No Carb Quotes

When in doubt, ingest carbs.

Heartache often drives us to consume things we wouldn't otherwise, such as an entire pint of Caramel Pecan Perfection high-fat ice cream, covered in ganache, the crack cocaine of frozed dairy. Twelve hundred calories per pint, six hundred and eighty of which are fat calories, but is only dulls the pain for the moment, there's that carb fog while you're standing at the sink shoving it in your face, and then it's over and you feel...used. Like a cheap pickup the Dove people seduced and abandoned in your kitchen, leaving you with sticky hands and an empty cup and a still-broken heart, except now you're mad at Dove, too.

Tyson dropped the two warriors he was about to tie into a knot and jogged after us. He jumped on the centaur's back. 'Dude!' the centaur groaned, almost buckling under Tyson's weight. 'Do the words "low-carb diet" mean anything to you?

We linked hands—my ex-boyfriend, my boyfriend, and my former friend-then-enemy-then friend and I—and walked through a door to see if maybe empty carbs were good for something after all.

I am a gluttonous, gorging failure. A waste. My body isn’t used to high-sugar carbs laced with witchcraft. It can barely cope with soup and crackers.

Cut my life into pizzas. this is my plastic fork. oven baking, no breathing, dont give a fuck if its carbs that i'm eating' -Catherine Spann

No carbs" her mother called after her as she went into the dressing room "And no butter" "I know you stole me from my real parents" Min called back. "They'd let me eat butter

Satan to Jesus: Well, I see someone has a bad case of the hangries. You might want to consider using your godly powers to turn these desert rocks into loaves of bread. Maybe if you engage in some serious carb-loading, you’ll regain what little sense of humor you had before you started this ridiculous hunger strike.

Birds sold as free-range or free-roaming must be given access to the outside, however that is the ony requirement; the area to which they have access may be small, and consist of gravel and no forage of any kind. The term pastured or pasture-raised tends to be more meaningful, as this practice can affect the flavor and size of the birds...The term "natural" is unregulated and essentially meaningless. According to the current USDA standards, no poultry may be given hormones; thus, poultry labeled as "hormone-free" is akin to labeling bottled water "no carbs" or "fat free.

So Uncle Stuart is marrying that lady? Mom says she's going to be our aunt Amy. She's okay except she would't try any peanut butter M&M chocolate chip fudge cookies. They were good- you ate five, remember? But she said she was on a special diet, and couldn't eat something called carbs. We told her we didn't put any carbs in our cookies, just M&Ms, but she said M&Ms were carbs. Uncle Mitch, what's carbs? email to Uncle Mitch from Haily and Brittany

The simple act of moving your body will do more for your brain than any riddle, math equation, mystery book, or even thinking itself.

Like any southern woman would do. I choose to bury my feelings in carbs. There’s no problem carbs cannot fix. I can be my awkward, unsophisticated, tongue-tied self, but by god I’ll do it with cheesy carbs in my blood stream.

One macronutrient, in particular, demands more of our attention than most people realize: not carbs, not fat, but protein becomes critically important as we age.

I’ve had plenty more patients come through my doors and leave with a pain-free head, thanks to the adoption of a gluten-free diet.

You know how we’re thinking about food these days, less in terms of carbs and calories than in terms of color, vivacity, and life force? We can do the same with time. Then it’s no longer about having enough of it but about infusing color and vivacity and life force into every moment. (279)

He let the shirt fall and grabbed a Tupperware container of cookies out of the fridge. Maybe he could frustrate the Shadowhunters by refusing to work out and sitting around eating carbs. I defy you, Shadowhunters, he thought, thumbing the top off the container and popping a cookie in his mouth. I mock you with my sugar cravings.

I won’t change that much,” I replied. “Because believe me, when this pasta comes out, I’m gonna suck those carbs down like a blowjob.

if you cannot control your hunger and appetite, good luck managing your blood chemistry, metabolism, waistline, and, in the bigger picture, the prospect of crippling your brain.

When absurdities get repeated often enough, they start sounding like truth.

If I didn’t have carbs three times a day I couldn’t finish a sentence, and that was that.

All diets that result in weight loss do so on one basis and one basis only: They reduce circulating levels of insulin; they create and prolong the negative stimulus of insulin deficiency.

Researchers have known for some time now that the cornerstone of all degenerative conditions, including brain disorders, is inflammation. But what they didn’t have documented until now are the instigators of that inflammation—the first missteps that prompt this deadly reaction. And what they are finding is that gluten, and a high-carbohydrate diet for that matter, are among the most prominent stimulators of inflammatory pathways that reach the brain.

Ketones are an efficient and effective fuel for human physiology without increasing the production of damaging free radicals. Ketosis allows a person to experience nonfluctuating energy throughout the day as well as enhanced brain function and possibly resistance to malignancy. – Dr. David Perlmutter

I’m seized by sudden horrible fear – the thought of living without carbs is terrifying.

