Finding the Right Diet Plan -- A New Beginning

Finding the right diet plan isn't always as easy as a lot of people make it seem. The advice that I hear over and over again is to study the various plans carefully, looking for one that fits into your lifestyle and tastes, then pick one and do it like the book.

The problem with that line of reasoning is that it generally comes from someone who is doing the Atkins' diet, and someone who believes that Atkins is the plan you're going to pick. Come back and tell them that you're going to do something different, something more in line with South Beach, something lower in fat, and see what they do.


That's exactly what I've been watching over at Low Carb Friends. (I know...I know...I need to find a different place to hang out at.) Someone picked a diet called "Ideal Protein," and when she shared what was involved in the initial stages of that eating plan (20g carb, 60-75g protein, and 2-3 tbsp of fish oil or olive oil per day) she got confronted by the very folks who normally preach to pick a plan and do it by the book.

Now I wouldn't call 3 tbsp olive oil per day a low fat plan, but that was the term she used, "low fat", and it caused all sorts of folks to come crawling out of the woodwork in a goodwill effort to manipulate her into switching to their plan of choice. THEIR plan of choice.

Gosh. They went from cannibalizing her muscles, to researching the different low carb plans and picking one, to scaring her with heart disease if she didn't eat lots of saturated fats, to sending her to wikipedia to research rabbit starvation, to telling her that low carb is not a low fat plan -- then...pushing Atkins 72.

Knew they'd get around to that one. Which only served to prove the conclusion I've been coming to lately. That researching the various plans and picking one is always dependent upon you choosing to do what they are doing.

No Thanx.

Because I'm coming to realize, and actually beginning to get it through my thick head, that if I keep on doing what I'm doing right now -- bouncing back and forth between a low carb diet and maintenance, researching until I'm blue in the face but not actually getting anything accomplished -- I'm going stay fat. No doubt about it. I have got to make up my mind. Because it time to move forward. It's time for a new beginning.

So how does one go about finding the right diet plan that will allow them to meet their goals?

A lot of us are pretty attached to the idea of demonizing carbs. We've literally bonded ourselves to that idea. That carbs are bad. Even though realistically it isn't the carbs that made us fat. Nor is it the carbs that make us hungry. Association isn't cause. So yeah these things happen, but not for the reasons we've been taught.

For example, it isn't the state of Ketosis that keeps our hunger at bay. It's the release of CCK from eating higher protein and fat. That means that if you structure a higher carb diet to include what we've learned from doing low carb, making sure you get more than adequate protein and "good" fats in your diet so that you'll be releasing plenty of CCK to keep you satisfied, you can most definitely make a higher carb plan work -- without being hungry all the time.

I'm seriously leaning towards the idea of doing exactly that. Raising my carbs enough to keep my blood glucose level happy, my body from feeling sick, but taking into the structure of South Beach all of the lessons and principles and research I've learned from and accumulated all of the years I've been married to low carb.

Pretty much, my intent is to do my own thing. Because with the leaky gut, I don't tolerate olive oil very well, and canola oil sends my inflammation issues soaring. Which means I'll be eating more saturated fat than South Beach advises, but less total fat than what the Atkins' folks like to push.

So I don't think I can honestly place myself firmly within either camp. But then I don't feel the need to be. I just feel the need for a little forward movement right now. The need to make a new beginning.