of LCHF. As today has already started in some parts of the world I will post this blog for my tomorrow. 

ONE YEAR OF LCHF TODAY
I had more than one thing wrong because of what I was eating

Julie’s Blog 17/4/2017

Yeah! This time last year I started my new “Way Of Eating’ (WOE). I had been sick with IBS for many years and three months earlier I’d had a blood loss that had got me really worried. After a bowel scan where nothing was found to be wrong I thanked my God and then asked the doctor what do I do now? I was almost agoraphobic about going out for fear of embarrassing accidents, my intestines were always in a state of inflammation and painful and I was overweight just tipping the BMI at obese! And this IBS had been going on for some 40 years with no help from five operations in the area. But answer from any doctor or surgeon came there none.

Like many others these days the only recourse left to me was Dr. Google. A year ago last January I started an intense three months research on diets that might help. On April 17th 2016 I stopped having sugar in my coffee! That was the hardest thing to do. Of more importance I cut out all grains and sugar in anything. That meant all processed food. I ate only meats, fish, dairy, eggs, fats and minimum of vegetables. My life changed in so many ways.

This year I have stepped into a whole new world online. I discovered people all over the world who had come to the same decision to save themselves. It also made me realise that all my life had been blighted by my diet and particularly since 1970 food had changed. Although I cooked mostly from fresh I ate all the processed food everyone else ate and stuffed myself with LOW FAT when trying so hard a dozen times to lose weight that always crept back on. With a year of reading, watching wonderful lectures and interviews on video and following groups on Face Book I came to realise it was not only IBS that I had suffered because of this bad WOE. 

I had low thyroid that had made me think I had ME for many years until it was diagnosed because of muscle weakness and fatigue. I lost hair and my eyebrows. I had Arthritis in many joints bad enough that ten years ago I had to have two new knee joints. It is in my shoulders, hands and ankles. I had to lose my gallbladder. I had high Blood pressure as well. I got an stomach ulcer and Hiatus Hernia, ulcer now gone but hernia still there. And recently I had a realisation that my life long painful periods which disabled me every month even when young might not have been so bad with a better diet. A hysterectomy for this problem Plus two other operations. And now for the good news

My IBS is so much better that I now lead a normal life and can go out whenever I like. There is some residual damage to the gut which still flares up now and then and is painful. I came off of PPIs and and my High Blood Pressure medications. My Thyroxine has been reduced. I want to get off it altogether. My arthritis is less painful and I go walking, climb stairs normally and do Tai Chi. The arthritis can flare up sometimes. My blood pressure is within bounds but a little on the high side. I lost a little weight and am now only overweight. I think age has slowed my metabolism. This WOE does not seem to have helped these last two things. About the only thing that was better for me than most women was I didn’t suffer the menopause symptoms, don’t know why this is. Oh yes, My hair is growing back and stands up short on the top of my head.

There is one thing that makes me sad and that is seeing the rest of the world go by with every ill that can be laid at the door of the food people are eating. I wrote a short leaflet that I gave to my friends that asked for help after seeing my recovery. I commented where ever I could to help people on line and made up my page LCHF81 to post articles to help people understand and finally started a UK support group which is slow at catching on but has some good people joining now. 

At my age I don’t think I can do more but wish I could. Meanwhile I have stepped into this new world where I find social interaction hard, seeing the goodies in the shops even harder but know what I have done is right. I feel wonderfully well and able to enjoy my life. That is a blessing.

And so for my second year. I understand so much more now. I have honed my diet and think I get into mild Ketosis as I also Intermittent fast every day on 16:8, and only have two meals a day. I have reduced fat a little recently in hopes that some more weight might come off, not expecting it to be a lot. My meals are delicious and I enjoy eating them. I allow myself a small bit of 90% chocolate which has gone up from 85%. Well its hard to leave that other world entirely!

WHEN DID MY FOOD START KILLING ME? 1st April 2017

It is no joke.

When I was having a good think about this I asked myself, when was it that our food changed? When did the manufacturers think they could mess around with good food and then sell us an adulterated form of it? 60s, 70s, all the writings on say it changed in the early 1970s with the low fat theory. That is when the upward curve started for obesity and metabolic diseases like Diabetes. So my thinking started to take me back and with 80 years in which to go that is a long way.