We eat fewer carbs to work on our physical appearance, yet for our brain to make an appearance, we need a healthy carb in-take

argued for an hour on the telephone. now looking at pictures of carbs

All I know is, nothing in life feels that bad when I’m eating carbs and fat. Everything will work out, because of cheese.

Dude!” the centaur groaned, almost buckling under Tyson’s weight. “Do the words ‘low-carb diet’ mean anything to you?

Some people who have been working out regularly for months or even years are still out of shape because the number of cheat days they have in a week exceeds six.

Carbs are the devil’s work. Save them for treat days.

#WillRiskLifeForBooze&Carbs

I do the splits perfectly in PE. I lose half a pound in two days. I get the spinach and pig-meat frittata from the lo-carb section for lunch. And no-one else knows. I mentally construct a MyFace status, polishing the memories carefully until they shine. The need to record my life is as fundamental as my need to breathe. Without MyFace, I'm floating. I have nothing to anchor me down, to prove I exist.

Who is your famous crush? If a super-hot Hollywood actor who also happened to be a great person wanted to take you home—and the lights stayed on during the deed—what would you do? I mean, not in theory. Honestly, what would you do?” Claire looked at me for a long moment then asked, “Would I get a heads up a few months ahead of time? So I could eat low carb and start working out?” “No.” “Then, honestly, I’d run the other way.

Want to age backward? Do these things right now: •   Stop eating sugar, soy, excess omega-6 fats, and refined carbs, and replace these foods with additional healthy saturated fat from grass-fed meat, pastured eggs, and energy fats.

Plant- and animal-based foods are hugely different in terms of their nutrient contents, and watching what foods you consume is far more important than obsessing over calorie-counting without respect to where those calories come from.

This is no way to run a business,” I told Dim Sum, and then looked at Tons of Fun. “And you might want to lay off the carbs, you fucking wildebeest.

French women love bread and would never consider a life without carbs.

Carbs are proof that God loves us, don’t you think?

I wasn’t one of those girls who got tiny hunger pangs when it was time to eat, then took a few sips of water, burped, wiped my mouth, and announced I was full. Hell, no. Carbs. Give. Me. Carbs. Give me protein. Give me chocolate and I’ll be your best friend.

Refined carbohydrates are easy to become addicted to and overeat precisely because there are no natural satiety hormones for refined carbs. The reason, of course, is that refined carbohydrates are not natural foods but are highly processed. Their toxicity lies in that processing. p101

Please allow me to offer a simple financial plan. Invest in chocolate. Buy bars. Lots of bars. If we do enter anything approximating a real financial depression, you will not be able to improve your mood with gold.

I only cut carbs when I’m using a pizza cutter.

To cure disease after it has appeared is like digging a well when one feels thirsty,

Increasing numbers of studies are confirming the link between gluten sensitivity and neurological dysfunction.

Aldous Huxley said: “Medical science has made such fantastic progress that there are barely any healthy people left.

A low-carb, ketogenic diet needs to be high in fat, not protein, to produce adequate ketones.

if a lie is repeated often enough, people will begin to believe it.

Carbs and sugar equal oral orgasms

As is the case for diabetes and cardiovascular disease, central obesity [belly fat] is also a risk factor for dementia.

Around the lunch table everyone seems to have given something up---dairy, meat, gluten, sugar, carbs. Only in a land of plenty could people voluntarily go without so much.

We used to think that eggs were evil and margarine was magical, but now we know that eggs are among the world’s most nutrient-dense foods and that margarine contains deadly trans fats.

What's amazing to me now is that I actually recall fixating on the fact that my thighs a-l-m-o-s-t touched at the top....If I could go back in time and slap my eighteen-year-old self, I would. I would tell her to snap out of it, because that's the best you thighs will ever be. You should take pictures of your thighs right now so you can remember how amazing they were!

Eating carbs in the morning will set you up for an energy spike and crash along with food cravings throughout the entire day. If you decide to test this for yourself, it will be blindingly obvious. Try having just Bulletproof Coffee instead of your usual breakfast and see how long it takes you to want food. For most people, it turns off the desire for food for at least 5 to 6 hours.

To achieve a ketotic state, I ask people to begin with grain and sugar elimination. Grains are, by the way, the worst offenders for triggering high blood sugar, even worse than simple sugars, such as sucrose. So grain elimination—not reduction—is key for getting into ketosis. – Dr. William Davis

Low-fat had become the new mantra of the times, something we like to call the “Snackwell Phenomenon.” Food companies rushed to create low-fat versions of every food imaginable, all marketed as “heart-healthy,” with no cholesterol. (No one seemed to notice that manufacturers replaced the missing fat with tons of sugar and processed carbs, both of which are far more dangerous to our hearts than fat ever was.)

Carbohydrate density is simple to calculate -- just divide the quantity of carbohydrate in food by the weight of the food. The more carbs packed into a given gram of food, the higher its carbohydrate density.

