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Great post from Wheat Belly's Facebook page - South Africa is on the map !!! https://www.facebook...209766919069873 Wheat-free works in South Africa! Anette: "I am only now reading Wheat Belly, but have been cutting out wheat (plus refined sugar and any over-processed foods) since around end of May, focusing instead on 'real' food (which is thankfully a...bundant in South Africa!): high-quality pastured eggs, Karoo lamb, plus venison, kefir, veggies and some fruit. "Hubby lost 10 kgs (22 pounds) and I lost about 15 kgs (33 pounds) so far. According to the charts, I need to lose another 10 kgs (22 pounds) or so, but I am no longer getting on the scale. "What excites me most is that I have finally found a lifestyle that I can easily follow for the rest of my life. I am now longer weighing myself, as my weight seems to be higher than previous times that I went on a diet; yet I am comfortably fitting into clothes I would usually need to be another 5kgs lighter for. Also doing some hiking and weight training to tone. Excited to see where my body will find its happy space..."

@ MTBeer - try the fatshake for a quick and easy solution (see the first page or two of this thread), alternatively something like bacon, eggs, pork rashers, cheese, mince or leftovers from the prior night's low-carb dinner work well. If you learn to eat the same food every day it actually becomes less of a fuss, you get used to making it very quickly and with the right amount of fats like coconut oil in there it should last you for the best part of the day.

Crede Oils make an absolutely fantastic almond butter - really worth a try: http://www.credeoils.com/shop/oh-mega-nut-butters/

The longer you stay off carbs, the "harder" they hit when you do start taking them again, is my theory. A few bites of bread and I blow up like a balloon, or get sloppy with carbs in general, and the kilos pile back on. So I guess the right thing to do is really to only use the carbs while training to try and offset that with exercise, otherwise there is either a gut / IBS type action or weight gain as a price to pay... in fact, I get a gut reaction ON THE BIKE if I take carbs during an exercise session nowadays, so for me even sneaking the odd hamburger bun is a no-no...

Nice article on Native American diets by Weston Price. http://www.westonaprice.org/traditional-diets/guts-and-grease

Just keep going, from here on in you will start the real adaptation. Just don't get too "haastig" - this takes time and you need to allow the body the time to adapt. And hey, if you only lose the allergies, then it's still a bargain ! (And lots of people would give anything to lose 2.3kgs !!! so well done on that !!!)

Search for the video on Youtube and then post the link here, TheHub will automatically pick up the content from Youtube, but cannot from your FB as that is obviously restricted. Often the video will have a little Youtube sign on the bottom right hand which then takes you to Youtube to watch the video there.

Mini cheat yesterday (which I forgot about and only figured later) - was offered some mini hamburgers that were left over from a conference at our venue. Nice big fatty patties and the buns were more like little ciabatta breads, so I gulped two of them down. On my way home last night the heartburn hit me and I felt like an inflated balloon.... and then I remembered the mini burgers. Amazing how sensitive you become after eliminating wheat from your diet, hey !

Huge issue for us - we walk 6 dogs through our neighbourhood that has no spaces anymore where you walk your dogs away from other roaming dogs - previously the schools allowed this on their rugby fields, but that has now been closed down after people did not clean up after their dogs (why does it always take one irresponsible individual to stuff things up for everyone else ?). So now we walk them just before dark through the neighbourhood where so many people let their dogs run loose, so we have had a few close calls with especially smaller breeds storming our pack. I have now taken to walking with a tazer on me since that noise tends to frighten other dogs off, but what often happens is that my pack get so worked up that they start going at each other. So the only other option is to load them all into the car and drive to places 10 or 15km away where we can walk them away from other dogs - which is what we try to do over weekends. Not ideal... and again the consequence of irresponsible pet ownership... sadly.

