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May I just say that it is great to see both old and new contributors posting on this, probably the most on-topic thread on The Hub ! Keep it going !!!!

Jaxtun..... Can we start a "Show us your friends" thread, please ?

Mail him, what can you lose ?

Snytjie, apologies for the delayed reply, this is a moerofa interesting post ! I am betting on the fact that you could tune up your fat burning engine to make up most of that deficit from fat, leaving you with only a small shortfall of carbs, but that would need time to adapt and you will have to start running for longer and more intense periods without supplementing - but it does not sound as if you have time for this ? If I was you, I would drop Prof Noakes a mail and see - he does actually respond to emails - from the work he has done with Fordyce and Chalupsky I am sure that he will have an opinion that you could use ?

Strangely enough, I stopped eating any processed foods in October of 2012 and the only processed thing in my kitchen is a few cans of tuna. The Futurelife purchase was an impulse decision and I will actually give the box away rather than use it up, that's how bad the stuff made me feel. It took a while for the penny to drop regarding the sudden energy dips, but it is definitely a direct result of the FL in my breakfast mix. Got a bag of SSN whey today, so that will go into the shake from tomorrow !

Vetseun, my late Doberman did something similar, and it took us a long time to figure this out. Turned out that she had a pancreatic deficiency and she really battled to digest food, but only at times. She could go for weeks without any probs and then suddenly the wretching would start - she was then also in a lot of pain, which is another symptom of pancreatitis. The solution turned out to be really simple, though - we fed her a portion of raw pig's pancreas with every meal and that completely resolved it. We initially bought this from the vet, but later got it directly from K-9 petfoods here in CPT (not sure where one would get it in GP ?). However, from having raised many dogs, the one golden thread that the Vet always gave us with any dog condition is, start worrying when the dog stops eating, if it still eats the condition is probably not serious. Hope this helps, the pancreas has an effect in 2 - 3 days.

Yep. See an earlier post regarding Advocate !

Thanks for the quick feedback, the GI is 55 but for the life of me I cannot remember the carbs, although 23g / 75g serving rings a bell. I knew about the GMO issues, but thought I could shortcut making a fatshake. From tomorrow it will be cream, milk and protein powder again, oh and yes, quite "purgatory" for me as well. Not a great experience all round. Edit : 26g / 75g or 36g / 100g - thats half my daily allowance right there !

Used Futurelife high protein as an add-on to breakfast for the last 3 days. This is the porridge replacement, not the shake... Boy oh boy, did I have HUGE energy slumps about 3 hours into my day on each of those days ! Remember I ingest virtually no carbs in the fatshake, so this must have been a real overload to my system. Anyone else on here using Futurelife and had similar results ?

Sounds like you are right on the money there ! Good going !!!

Good one, Johan ! Thanks !!

Bar603 did you have HbA1c done ? If so, what was that number? If not, have that done as it is a 3 month picture of your BG and that will indicate what course of action to take. Although your waking BG sounds high, your daytime BG appears perfect. What made you go out and buy a BG meter - were you worried about something or were you experiencing specific symptoms ?

I am in GP for a two week Course, so my wife sent me some pics of the pack today. One of her friends visited, so the whole pack said Hello ! Romeo was guarding the gate... While Mia and Gada were having a sit-down chat with Peaches... . Peaches... How can you not love this little face ?

Awesome story, Guy, well done on rescuing and adopting her - may you share many happy years filled with puppy love !

If I am a little quiet it is because I am in JNB for the next two weeks, but please PM me for anything urgent

An3 - please feel free to share any tips, tricks or lessons learnt over the last 8 months ! Excellent weight loss - where did you start from and are you at your target weight ?

Another must-see is "Food Inc". This is also about Monsanto but provides huge insights into the food industry in general. I have copied it to the LCHF dropbox folder, but it is large and will take a while to upload. We are indeed fighting Goliath when it comes to Monsanto.... @tombeej - see if the folder allows you to copy into it and let me know ? ps. hope you appreciate the 101 Best ever Workshops projects that I put in there just for you ! https://www.dropbox....3oay/tD5ubEFGmr

Hi Francois, yes I did and I actually took that for a while to see if I could replace diabetes meds with that, but it made no visible difference (to my BG readings). I think if you are quite strict with what you eat AND you use these cinnamon or red yeast rice supplements it may make a small difference, but honestly I could not justify the cost vs the results.