But today, the AHA is saying something quite different. In their massive 2015 report Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics, they buried a bombshell in the text.8 It says that five huge randomized controlled trials have demonstrated that total fat consumption does not affect rates of coronary heart disease or stroke.

If the conventional thinking and advice worked, if eating less and exercising more were a meaningful solution to the problem of obesity and excess weight, we wouldn’t be here. If the true explanation for why we get fat were that we take in more calories than we expend and the excess is stored as fat, we wouldn’t be here.

Archives of Internal Medicine revealed that postmenopausal women who were put on statin drugs to lower their cholesterol had a nearly 48 percent increased risk of developing diabetes compared to those who weren’t given the drug.

Test Ideal level • fasting blood glucose less than 95 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL) • fasting insulin below 8 µIU/ml (ideally, below 3) • hemoglobin A1C 4.8 to 5.4 percent • fructosamine 188 to 223 µmol/L • homocysteine 8µmol/L or less • vitamin D 80 ng/mL • C-reactive protein 0.00 to 3.0 mg/L • gluten sensitivity test with Cyrex array 3 test

Many chronic symptoms and health conditions—such as fatigue, sleepiness, mood disorders, insomnia, gastroesophageal reflux disease, lipid disorders, high blood pressure, headaches (including migraines), gas, bloating, irritable bowel syndrome, joint inflammation, acne, and difficulty concentrating, to name a few—will improve on a ketogenic diet. Treating lifestyle conditions with lifestyle change such as this can make us a healthier and less drug-dependent country. – Jackie Eberstein

First, there was Francie. If our group had a mascot, someone to glue themselves in feathers and lead our team in three cheers for motherhood, it was her. Miss Eager-to-Be-Liked, to not screw anything up, so plump with hope and rich Southern carbs.

I thought you had resolved this year not to make any rash decisions while consuming carbs,” he says. “I’m thinking through it. That means it isn’t rash.” “Deciding to marry someone for a roll recipe is pretty rash,” Mike says. “Mike, I am a nurse. I specialize in rashes.” “I

The origin of brain disease is in many cases predominantly dietary. Although several factors play into the genesis and progression of brain disorders, to a large extent numerous neurological afflictions often reflect the mistake of consuming too many carbs and too few healthy fats.

For me, without question and despite certain Oracle of Delphi moments concerning my own thighs, it was my belly. The belly that refused to turn into abs no matter how many crunches I performed or how few carbs I ate. (This obviously led to alternating phases wherin there were no crunches and only carbs, to soothe the pain.) Either way, the belly hung there over the edge of my otherwise fabulous low-slung jeans, rounded and spiteful, despite my best efforts. I was convinced the belly made me a troll. That it was disfiguring. That it was the outward evidence of my true inner unlovableness. No one could convince me otherwise.

Astwood’s belief that those who fatten easily are fundamentally, physiologically and metabolically different from those who don’t. This implies that those of us who fatten easily can get fat on precisely the same food and even the same amount on which lean people stay lean. We can’t be told to eat like lean and healthy people eat and expect that advice to work, because we get fat eating like lean and healthy people. Indeed, we get fat and hungry eating like lean and healthy people do.

To deal or avoid Keto Flu, you must ensure these levels of electrolytes: 400 mg (RDA) of Magnesium (increase if you exercise). Sources: artichoke, dark chocolate, nuts, spinach, fish, supplements. 2000 mg of Potassium (Daily Estimated Minimum), plus another 1000 mg a day specifically for a Keto diet. Sources: salmon, dark leafy greens, mushrooms, avocado, nuts, supplements. You need extra sources of Sodium on a Keto diet (about 3000-5000 mg preferably from food sources). Sources: bouillon, broth, bacon. Once you give up most carbs, make sure you include foods like avocados (potassium), nuts (magnesium), bone broth or sauerkraut (sodium) in your diet

And as a nutritional researcher, I was surprised at first by the popularity and commercial success of the low-carb diet, especially given its serious flaws. The research on high-protein, high-fat diets has consistently demonstrated that they have disastrous health effects and fail to secure compliance and long-term weight loss.

Brace yourselves, girls: Soda is liquid Satan. It is the devil. It is garbage. There is nothing in soda that should be put into your body. For starters, soda’s high levels of phosphorous can increase calcium loss from the body, as can its sodium and caffeine. [Cousens, Conscious Eating, 475] You know what this means—bone loss, which may lead to osteoporosis. And the last time we checked, sugar, found in soda by the boatload, does not make you skinny! Now don’t go patting yourself on the back if you drink diet soda. That stuff is even worse. Aspartame (an ingredient commonly found in diet sodas and other sugar-free foods) has been blamed for a slew of scary maladies, like arthritis, birth defects, fibromyalgia, Alzheimer’s, lupus, multiple sclerosis, and diabetes.2 When methyl alcohol, a component of aspartame, enters your body, it turns into formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is toxic and carcinogenic (cancer-causing). 3 Laboratory scientists use formaldehyde as a disinfectant or preservative. They don’t fucking drink it. Perhaps you have a lumpy ass because you are preserving your fat cells with diet soda. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has received more complaints about aspartame than any other ingredient to date.4 Want more bad news? When aspartame is paired with carbs, it causes your brain to slow down its production of serotonin.5 A healthy level of serotonin is needed to be happy and well balanced. So drinking soda can make you fat, sick, and unhappy.