40 years of federal nutrition research fatally flawed University of South Carolina study shows flaws in NHANES data Four decades of nutrition research funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may be invalid because the method used to collect the data was seriously flawed, according to a new study by the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina. The study, led by Arnold School exercise scientist and epidemiologist Edward Archer, has demonstrated significant limitations in the measurement protocols used in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). The findings, published in PLOS ONE (The Public Library of Science), reveal that a majority of the nutrition data collected by the NHANES are not "physiologically credible," Archer said. These results suggest that without valid population-level data, speculations regarding the role of energy intake in the rise in the prevalence of obesity are without empirical support, he said. The NHANES is the most comprehensive compilation of data on the health of children and adults in the United States. The survey combines interviews of self-reported food and beverage consumption over 24 hours and physical examinations to assess the health and nutritional status of the US population. Conducted by the CDC and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the NHANES is the primary source of data used by researchers studying the impact of nutrition and diet on health. The study examined data from 28,993 men and 34,369 women, 20 to 74 years old, from NHANES I (1971 – 1974) through NHANES (2009 – 2010), and looked at the caloric intake of the participants and their energy expenditure, predicted by height, weight, age and sex. The results show that -- based on the self-reported recall of food and beverages -- the vast majority of the NHANES data "are physiologically implausible, and therefore invalid," Archer said. In other words, the "calories in" reported by participants and the "calories out," don't add up and it would be impossible to survive on most of the reported energy intakes. This misreporting of energy intake varied among participants, and was greatest in obese men and women who underreported their intake by an average 25 percent and 41 percent (i.e., 716 and 856 Calories per-day respectively). "Throughout its history, the NHANES survey has failed to provide accurate estimates of the habitual caloric consumption of the U.S. population," Archer said. "Although improvements were made to the NHANES measurement protocol after 1980, there was little improvement to the validity of U.S. nutritional surveillance." These limitations "suggest that the ability to estimate population trends in caloric intake and generate public policy relevant to diet-health relationships is extremely limited," said Archer, who conducted the study with colleagues at the Arnold School. "The nation's major surveillance tool for studying the relationships between nutrition and health is not valid. It is time to stop spending tens of millions of health research dollars collecting invalid data and find more accurate measures," he said. ### To access the current study, please visit: http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0076632.

From dietdoctor : Is overeating carbs worse than overeating on LCHF ? Interesting reading ! http://www.dietdoctor.com/overeating-carbs-worse-overeating-lchf-diet

Just on the salt - get some rock or crystal salt and add that to your food or bulletproof coffee, normal table salt tastes vile compared to the rocksalts.

Well done on getting a tweet back from the Prof ! My carb flu lasted from about day 3 - 6 and after the 2nd week I started feeling amazingly well, waking early in the morning, feeling refreshed and did not have energy dips during the day. My adaptation to burning fat effectively as fuel probably took 6 - 8 weeks and I think the real muscle adaptation took significantly longer, probably only after month 4 could I perform at previous exertion levels. I lost weight initially, then stalled, then dropped steadily from about month 3 or 4 and at about month 6 I became "weight stable" - at a weight about 7 - 10kg above where I would have wanted it to be, but I am working on that one

Easy workaround for chocolate cravings: Buy yourself some Nomu Skinny Hot Choc at PnP (the Skinny is sweetened with sucralose and is REALLY low GI and low cal, it contains no sugar). Take half a cup (or more) of cream or greek yoghurt, add a heaped teaspoon of Nomu Skinny powder, stir well and in under a minute you have something that resembles chocolate mousse, tastes like chocolate, is sweet and has ample fat. Simple but elegant solution. Otherwise eat Lindt in moderation. Please check the labels carefully, I know some of the upmarket stores sell "Dark Belgian Chocolate" but that is absolutely sugar-laden where Lindt is not.

I think we have to also keep reminding ourselves that on LCHF-type diets the body settles at a "natural weight", which may often be higher than what we anticipate or would like to be. Just saying...

jcza - question - have you remained weight stable on Paleo ?