My first worries about food were during the second world war. I was four as it broke out and very shortly found myself in a boarding school while my parent were on war duties. I was always hungry. The food did not sustain us and we looked for anything to eat. I rememberer being in a school play and in one scene some were at a dinner table eating a meal. They had one thin slice of bread to represented the food each had to eat and the rest of us just drooled watching them eat it. But the bread we had then was said to be adulterated with chalk, don’t know the truth. Margarine was like axel grease, not that I knew what that was. Meat was small and mostly fat and gristle. I think that this was where manufacturers began to find out what could be done to food.

After the war we returned to what is now termed ‘real food’. A meal was meat or fish and two veg, potato and a garden vegetable. A pudding was homemade on the whole like jam tart and custard, steamed suet pudding. I remember breakfast cereals at this time, quite plain like Shredded Wheat. Sugar remain rationed for a long time and in the late forties, early fifties, my last days at school, sweets were like a very small bar of chocolate or 2 oz of boiled sweets per week. I entered adulthood always keen to get food and wanting as much sweet stuff as I could get. I think I can see a problem emerging here. But I was a keen athlete and swimmer most of my young life, I think that helped me stay slim. 

By 1960 I was a young married woman. The food I cooked food for the family it was mostly traditional as I had been taught to make at school and home. I baked cakes and biscuits, bread and made jam. I found it cheaper than buying ready mades. So ready mades were becoming more in evidence in peoples homes. Unfortunately at this time my marriage fell apart and I was left on my own. Although money was tight I still tried to cook a meal for myself. During this time I took a job as a waitress in a seaside hotel. Here I rememberer my first pre-cooked or dried food. It was awful but part of my wages. This must have been the precursor of processed food other than biscuits bread etc. The daily dinner that only had to be rehydrated.

And so I ate my way through the 60s, 70s, 80, 90s and into the 2000s eating what we all have been eating, utter rubbish. It has got sweeter and sweeter, sugar and wheat flour added to everything. I have gone through several metabolic or autoimmune problems none of which have been solved by operations or drugs. Then I had a sign which made me think the worst had befallen me. It hadn’t but it frightened me. I started searching for an answer.

At this time last year I had been reading books and articles, and watching video lectures etc. about eating Low Carbohydrates High Fat for 3 to 4 months. I was preparing myself to eat a different way. On the 17th  of April I started and within two weeks I felt better. Bar eating three rolls on my annual holiday that threw me right back into my illness, I have continued to eat LCHF and damned glad I am too. No, not all is right but I am so much better and able to lead a normal life again. I lost some weight but not a lot and yes, I could do with a little more off. But health is my most important factor in all this.

Here are some of the books I read on my Kindle. Some are freebies I downloaded whenever I saw them. I wish I could afford a lot more. The videos and articles are too numerous to mention. I think that one should continue to research and read everything one can on the subject because it keeps in mind why one is eating LCHF, what ever that may be.

MINI JULIE'S BLOG 20TH MAR. 2017

Mini Blog by Julie Gale

STARTING AT THE BEGINNING

It may well be that you have not actually started your LCHF Way of Eating (WOE) yet or that you are well on your way but not completely sure what you are doing yet, Or again you may be like me and been on the WOE for nearly a year but had a bit of a fall back into old ways. I guess my fall isn't too bad, for one week I allowed myself to have 20 grams of porridge, full fat yogurt and frozen raspberrys each morning, and during the week 1 oat cake and one banana. 

'Humph! So you think that's a fall? I had (enter your own naughty here'.)

Yes, but it was for me and I put on half a kilo! Keep doing it and I would have back where I started. So today, Monday, I start back at the beginning again because it will take me some time to get back into fat burning keto and I shall be hungry, possibly craving other carbs. I am also back to my 16:8 intermittent fasting I have done for many months. A regime that I know makes me feel well and brain bright.

Where ever you are on this spectrum of eating just know you are not the only one, continue educating yourself on all things LCHF etc. and eat well. BTW, don't forget your salt, potassium and magnesium unless told medically not to have them. You need you electrolytes.