These studies all came to the same startling conclusion: the low-carb diet was significantly better for weight loss than the low-fat diet. Even more stunning was that all the important risk factors for cardiovascular disease—including cholesterol, blood sugar level, and blood pressure—were also much improved on the low-carb diet.

Most processed foods and ingredients are low in protein, high in carbs, high in fat, and engineered to increase palatability. They’re literally designed by scientists to make you overeat because you’re not getting enough protein for satiety, no micronutrients, and way too many over-stimulating sugars and other ingredients that make you lose your sanity.

nor the egg making you fat–it’s the carbs! The carbs cause high levels of insulin which steer both carbs and fat (and protein) into your fat cells.

Eating high-cholesterol foods has no impact on our actual cholesterol levels, and the alleged correlation between higher cholesterol and higher cardiac risk is an absolute fallacy.

Beyond calories, fat, protein, and micronutrients, we now understand that food is a powerful epigenetic modulator—meaning it can change our DNA for better or worse.

ZERO BELLY VINAIGRETTE There’s developing research to suggest vinegar can aid weight loss by keeping our blood sugar steady. One study among pre-diabetics found the addition of 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar to a high-carb meal reduced the subsequent rise in blood sugar by 34 percent. Shake up this recipe in a mason jar and you’ll have delicious, additive-free dressing for the week! Yield: 1 cup, about 16 servings ⅓ cup raw apple cider vinegar ⅔ cup extra-virgin olive oil 1½ teaspoons Dijon mustard 1½ teaspoons honey ¼ teaspoon salt

Hey, Jerry, you got a minute?” He grunts. “What’s up, buttercup?” “So, it’s looking like we might end up with double the people we planned for the fundraiser,” she says. “We should probably talk pancake logistics again.” “Shit,” he swears, “that’s gonna be at least thirty gallons of batter.” “I know. But we don’t have to make a pancake for every guest—I mean, there have gotta be people who are gluten-free, or low carb, or whatever—” “So, let’s say twenty gallons of batter, then. That’s still a lot, and I don’t even know how we’d transport that many pancakes.

What I tried to make clear in Good Calories, Bad Calories was that nutrition and obesity research lost its way after the Second World War with the evaporation of the European community of scientists and physicians that did pioneering work in those disciplines. It has since resisted all attempts to correct it. As a result, the individuals involved in this research have not only wasted decades of time, and effort, and money but have done incalculable damage along the way. Their beliefs have remained imperious to an ever-growing body of evidence that refutes them while being embraced by public-health authorities and translated into precisely the wrong advice about what to eat and, more important, what not to eat if we want to maintain a healthy weight and live a long and healthy life.

Looking at obesity without preconceived ideas,” she wrote, “one would assume that the main trend of research should be directed toward an examination of abnormalities of the fat metabolism, since by definition excessive accumulation of fat is the underlying abnormality. It so happens that this is the area in which the least work has been done.” She added, “As long as it was not known how the body builds up and breaks down its fat deposit, the ignorance was glossed over by simply stating that food taken in excess of body needs was stored and deposited in the fat cells, the way potatoes are put into a bag. Obviously, this is not so.

Some of my most remarkable case studies involve people changing their lives and health for the better through simple brain-making edits to their dietary choices. They cut carbs and add healthy fats, especially cholesterol—a key player in brain and psychological health. I’ve watched this fundamental dietary shift single-handedly extinguish depression and all of its kissing cousins, from chronic anxiety to poor memory and even ADHD.

A SPOONFUL OF KINDNESS When Tommy, my son, was three years old, my wife, Lilly, and I took him for his annual checkup and the pediatrician asked us what his eating habits were like. “Well,” we confessed, “he’s going through this phase of only liking chicken fingers and carbs, so we’ve kind of given up trying to get him to eat vegetables for now. It’s become too much of a struggle every night.” The pediatrician nodded and smiled, and then said, “Well, you can’t really force him to eat the veggies, guys, but your job is to make sure they’re on his plate. He can’t eat them if they’re not even on his plate.” I’ve thought about that a lot over the years. I think about it with teaching. My students can’t learn what I don’t teach them. Kindness. Empathy. Compassion. It’s not part of the curriculum, I know, but I still have to keep dishing it out onto their plates every day. Maybe they’ll eat it; maybe they won’t. Either way, my job is to keep on serving it to them. Hopefully, a little mouthful of kindness today may make them hungry for a bigger taste of it tomorrow. —Mr. Browne