Health benefits of coconut oil vs other oils (from positivemed): http://positivemed.com/2013/07/08/health-benefits-of-coconut-oil-vs-other-oils/

Here are a few tidbits from the internet. Cholesterol readings after four years on strict LCHF (from dietdoctor): http://www.dietdoctor.com/great-cholesterol-numbers-4-years-ultra-strict-lchf-diet

Some "accidental learnings" based on BG measurements over the weekend. Note, the penny only dropped well afterwards, but I think there is enough value in this to share it here. I am on just about a no-carb diet, therefore my BG tests in the 4 - 5 range most of the time. My ketones are almost always in +++ on the sticks (I have run out of keto strips for my meter and just haven't bothered). On Saturday before my ride, I tested my ketones and it was at +. My BG was at 6.5. I dismissed it as a spurious reading as it normalised later in the day. On Sunday before my ride, my ketones where trace and my BG was 7.3 and then the alarm bells started ringing. I went for a 1h30 MTB and when I came back my BG was 5.1 and my Ketones deep purple at +++. Because I could not connect the dots, I started reverse-engineering everything I ate over the weekend, but could not find a culprit. Then I started analysing what else I consumed and the penny dropped... I injured my back by incorrectly lifting a bag of dog food out of my car last week and over the last few nights I actually woke up in so much pain that I drank two pain killers during the night. The only stuff I had in the house was adco-dol which is a particularly nasty mixture of paracetamol and codeine phosphate. In both instances of high BG readings, I drank these at about 4am in the morning - about 2 hours before testing. After an anti-inflammatory and massage last night, I had no need for pain killers during the night last night and lo and behold, my BG is down to 4.6 and ketones are back at +++. The only conclusion I was left with is that (specifically) the paracetamol taxed my liver to the point where it actually affected my BG and ketone production ! I then Googled paracetamol and voila - the biggest cause of liver failure admittances to hospitals world-wide is not as one would suspect alcohol, but in fact paracetamol ! Granted, I am probably a lot more sensitive to ANYTHING that could affect my BG than most people, but this has been a real eye-opener. And if you are a regular painkiller taker and you are not losing weight, my suggestion as part of trying to break your weight loss plateau will be to also stop taking ANY medication that could potentially tax your liver. The penny dropped for me as I remember a year or so again I was on a heavy dose of antibiotics which I actually stopped taking when it eventually spiked my BG through 8 ! Use it, don't use it.

With you on this one Dale. I can get away with one or two potatoes added to a large stew or a small amount of rice if circumstances dictate it, but I also cannot do the pig-out thing. Also having re-read IQ of 2's post it is clear that it wasn't just the Energade, but also the pies, etc that followed. So a typical carb craving reaction. People, you need to remember that sugar is as addictive as cocaine and tobacco. And when you quit carbs you body starts doing strange things to convince you to consume carbs. One of the things it does is called "Junky-thinking" or Junky-behaviour" - that point where you start convincing yourself that you will only have one small helping of carbs/bread/sugar and that will be it. You will control it again after that. Or where you convince yourself that you have been "good" for long enough and that you need to reward yourself. Trust me. Been there, done that !

Love it, thanks Dave !

I can confidently tell you that I put myself into Type 2 diabetes through (over)consumption of Energade. I used to drink the stuff at a rate of about 1 litre of concentrate per day, telling myself that it was good for me because this is what sports people drink. Honestly, you'll probably do better drinking neat table sugar. The short answer to the lethargy is a resounding YES - Energade will do that to you if you have been low-carbing for a while, but you need to provide a little more context to fully answer that. How long have you been avoiding carbs for and have you been quite strict at doing that ?

If it is the tomato-sauce based version of Lucky Star it would make sense - not sure if they put some kind of "sauce" with the unflavoured sardines, but my money would be on some starchy / maltodextrin additive to add flavour - does it not specify anything like that on the ingredients list ? Edit : you said it doesn't list anything additional - perhaps because the quantities are minute ? edit: typos

Yes, it could be, but watch those viennas... they are typically carb-laden, so try and source e.g. organic sausage and rather use that - these processed things like viennas and poloni typically contain a lot of fillers and artificial gunk. I have for the last two days packed a light lunch consisting of 3 boiled eggs, 3 reasonable slices of cheese and I eat that with some dollops of home-made mayo - it has worked remarkably well and I have not had any desire to snack at all !