A WAY OF EATING JULIE'S BLOG 18 MARCH 2017

JULIE'S BLOG 18 MARCH 2017 A WAY OF EATING

We have all been subject to many ideas of how we should be eating over our lives, nearly always called a 'DIET'. But if you are now looking to heal yourself of the many modern metabolic and autoimmune chronic diseases or are looking to lose weight before you do get them, by eating a low carbohydrate way, whatever it is called, is not a diet, it is a way of life! And it is called lots of things, LCHF, Paleo, Ketogenic, Mediterranean, Banting, Atkins and probably many more. Some are a little bit more protein, some more fat, some different amounts of carbohydrates. So what do they have in common?

Embarking on any of these named Way of Eating (WOE)(yes I hate it too) I would say the thing in common is 'you stop eating processed foods and eat real food!' Beyond that you takes yer choice. I think you should think about the reason you want to do it, what is driving you to it, overweight or feeling so ill you find you have to do something. Doctors haven't really helped in the main, and you have either started researching online or have seen articles in mags and papers. I had vaguely been hearing about going gluten free and wondered if it would help my IBS. I asked one of my doctors 'should I stop eating bread?' He answered 'well you can always give it a try'. I did but when I started looking into it I found the whole subject was much bigger and deeper than I had realised. So much more than just gluten free.

Then it is not a 'Diet' as one has to almost leave the world everybody else is living in and reorganise ones life. It isn't just buying different foods but carefully choosing the right ones. Labels become more important if you do buy some boxed or tinned foods etc. But the biggest, hardest thing is the change in your social interactions. It comes as quite a shock the number of things off your list of what you can eat when eating out. Your friends and relations start by saying 'good for you, you go for it' but you suffer rather like being a vegetarian or vegan. I was a vegi for 15 years and I know. But they often don't really know what you have been suffering with your particular health problem and may not see your desperation. Surely, they say you can have one roast potato, one bit of birthday cake? Ah yes the birthday cake problem, shall I shan't I? Well it will depend on which WOE you have chosen, on keto it is a big no no, others it may be OK. But every time you eat carbs it is amazing how it starts your craving for carbs again. 

So where to start or if you have started, to carry on from? I started this group and my #LCHF81 page to help people find a place to start their research. I follow quite a few Doctors and sites but.... they are nearly all American or Australian. The only British one anywhere near them, unless you know of another one then please tell us, is Zoë Harcombe's site. I am not going to put up links because you must research for yourself. Just type the names in Dr Google :-) Then I think my best are Dr Perlmutter for brain problems, Dr Berg videos, Ivor Cummins (Irish) for heart and diabetes(not a doctor but superb lecturer). Dr Jason Fung for diabetes and fasting, Oh I forgot that one on my list of WOEs. A good group for Keto, Keto Saved Me and watch Jamie Moskowitz who beat diabetes and more, good videos. 

A couple of things, they often try to sell their services, books and products but I just say, well there is no NHS and they have to make a living. Also disregard all peculiar adverts in articles, (like five foods not to eat). I like the two boys on 180Nutrition Videos, one them is Welsh and of course Robert Lustic on the evils of Sugar. And Gary Taubes for the same reason. Dr Amy Myers is good for Thyroid and Dr Mary Newport for Alzheimer's. I'll do books another time.

These are some of my favourites and there are many more. When you read or watch them only take what is right for you and don't be afraid to change your mind. I have vacillated all over the place but perhaps that is for another blog. Thanks if you have got this far. I am going to change some rules for the group later this week so look out for that please, until my next blog
Happy eating and better health to you all. Julie Gale Admin

PS to new members - I have several blogs if you page down but it will be quite a long way. Thinking of bringing them out onto Blogspot then only puting links. I'll let you know in due course.

FASTING JULIE'S BLOG 3RD MAR 2017

FASTING

Had a Fast this week on Wednesday. I was into fasting in 2013 after the Dr Michael Mosley programme on BBC. Well what I now think of as semi fasting. I did the 5:2 system for quite a while.Yes it worked up to a point, that point being that all diets where you keep eating carbohydrates don't work. You regain the weight when you go back to a 'normal diet'. In quotes because too many, and me at that time, a normal diet meant a standard diet. 