First, when you try to restrict calories and exercise more, your body is hardwired to perceive a starvation situation. That makes you tired (so you move less and conserve energy) and hungry (so you eat more), and it slows down your metabolism (so you don’t die!). This “eat less, exercise more” formula is not too successful for most people. It can work for a short time, certainly, but less than 10 percent of people lose weight and keep it off for a year;4 you will almost always rebound and gain back the weight. Second, when you eat carbs and sugar, insulin spikes and your blood sugar drops. The insulin drives most of the available fuel in your bloodstream into fat cells, especially the fat cells around your middle, otherwise known as belly fat. So your body is starved of fuel, and this stimulates your brain5 to make you eat more.6 You could have a year’s worth of stored energy in your fat tissue and yet feel like you are starving. The only thing that can stop this vicious cycle is eating a lot of fat and cutting out the refined carbs and sugar. A high-fat, low-carb diet leads to a faster metabolism and sustained weight loss.

Despite decades of obesity research, and billions of dollars spent in the laboratory and on clinical trials, the bedrock fundamental concept underlying all nutrition and dietary advice is that fat and lean people are effectively identical physiologically, and that our bodies respond to what we eat the same way, except that the fat people at some point in their lives ate too much and expended too little energy and so became fat, while the lean people didn’t.

A healthy attitude to eating I am concerned about the current victimisation of food. The apparent need to divide the contents of our plates into heroes and villains. The current villains are sugar and gluten, though it used to be fat, and before that it was salt (and before that it was carbs and . . . oh, I’ve lost track). It is worth remembering that today’s devil will probably be tomorrow’s angel and vice versa. We risk having the life sucked out of our eating by allowing ourselves to be shamed over our food choices. If this escalates, historians may look back on this generation as one in which society’s decision about what to eat was driven by guilt and shame rather than by good taste or pleasure. Well, not on my watch. Yes, I eat cake, and ice cream and meat. I eat biscuits and bread and drink alcohol too. What is more, I eat it all without a shred of guilt. And yet, I like to think my eating is mindful rather than mindless. I care deeply about where my food has come from, its long-term effect on me and the planet. That said, I eat what you might call ‘just enough’ rather than too much. My rule of thumb – just don’t eat too much of any one thing.

U.S. Army researcher Dr. F. Curtis Dohan was among the first scientists to notice a relationship between postwar Europe’s food scarcity (and, consequently, a lack of wheat in the diet) and considerably fewer hospitalizations for schizophrenia.

Losing weight and getting healthy don’t have as much to do with calories or fat grams or carb counting as you’ve been led to believe. The secret is to break free from food additives and obesogens that are getting in your body’s way as it tries to burn fat and keep you healthy.

When you have finished reading this book, you will have completely revised the way you think about food. We’re going to do away with calorie counting and struggling to find the perfect ratio of carbs to protein to fat. These terms aren’t useful because they say nothing about what really matters about your food. Food is like a language, an unbroken information stream that connects every cell in your body to an aspect of the natural world. The better the source and the more undamaged the message when it arrives to your cells, the better your health will be.

Whey protein Whey protein has got more bad press than whisky, gin, rum, wine, beer, and even grass. Whey protein is a powder made from milk which you mix with water to turn into a drink. It has the best biological value of protein; which means that almost every gram of whey you consume gets used for its intended purpose and is absorbed by the body. Whey isolate, made from whey protein is a boon for lactose intolerant vegetarians like me as it doesn’t irritate the stomach or the intestines. Whey protein has been accused of affecting the kidney, liver and heart but this isn’t true. Although superstars, cricketers and doctors advertise for the so called ‘Protein drinks’, (especially for children, easy targets perhaps, not to mention their parents’ obsession with their height), the reality is that these drinks are so loaded in sugar and have such miniscule amounts of protein (not to mention poor biological value too) that they really do much more harm than any good. And a nutrient is never specifically beneficial for a particular age group. Whey protein on the other hand is easy on the system, has zero sugar, and is easy to digest. If you weight train regularly or run long distances, whey protein will become a necessity. (It also comes in all flavours: chocolate, vanilla, strawberry and many more.) Word of caution: whey protein is a supplement. It is not supposed to be used as an alternative to eating correctly. Consuming adequate protein, carbs and fat by means of a well-balanced diet is a must. Only then can whey protein be of any help. Like with everything else, if you overdo it or depend on it alone to provide you with protein, you stand to lose out on its considerable benefits.

The Tree of Life was an ancient symbol of interconnection, fertility, and eternal life—precisely because of this legendary tree’s fruit. Fruit is part of our essence, a basic element of who we are. We cannot survive without fruit on this planet. It outweighs the nutrition of any other food. Yet the current “health” movement toward low-carb diets has put fruit on the endangered species list, with the goal of making it extinct. Is this denial? Ignorance? Foolishness? We’re not talking about uneducated people who are driving the trend. We’re talking about smart, highly intelligent professionals with advanced degrees in medicine and nutrition. If they’re advising patients to shun fruit, it must be because of their training, the misinformation out there, or their own selective interests. Have you heard of book burning? If the anti-sugar war keeps up its momentum, fruit trees will be next to go up in flames.

