On Thu, Mar 15, 2012 at 9:46 AM, willowg26 <willowg26@yahoo.com> wrote:
-- I just had my gallbladder removed so I need to watch my fats for awhile, and I would like to follow a low carb way of eating. The Atkins diet, which I just read, really stresses the importance of eating 3 meals a day and two snacks. I prefer to stick with the Fast 5. Does anyone have any experience eating low carbs without a gallbladder and sticking to a 5 hour eating window?
What I found on Fast5 (and the reason I started it) was that food digested a lot better. My guess is that your body has time to do "housecleaning" between meals if you don't stuff food down your gut all day.
My summary from reading a LOT of dietary information is as follows.
1. The way humans work, they need and crave a certain amount of protein. You'll keep eating and be hungry until your body gets enough of it. That often causes overweight, if the food mix doesn't have enough protein. The proteins in fish and eggs, and dairy whey, are the best for satisfying the protein need.
2. The rest of your diet will be carbs or fat ... the only two other choices. Atkins stresses your body doesn't NEED carbs. But your body doesn't NEED fat either. Esp. if you are overweight, your body has plenty of fat to call on, if needed.
3. The starches in the American diet are highly problematic for a lot of reasons. Part of it is that they are finely ground, dry, baked goods, which digest way too quickly and feed the wrong bacteria. And they are mostly wheat-based, and wheat reacts directly with the villi in your gut and irritate it (which is a cause of a lot of gall bladder issues, BTW: the gut gets irritated and blocks the bile duct). And there are additives etc. in store-bought foods that cause other problems. So going starch-free really does help a lot of Americans.
The starches in your average Japanese or Kitavian diet though ... steamed rice or cooked yams ... don't cause the same issues. So I think it's good to be more specific about "carbs". Some cause problems, some don't.
4. The healthiest diet appears to be one based on plants (excluding the grains). I.e. a lot of vegies and fruits. The human body DOES have a need for the nutrients in plants. There is a good video embedded here, about Dr. Terry Wahl's experience:
So overall, if you have a diet with enough protein, and the rest vegies/fruits, you should be fine. You do need enough of the "essential fatty acids" but you don't need a whole lot every day. You probably won't get enough calories to sustain your weight, but I'm assuming you want to go low carb to lose weight? Personally I don't think "low carb" is great for everyone, because the human body wasn't designed to stay in ketosis. People like the Inuit do adapt so they can create their own glucose from protein, and don't stay in ketosis either.
If you need or want some fat in your meal, or added calories, the bodybuilders use MCT. MCT is also used with babies that have a problem digesting fat ... it's in mother's milk too. Anyway, you don't need a gallbladder to digest MCT, and you can use it in cooking as you would any oil. They suggest starting out with it gradually though because it does digest very quickly which can cause cramps on an empty stomach. Coconut oil is high in MCT, and coconut oil in general is easy to digest.
MCT and coconut oil don't have the essential fatty acids though. I'm not clear on the exact EFA's ... I think eating oily fish and whole eggs gives you most of them, but some people recommend a tsp. of safflower oil or borage? If you don't get the EFA's your skin will get dry and some think lack of EFA's causes psoriasis.
Heather Twist
http://eatingoffthefoodgrid.blogspot.com/
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