The 5:2 diet meant that you ate normally for five days and fasted for two days. Mosley's book, which I had purchased, said on a fasting day you ate 500 to 600 calories. So really it was an Eat Less Day, to my mind fasting means no eating. But I didn't know what I know now. I followed the 5:2 for quite some time, I joined a 5:2 site and wrote up my diary, not very well, never very good at keeping up diaries. 

I did find that on the fast days I felt hungry, I longed to get to six O'clock when I allowed myself to eat a small meal. This experience put me off of trying fasting again and since my success with LCHF/Keto eating I didn't see the need. As mentioned elsewhere, I have plateaued in my weight loss. I am a great Dr Jason Fung follower so recently I watched a good many of his interviews and read his blogs. I'd love to buy his book but funds are not good at the moment, it is on my Kindle wish list. I do have one by Joanna Alderson which is a short guide based on Dr Jason's writings. She say it is really her notes on Fungs writing. It was only £2.77 on Amazon.

One thing came up in this re-researching that made me decide to give fasting another go, it was that if one was on a fat burning way of eating, fasting was a breeze! And so it turned out to be. Much easier. I started at 8pm the night before and went right round to 8 pm the next day. I drank a bulletproof coffee first thing, various green teas during the day and a cup of marmite at lunch time. At 8pm I made 2 scramble eggs with cheese and had another green tea. The next day I returned to my intermittent fasting as usual and didn't eat until 1pm. I lost half a kilo but its creeping back but up.☹️

The thing is I don't want to cut down the size of my meals and their diversity of nutrients. Also my husband cooks and I don't want him to think I don't appreciate his delicious meals. So I figured that if I fasted that might take care of the problem. First I tried the Intermittent fasting but that wasn't enough hence the day long fast. It was really no problem and I shall certainly do it again next week. BTW, husband likes it because he can cook himself things he likes and I don't.

You might wonder about my cutting down the amount that I want to eat. I am 82 in a couple of months and all the pundits seem to say for older people its better to eat smaller amounts of all good nutrients. I have found that anyway on an LCHF/keto WOE I just don't want to eat as much as I did.
Thanks for reading this
Julie.

CAT AMONG THE PIGEONS 26TH FEB 2017 JULIE'S BLOG

CAT AMONG THE PIGEONS

I mentioned in another post that my weight loss had plateaued…….. Last week I tried a bit harder by following a Dr Berg video to bring the fat content down a little and kept to my two meals a day and no extras. Already being on two meals a day it wasn’t very different. It did also say avoid stress, not really having much as a retired lady, by not listening to the news. So no TV news and no radio at night that I like. I did think I’d probably had enough of The Trump news. Do you know it was very relaxing, I admit I worry about what is happening to the world. Particularly in the case of health and welfare.

Perhaps this blog will be a Cat among the Pigeons. We, my husband Philip and I, were discussing this morning what would happen if everybody listened to the LCHF message and ditched the carbs and processed foods? How many people in the food industries would be put out of work? How many companies would crash? How could we feed the world? Could we find enough organic, real food to give the millions? It certainly could not be done quickly.

People say we should eat like in the 70s but I can remember it in the 50s. I left school at 15 to go to Art School and then work. Food was still scarce after the war. I joined the Royal Air Force for four years as a Physical Training Instructor which is where I first learned a bit about nutrition. Of course I was fed three good meals a day, loads of carbs, even then I went to the canteen in the evening and had egg and chips. It was here I experienced for the first time putting on weight despite all the sports. I could tell by the fact that my uniform became to tight! You had to shell out money if you needed new uniform. I realised that I was adding a small bar of dairy milk chocolate every day to my food intake. I cut it out and returned to my proper size. I wish it had been that easy later in life.

So we have been subject to processed rubbish for a long time. Longer than most writers say. But perhaps just after the war we were limited by rationing and it was one only small bar of chocolate a week. Is it just a matter of the amount of this rubbish people eat, or has the actual ‘rubbish’ got worse as well as more available? Yet now they say there are more people over fed than under fed in the world. More people dying of abundance than starvation. What a crazy world. I still get visions of the TV program a little while ago of frosty corn flakes being made in UK. They had to make millions of tons of the stuff day and night to keep up with the demand. 