Across from me at the kitchen table, my mother smiles over red wine that she drinks out of a measuring glass. She says she doesn’t deprive herself, but I’ve learned to find nuance in every movement of her fork. In every crinkle in her brow as she offers me the uneaten pieces on her plate. I’ve realized she only eats dinner when I suggest it. I wonder what she does when I’m not there to do so. Maybe this is why my house feels bigger each time I return; it’s proportional. As she shrinks the space around her seems increasingly vast. She wanes while my father waxes. His stomach has grown round with wine, late nights, oysters, poetry. A new girlfriend who was overweight as a teenager, but my dad reports that now she’s “crazy about fruit." It was the same with his parents; as my grandmother became frail and angular her husband swelled to red round cheeks, rotund stomach and I wonder if my lineage is one of women shrinking making space for the entrance of men into their lives not knowing how to fill it back up once they leave. I have been taught accommodation. My brother never thinks before he speaks. I have been taught to filter. “How can anyone have a relationship to food?" He asks, laughing, as I eat the black bean soup I chose for its lack of carbs. I want to tell say: we come from difference, Jonas, you have been taught to grow out I have been taught to grow in you learned from our father how to emit, how to produce, to roll each thought off your tongue with confidence, you used to lose your voice every other week from shouting so much I learned to absorb I took lessons from our mother in creating space around myself I learned to read the knots in her forehead while the guys went out for oysters and I never meant to replicate her, but spend enough time sitting across from someone and you pick up their habits that’s why women in my family have been shrinking for decades. We all learned it from each other, the way each generation taught the next how to knit weaving silence in between the threads which I can still feel as I walk through this ever-growing house, skin itching, picking up all the habits my mother has unwittingly dropped like bits of crumpled paper from her pocket on her countless trips from bedroom to kitchen to bedroom again, Nights I hear her creep down to eat plain yogurt in the dark, a fugitive stealing calories to which she does not feel entitled. Deciding how many bites is too many How much space she deserves to occupy. Watching the struggle I either mimic or hate her, And I don’t want to do either anymore but the burden of this house has followed me across the country I asked five questions in genetics class today and all of them started with the word “sorry". I don’t know the requirements for the sociology major because I spent the entire meeting deciding whether or not I could have another piece of pizza a circular obsession I never wanted but inheritance is accidental still staring at me with wine-stained lips from across the kitchen table.

Cheeseburger-Stuffed Twice-Baked Potatoes • MAKES 8 SERVINGS • THIS RECIPE IS THE LUSCIOUS love-child of a stuffed potato skin and a cheeseburger, where Russet potatoes are scooped out and twice-baked to make crispy carriers for a generous helping of beefy filling that’s smothered in melted cheddar cheese. It tastes as decadent as it sounds, but it is actually quite healthy, because hollowing out the potatoes keeps carbs in check (and gives you the makings of mashed potatoes for the next day) and amping up lean beef with chopped mushrooms, broccoli, and tomatoes gives you a big portion with a sensible amount of meat.

Feeling Faint Issue: I’m happy losing weight with a low carbohydrate diet, but I’m always tired, get light headed when I stand up, and if I exercise for more than 10 minutes I feel like I’m going to pass out. Response: Congratulations on your weight loss success, and with just a small adjustment to your diet, you can say goodbye to your weakness and fatigue. The solution is salt…a bit more salt to be specific. This may sound like we’re crazy when many experts argue that we should all eat less salt, however these are the same experts who tell us that eating lots of carbohydrates and sugar is OK. But what they don’t tell you is that your body functions very differently when you are keto-adapted. When you restrict carbs for a week or two, your kidneys switch from retaining salt to rapidly excreting it, along with a fair amount of stored water. This salt and water loss explains why many people experience rapid weight loss in the first couple of weeks on a low carbohydrate diet. Ridding your body of this excess salt and water is a good thing, but only up to a point. After that, if you don’t replace some of the ongoing sodium excretion, the associated water loss can compromise your circulation The end result is lightheadedness when you stand up quickly or fatigue if you exercise enough to get ‘warmed up’. Other common side effects of carbohydrate restriction that go away with a pinch of added salt include headache and constipation; and over the long term it also helps the body maintain its muscles. The best solution is to include 1 or 2 cups of bouillon or broth in your daily schedule. This adds only 1-2 grams of sodium to your daily intake, and your ketoadapted metabolism insures that you pass it right on through within a matter of hours (allaying any fears you might have of salt buildup in your system). This rapid clearance also means that on days that you exercise, take one dose of broth or bouillon within the hour before you start.