Doesn't look quite right... 0 Carbs ?

When in doubt, revert to the first page of this thread (there is a fatshake recipe there). A fatshake is just a healthy amount of fat, usually coconut oil, butter and/or cream, which you mix with either milk or coffee into a shake, using a blender. Some people add no sweeteners to that, I add a teaspoon of Nomu Skinny and a teaspoon of salt. The shake takes some getting used to, so start with a smallish dose of fat, otherwise your liver and gall bladder will attack you Google peanuts and see the carb content. Now go to your jar of peanut butter and see what that says. I have a old Black Cat jar here and that says 16.3g carbs / 100g which is not too bad. Some varieties of peanut butter have high amounts of sugar added, so just be on the lookout for that.

Hey LF, yes the bloodwork included a diabetes test but that was fine. He is really doing well at the moment and in spite of some high-energy moments in the pack he has remained calm, which is a great sign. He is alert, perky and full of energy still so its not like the meds has made him drowsy or anything. He will be OK, he is in the best possible house to ensure that happens

(I am hugely rounding up and down below, so please don't hold me to the numbers as exact or correct). Use this site if you want to quickly find out the nutrient content of foods and remember to look at the area just above the table to see the serving size in grams or cups, etc. http://nutritiondata.self.com/ The real easy way to figure out protein is as follows: Any meat, fish or chicken is roughly 20% protein by weight. So if you are eating a 300g steak, that is about 60g of protein (which is just 25 - 30g off where you want to be for your daily target, assuming you are aiming for 70kg). Don't overcomplicate things and don't go OTT on measuring foods, you can use these basic guidelines and you should do well. So if you are going to have that steak and you needed to eat about 90g of protein for the day, you can either make the balance up from whole foods like egg, cheese, etc, or you can supplement with a protein powder, so there's your protein requirement taken care of. Restrict carbs to 50g or below, that's easy enough if you stick to green leafy veggies (spinach, kale, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, etc) and remember to add the "hidden carbs" in most of the other foodstuffs that you eat to that daily total. "Carb-creep" is very easy if you eat a lot of dairy products (or processed foods for that matter). Add the carbs that you eat from fruit to this as well. Now you have to make up the balance of your energy requirement from fat. If I assume that you are moderately active, you will probably need to supply around 3000 kcal of energy per day, so that leaves you with over 200g of fat that you need to eat and this is the trick ! Some of us opt to ingest most of that in the morning in a fatshake (which again is not for everybody) in the form of e.g. coconut oil, butter and cream, whilst others split their fat intake over the day and get it from e.g. fatty meats, biltong, cream on food, mayonnaise, olive oil over salads, butter on everything, etc. You will need to find out what works for you and fine tune that. Honey is fructose + glucose, both sugars, but honey is better than ingesting either of those on their own. If you look at the nutrition content, honey is 84g carbs per 100g, so that will hugely affect your daily carb "allowance"... you decide. Strange thing is, once you become adapted to burning fat and not eating sugars, you may completely lose your taste for sweet stuff like honey. So in a nutshell - YES, eat more fat and don't eat too much meat or chicken. The original Atkins diet was based on large amounts of protein from e.g. meats, but you will see in the New Atkins diet, that has been modified to a large % fat and not so much protein. Helpmytrap answered the rest above.

Absolutely. If you can live with this line : "High sugar consumption may worsen diabetes control, and the combination of sugar with protein and fats promotes formation of dietary AGEs, which may be especially detrimental to those with diabetes."