Yet I think we must make the effort to spread the news that individually we can save our health, stop pain and reverse such things as diabetes by ditching the carbs and sugar. I shall try to help as as long as I’m here and can work a computer. You Low Fatters and high Carbers will not fool me any longer! 

Yes thanks, I have lost half a kilo, lots more to go.

Love to all
(my other hobby, Painting)

JULIE’S BLOG 22ND FEB. 2017

JULIE’S BLOG 22/2/2017

Hi everyone. When I started searching Facebook for groups to do with LCHF etc. I found they mostly were talking about foods and supplements that were not available here or I had to find its equivalent in the UK, or I didn’t know what the heck they were talking about. I joined several, from USA and Australia and although I learnt a lot I got frustrated. Also, luckily, not being diabetic myself I found a lot of people’s test reading posted and being told to ‘eat to my meter’ a bit strange. That completely fogged me at first as to what it meant. But then in UK with our NHS we don’t get more than basic blood tests. Last time I was told one of my reading was ‘In the green area’ and OK. I could not get them to tell me the reading. Got it eventually from my doctor but the nurse hadn’t a clue.

I had, as previously mentioned, started LCHF because of IBS and followed Zoë Harcombe’s book. I just ate to a very simple plan of three meals including porridge for breakfast, and basically meat, fish, eggs, cheese and vegetables. I wanted to particularly stop eating wheat at the time, or anything made of wheat. So I wasn’t really worrying if I was in Ketosis, eating Paleo or even LCHF. But in following a keto site I later realised I was going into ketosis and even had a dose of keto flu. I still allow myself an occasional porridge with berries and Straight Up yogurt from Waitrose that I find good. No sugar and live.

I think we are very slow here in UK in catching up on these issues. Yet all around me I see people so ill or definitely heading towards being very ill. All you get told is ‘I’m fed up with all the different things they tell you to eat or not eat’ and they mostly don’t want to be bothered at all. Even if it would lessen their pain, reverse so many illnesses, they would rather continue to eat horrible processed food. I have seen large tables filled with sugary baked processed goods disappear in an afternoon. The few who have been interested are in this group! 

As the name I gave this group suggests I don’t mind what type of LCHF any one follows, it is what is right for them. As long as its low carb and they eat good fats. I still don’t really know what type of WOE I follow, I only know what I do works for me and my heath is very good for my age. All I want to do is to try to help people understand what turns out to be a very all encompassing subject by finding things that may be of interest and putting them up on group. Getting people to help each other on what is a not always an easy path to embark on and, as a retired person with time, do the researching for people who have not. I have been doing this researching to the detriment of other things for over a year now. I had some previous training in nutrition and exercise. 

A warm welcome to all new members, I hope you find something here to help you on your way

BTW I am dyslexic so forgive any mistakes and I'll be glad if you tell me corrections 😍 I Go through it a million times but still miss things.

FALLING OF THE WAGON 4th Jan 2017

FALLING OF THE WAGON  4th Jan 2017
Or the 'well one won't hurt me' syndrome. This idea is one that also comes to us along with the wrong diet information we have been given for so many years. If we have changed our Way of Eating (WOE) to embrace better health then there is no wagon to fall off of. Because that is the way we have decided to eat. Low Carbs, Moderate Protein, High Fat. No rubbish foods. If we decide not to offend a hostess and eat her biscuit, or her lovely pasta supper dish, or even succumb to that bit of dessert, we know it won't be good for us but we can just step back onto the waggon the next day. Return to good eating. Perhaps limit our carbs a bit more for one day. Because this is the way we have decided to live for the rest of our lives, not just for the period of a 'diet'.

But has it harmed us? Yes and no. No because we have all eaten these carbs in our time, that's why we are either ill or fat. We won't die or be ill unless you ate the food that was your particular problem, like mine is wheat. But Yes, because you are working towards or are now a 'fat burner'. You have taught your body to use fat for its fuel source rather than carbs (glucose). It was hard giving up sugar in coffee, no biscuits, no bread etc. And you felt better and lost weight! If you wake up after a lapse feeling poorly, found your weight has gone up and have your pain is back, then you have been harmed. You body had to switch fuel source again because it had to use up the carbs you ate, the extra sugar cannot stay in your body.