Sunday night is my personal weekly Halloween. I walk along slowly and drag my fingertips along the bars of chocolate. Goddamn, you sexy little squares. Dark, milk, white, I do not discriminate. I eat it all. Those fluorescent sour candies that only obnoxious little boys like. I suck candy apples clean. If an envelope seal is sweet, I’ll lick it twice. Growing up, I was that kid who would easily get lured into a van with the promise of a lollipop. Sometimes, I let the retail seduction last for twenty minutes, ignoring Marco and feeling up the merchandise, but I’m so tired of male voices. “Five bags of marshmallows,” Marco says in a resigned tone. “Wine. And a can of cat food.” “Cat food is low carb.” He makes no move to scan anything, so I scan each item myself and unroll a few notes from my tips. “Your job involves selling things. Sell them. Change, please.” “I just don’t know why you do this to yourself.” Marco looks at the register with a moral dilemma in his eyes. “Every week you come and do this.” He hesitates and looks over his shoulder where his sugar book sits under a layer of dust. He knows not to try to slip it into my bag with my purchases. “I don’t know why you care, dude. Just serve me. I don’t need your help.” He’s not entirely wrong about my being an addict. I would lick a line of icing sugar off this counter right now if no one were around. I would walk into a cane plantation and bite right in... “Give me my change or I swear to God …” I squeeze my eyes shut and try to tamp down my temper. “Just treat me like any other customer.” He gives me a few coins’ change and bags my sweet, spongy drugs.

Even now I’ve actually been in magazines I’ve struggled with feeling like I don’t fit the standard of beauty in our culture, one that I would only fit into if I was pulled on one of those old-fashioned torture devices, the things they used to stretch people on. Now I’m thirty-three years old and bored of recounting everything I’ve eaten over the course of every day before I go to sleep and berating myself for every single carb I’ve sunk my teeth into, I’m starting to think that maybe the ridiculously tall and narrow standard is just another construct to make us feel bad about ourselves so we put our energy into going to the gym and juice cleanses instead of raising hell and changing the world.

1. She switched her breakfast to a high-protein meal (at least 30% protein) à la the Slow-Carb Diet. Her favorite: spinach, black beans, and egg whites (one-third of a carton of Eggology liquid egg whites) with cayenne pepper flakes. 2. Three times a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday), she performed a simple sequence of three exercises prior to breakfast, all of which are illustrated in the next few pages: One set: 20 two-legged glute activation raises from the floor One set: 15 flying dogs, one set each side One set: 50 kettlebell swings (For you: start with a weight that allows you to do 20 perfect repetitions but no more than 30. In other words, start with a weight, no less than 20 pounds, that you can “grow into.

So let’s consider an alternative diet, say 1200 kcal consisting of 30% protein, 15% carbs (i.e., 180 kcal or 45 grams), and 55% fat. After a week or two of getting adapted (during which you may experience some of the fuel limitation symptoms discussed above), your serum ketones rise up in the range (1-2 millimolar) where they meet at least half of the brain’s fuel supply. Now if you go for that 5 mile run, almost all of your body’s muscle fuel comes from fat, leaving your dietary carb intake plus gluconeogenesis from protein to meet the minor fraction of your brain’s energy need not provided from ketones. And, oh yes, after your run while on the low carb diet, your ketone levels actually go up a bit (not dangerously so), further improving fuel flow to your brain. So what does this mean for the rest of us who are not compulsive runners? Well, this illustrates that the keto-adapted state allows your body more flexibility in meeting its critical organ energy needs than a ‘balanced’ but energy-restricted diet. And in particular, this also means that your brain is a “carbohydrate dependent organ” (as claimed by the USDA Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee as noted in Chapter 3) ONLY when you are eating a high carbohydrate diet. When carbohydrate is restricted as in the example above, your body’s appropriate production of ketones frees the brain from this supposed state of ‘carbohydrate dependency’. And because exercise stimulates ketone production, your brain’s fuel supply is better supported during and after intense exercise when on a low carbohydrate diet than when your carbohydrate intake is high (see below).

The authorities who insist that abstaining from carbohydrates is an unsustainable lifestyle once again typically do so from the perspective of lean people whose primary fuel happens to be carbohydrates and whose bodies can tolerate carbohydrates without accumulating excess fat. From their perspective, a program that requires living without carbohydrates appears doomed to fail. Why would anyone do it, if another way existed that allowed for the occasional consumption of cinnamon buns and pasta (in moderation, not too much)? But for many of us, there may be no other way. Lean folks aren’t like us. They don’t get fat when they eat carbohydrates; they may not hunger for them just by thinking about them. They have a choice to live with carbohydrates or not. We don’t. Not if we want to be lean and as healthy as we can be.