Stevief, welcome ! Your first stop should be http://www.dietdoctor.com/lchf as all of your questions are answered there. Go to the very first post on this thread and pick up some of the useful links from there. I will try and answer your questions below, but please give context to your 5-6kg weight loss goal - what is your current weight and height ? Please keep in mind that LCHF as a weight loss tool does not work for everyone and in fact there are people who gain weight on it (although not anyone that I am in direct contact with). What veggies are high in carbs that i need to avoid? Rule of thumb is eat veggies that grow above ground as the veggies that grow below ground are there for a reason - they have to "hide" themselves as they are usually very high in sugar (carbs). Is the fat in meat ok to eat and the skin on chicken? Absolutely. Saturated fat in meat (and chicken) is the same fat that your body chooses to store its energy in. Does not make sense that the body would pick a toxic substance to do that with, hey ? Must i completely cut out sugar in my tea? (i normally have a 2 - 3 cups a day with one teaspoon) Yes, you HAVE to cut out all sugars and sweeteners, for at least the first few (say 4) weeks in order to allow your body to adapt. If you are still eating sugar, your next question will always be there - it is like quitting smoking, but still having the odd cigarette here and there - it just means you haven't really quit smoking. At night i have been craving sweet ( i used to eat half a slab of chocoloate evrynight whats a good alternative? I use a product called Nomu Skinny Hot Chocolate, it is a powder that contains sucralose (very very low GI) as sweetener and I mix a spoonful of that with either double cream Greek yoghurt or sometimes just warm cream for a nice hot chocolate. You can buy Nomu Skinny at PnP or online from www.nomu.co.za . Once you completely eliminate sugar and sweeteners from your diet, this craving will go away. The time for this to happens varies from person to person, but by week 3 you should be there. What,s the deal with fruit can i have an apple a day or are they bad? Fruit is not bad at all, but dietdoctor describes it beautifully - "fruit is nature's candy" and you have to treat it as such. If you are very sensitive to carbs (I am) then even a sweet apple will chase your blood sugar up. I cannot remember when last I had a fruit, but I am following LCHF very strictly - lots of the people on this thread happily eat all the fruit they want. What you want to aim for is low-GI fruit, so you will need to look at that dietdoctor website for some pointers. When i cycle can i eat bananas ? Yes you can, but if you follow the LCHF type eating plan and allow yourself adequate time to adapt, you may never have to eat anything on the bike again - it all depends on how hard and how long you ride when you do. In theory you burn up any carbs that you consume during exercise very quickly so you can eat quite a bit of carbs on the bike without it affecting your low-carb lifestyle, however as with everything else there are limits to that. I seem to be eating a lot of protein (mainly chicken and meat) must i focus more on fats? Your protein intake should be in the region of 1g - 2g of protein per kg that you weigh. So get that part sorted first as it is the easiest to do. If you take in too much protein in one go, your body treats it almost the same as carbs (I am over-simplifying) and it will also raise your blood glucose levels. If you then keep your carb intake low (as you are supposed to do on LCHF otherwise it is not LCHF), e.g. below 100g or even below 50g as that is most likely what you would have to stick to initially, you have an energy deficit that needs to come from the only other food source available for that - FAT. You will need to get somewhere between 70 - 80% of your energy from fat, otherwise you are soon going to feel like the walking dead. If you are at day 4 and you have really restricted your carbs and sugars down, this is about the time that you are likely going to start feeling horrible and get what many call "Carb-flu". It is quite unpleasant and very similar to proper flu, you feel ill for about 2-5 days and ALL your body wants you to do is to eat carbs again. If you can push through this, you are half-way there. During this difficult transition phase you need to add about a teaspoon of crystal salts to your daily food intake, otherwise you will get headaches. Again, look at some of the links in the first post and read Dr Phinney's work where this is discussed in great detail. The key things to eliminate early on are sugars/sweeteners and wheat. If you can get that done, you will be good to go. Oh, and the bad news is that if you "cheat" or fall off the wagon, you kind of have to start all over again Use this forum to your advantage and ask as many questions as you want, someone on here is bound to have an answer or a workaround for you. And just remember what works for me may not work for you. You need to decide what you use or not use. LCHF is not a silver bullet solution by any means. Namaste. edits : typos

My wife boils eggs, 6 at a time and keeps them handy as snacks in the fridge, which she does with home-made mayo and cheese. I am SO tempted to exchange one of those cooked eggs with a raw one, but I know that with my luck I will end up getting it