But it is not like the old eating too many calories or not sticking to prescribed menu. That made you feel bad mentally. Don't beat yourself up about it but - get back to eating the LCHF WOE as soon as you can and don't be surprised if next day you feel hungry or desire carbs again. That is the down side of Falling off of the Wagon.

Julie's Blogs 5th Feb. 2017

ABOUT MY OWN SEARCH

I said in the pinned post I would upload some blogs which I have been very remiss in doing. So I have sat down this Sunday afternoon to write a blog. Perhaps some information about me and why I feel I had to start this group. 

Last year I had a colon scan because of a show of blood. I have had bowel problems for some 40 years and only recently had I managed to get my doctor to agree that I had Irritable Bowel Syndrome. I have had many operations over the years that never gave an answer as to what my pain and bowel problem was and really calling it IBS didn't either. The scan showed nothing untoward which was a relief but the surgeons and doctors still didn't have any more advice as to what to do to help myself. 

A year or so previously it was found that I had a hiatus hernia and an ulcer in my stomach. Here a diet was suggested which was to cut out many particular foods. Tea, coffee, oranges, tomatoes and many more. What is called a GERD diet. It worked, well as far as the ulcer was concerned. It completely disappeared. When I came home distraught from being told that nothing could be found on the colon scan, distraught because there seemed to be no answer, I remembered that diet alone had cured my ulcer. I wondered if diet could help me now because my IBS was making me almost agoraphobic, I needed always to be near a toilet or I had embarrassing accidents. Yes, I turned to Dr. Google. What would we all do without him?

The first thing I turned up was Dr Lustic on the evils of sugar. I ate plenty of sugar and although I knew sugar made one fat I still ate it in all the usual things, cakes, biscuits, desserts.....
I noticed at the side of the Youtube video other suggestions. I had not to this point been a Youtube watcher, more a user to put up a few of my own videos. I moved on to videos about wheat and grains. Now these really startled me. I had been vaguely wondering if I should stop eating bread but we had not long brought a Bread Maker and my darling husband had become a very good baker. His bread rolls and loaves were delicious. I studied for 3 to 4 months articles, books, and videos. 

I began to realise it was not just cutting out this or that but a complete change of my Way of Eating if I was going to be successfuI. I had to come away from the 'Low Fat - Counting Calories' and eat what to me sounded a great way of eating, a Low Carb - High Fat diet. It jogged my memory. Many years ago when trying to lose my 'after baby fat' I had found a small booklet in Boots chemist that said do not eat bread, cakes, biscuits or potatoes but eat as much proteins, fat and vegetables as you wish. This was 1962. It had worked! Here I was now on the edge of obese, sick to death of my life and I hadn't remembered this. I was conned along with the rest of the world into eating 'low fat' filled with SUGAR and CARBS galore. Had this been my downfall? I'd had unmentionable parts of me removed over the years none of which made me any better ending up fairly recently with gallbladder removal. Plus the gastric ulcer and hiatus hernia. All of which I felt could be put down to eating the wrong things.

On April 17th 2016 I announced I was going to try an LCHF diet. My husband who now does the cooking took it quite well. I did a bit preparation in making out a diet for myself based on the Harcombe diet. Within in two weeks my Diarrhoea stopped. Within a month I felt the best I had been for years. I lost a little weight but not a lot I did however lose some of my big belly fat, I changed shape. I became a convert to LCHF but I still had a lot to learn. I have continued studying and have many books on my Kindle I haven't had time to read. I also, in looking around my friends and family, realised that most them were sick for the same reason, too many carbs. I started my page LCHF81, the 81 being my age at the time and recently started the group. I have formed several views on the subject and will try to talk about them in the future. Meanwhile I continue my LCHF WOE and my IBS seems to be in abeyance. I don't seem to lose more weight but I have the energy to go to my Tai Chi Classes. 

My best wishes to you all on your own journeys, whatever method of LCHF you use. Julie

Me Dec. 1st 2016 on my husband's birthday

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