Sitting here in my lab, I can imagine you scratching your head again: Dr. Panda, what’s the big deal? Aren’t we talking about just a few ounces of fat gain after a late-night snack? Won’t my metabolic rhythm come back the next day? Actually, it’s worse than you think. It is hard enough for the body to monitor hormones, genes, and clocks for someone with a strict eating routine. But when eating occurs at random times throughout the day and night, the fat-making process stays on all the time. At the same time, glucose created from digested carbohydrates floods our blood and the liver becomes inefficient in its ability to absorb glucose. If this continues for a few days, blood glucose continues to rise and reaches the danger zone of prediabetes or diabetes. So, if you’ve wondered why diets haven’t worked for you before, timing might be the reason. Even if you were diligently exercising; counting calories; avoiding fats, carbs, and sweets; and piling on the protein, it’s quite likely that you weren’t respecting your circadian clocks. If you eat late at night or start breakfast at a wildly different time each morning, you are constantly throwing your body out of sync. Don’t worry, the fix is equally simple: Just set an eating routine and stick to it. Timing is everything.

I have seen mood stabilization, reduced or eliminated depression, reduced or eliminated anxiety, improved cognitive functioning, greatly enhanced and evened-out energy levels, cessation of seizures, improved overall neurological stability, cessation of migraines, improved sleep, improvement in autistic symptoms, improvements with PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome), improved gastrointestinal functioning, healthy weight loss, cancer remissions and tumor shrinkage, much better management of underlying previous health issues, improved symptoms and quality of life in those struggling with various forms of autoimmunity (including many with type 1 and 1.5 diabetes), fewer colds and flus, total reversal of chronic fatigue, improved memory, sharpened cognitive functioning, and significantly stabilized temperament. And there is quality evidence to support the beneficial impact of a fat-based ketogenic approach in all these types of issues. – Nora Gedgaudas

The soul of Sardinia lies in the hills of the interior and the villages peppered among them. There, in areas such as Nuoro and Ozieri, women bake bread by the flame of the communal oven, winemakers produce their potions from small caches of grapes adapted to the stubborn soil and acrid climate, and shepherds lead their flocks through the peaks and valleys in search of the fickle flora that fuels Sardinia's extraordinary cheese culture. There are more sheep than humans roaming this island- and sheep can't graze on sand. On the table, the food stands out as something only loosely connected to the cuisine of Italy's mainland. Here, every piece of the broader puzzle has its own identity: pane carasau, the island's main staple, eats more like a cracker than a loaf of bread, built to last for shepherds who spent weeks away from home. Cheese means sheep's milk manipulated in a hundred different ways, from the salt-and-spice punch of Fiore Sardo to the infamous maggot-infested casu marzu. Fish and seafood may be abundant, but they take a backseat to four-legged animals: sheep, lamb, and suckling pig. Historically, pasta came after bread in the island's hierarchy of carbs, often made by the poorest from the dregs of the wheat harvest, but you'll still find hundreds of shapes and sizes unfamiliar to a mainland Italian. All of it washed down with wine made from grapes that most people have never heard of- Cannonau, Vermentino, Torbato- that have little market beyond the island.

Eat either three regular-size meals a day or four or five smaller meals. Do not skip meals or go more than six waking hours without eating. 2. Eat liberally of combinations of fat and protein in the form of poultry, fish, shellfish, eggs and red meat, as well as of pure, natural fat in the form of butter, mayonnaise, olive oil, safflower, sunflower and other vegetable oils (preferably expeller-pressed or cold-pressed). 3. Eat no more than 20 grams a day of carbohydrate, most of which must come in the form of salad greens and other vegetables. You can eat approximately three cups-loosely packed-of salad, or two cups of salad plus one cup of other vegetables (see the list of acceptable vegetables on page 110). 4. Eat absolutely no fruit, bread, pasta, grains, starchy vegetables or dairy products other than cheese, cream or butter. Do not eat nuts or seeds in the first two weeks. Foods that combine protein and carbohydrates, such as chickpeas, kidney beans and other legumes, are not permitted at this time. 5. Eat nothing that is not on the acceptable foods list. And that means absolutely nothing! Your "just this one taste won't hurt" rationalization is the kiss of failure during this phase of Atkins. 6. Adjust the quantity you eat to suit your appetite, especially as it decreases. When hungry, eat the amount that makes you feel satisfied but not stuffed. When not hungry, eat a small controlled carbohydrate snack to accompany your nutritional supplements. 7. Don't assume any food is low in carbohydrate-instead read labels! Check the carb count (it's on every package) or use the carbohydrate gram counter in this book. 8. Eat out as often as you wish but be on guard for hidden carbs in gravies, sauces and dressings. Gravy is often made with flour or cornstarch, and sugar is sometimes an ingredient in salad dressing. 9. Avoid foods or drinks sweetened with aspartame. Instead, use sucralose or saccharin. Be sure to count each packet of any of these as 1 gram of carbs. 10. Avoid coffee, tea and soft drinks that contain caffeine. Excessive caffeine has been shown to cause low blood sugar, which can make you crave sugar. 11. Drink at least eight 8-ounce glasses of water each day to hydrate your body, avoid constipation and flush out the by-products of burning fat. 12. If you are constipated, mix a tablespoon or more of psyllium husks in a cup or more of water and drink daily. Or mix ground flaxseed into a shake or sprinkle wheat bran on a salad or vegetables.