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> Some people tell me going "ketogenic", or reducing carbs is healthy. I am now skeptical of this claim as lowering carbs makes me feel hungry and tired, and th
by bsmith 14y ago
> Some people tell me going "ketogenic", or reducing carbs is healthy. I am now skeptical of this claim as lowering carbs makes me feel hungry and tired, and the drink taste less sweet. Perhaps it would be possible after an unpleasant transition period, but I don’t see the ultimate gain...
Their advice seems to fall in line with the paleo/primal philosophies—in a nutshell: man only started eating a significant amount of carbohydrates after the agriculturalization of cereals (grains) about 10,000 years ago. They argue that wasn't enough time for us to evolve enough to adapt.
But to your point about feeling hungry and tired—I think it's because you're addicted to carbs and sugar (like almost all of us are), but you don't NEED carbs, at all. I tried primal for a month, and yes, the adjustment took a few days (maybe a week). However, after I got over the sugar/carb cravings, my energy levels where much more even throughout the day, sans-grains.
- Semaphor 14y agoHonestly the only two things I'm missing on low carb are ice cream (that's okay though) and coke (which is why I'm searching for a pure stevia alternative). I had way less problems then I would have expected. edit: a) I'm in Germany, not that many products available here. b) I always steered clear of Coca Cola, Pepsi and so on, those were too sweet for me and the caffeine level was rather low anyway.
- groby_b 14y agoThat alternative would be Zevia. I get them at Trader Joe's or Sprout's - YMMV.
- mikeryan 14y agoYou may have found this but http://www.zevia.com/ http://www.zevia.com/ for Stevia based Soda options.
- Semaphor 14y agoYeah, found it. Sadly I'm in Germany :/ Will probably get one of my friends to bring me some when they visit home the next time.
- trin_ 14y agohttp://www.fritz-kola.de/fritz-kola-und-limo/fritz-kola-stevia/ http://www.fritz-kola.de/fritz-kola-und-limo/fritz-kola-stev... and it tastes good! in fact i like all their products :)
- Semaphor 14y agoSadly they feel the need to still have 5g of sugar / 100ml. It tastes fine but I could easily do with it being less sweet and sugar free.
- username111 14y agoHave you tried just the fizzy flavored water you can buy at the grocery store? The taste takes some getting used to (not really sweet when compared to cokes) but I've found that what I liked most about soda is the fizz. After dropping soda I can't even drink half a can because of the sweetness but YMMV.
- damian2000 14y agoYou could try plain soda water flavoured with a small amount of concentrated cordial/squash.
- Semaphor 14y agoI like the slightly bitter taste of cola and of course the caffeine.
- Centigonal 14y agoYou should try making your own. The Coke recipe is actually pretty simple -- most of the "super secret formula" stuff is for marketing. A quick Google will bring up a bunch of different versions, like the ones on this[1] helpful page. You can order the ingredients whenever you're sure you want to try it (most of them keep for a long time). Then, when you get a few hours free on the weekend, you can make a batch of soda syrup. You can experiment with the ingredients and fine-tune it to be perfect. If you want to try something slightly different (which, unfortunately, requires processed sugars AFAICT), you can try making ginger ale at home! Here's a simple and practical guide[2] that I used to learn how to make some, which serendipitously was written by a San Francisco tech startups guy. [1]: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/427/original-recipe/recipe http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/427/o... [2]: http://tashian.com/carl/archives/2009/03/ginger_ale.php http://tashian.com/carl/archives/2009/03/ginger_ale.php
- hsjsjzjzjz 14y agoIt is the fizz that makes one addicted to soda. So it makes sense you like it. A lot of people do not notice this.
- tieTYT 14y agoWhy not just drink diet coke?
- vidarh 14y agoYou seriously suggested diet coke to someone wanting a non-sugary alternative to coke? Ok, so that's unnecessarily snarky, but diet coke is pretty much the farthest away from the non-diet colas you can get with the diet variations. These days at least I believe it's that way on purpose, as it's created a distinct market for itself. Coke Zero is a lot closer, but Diet Pepsi and Pepsi Max are both vastly better approximations to their non-diet versions. RC Light, though, is the only diet cola I've tasted that ever got close to fooling me into thinking I got the non-diet version. It's worth a try. But RC tastes quite different to Coke (much stronger caramel taste) so someone looking for a diet alternative to Coke might not be happy with it.
- tallanvor 14y agoYes, Coke does seem to have gone way out of their way to make Diet Coke and Coke Zero taste very distinct. I miss Diet Pepsi (can't get it in Norway) - Pepsi Max is ok, but it's not the same. Since work ditched Pepsi I've cut way back on the amount of soda I drink. I suppose that may be a good thing, but I still miss the taste.
- philwelch 14y agoFun fact: Coke tried adapting the Diet Coke recipe to use real Coke. The result? 1985's ill-fated New Coke. Diet Coke and Coke Zero are only two of their diet colas. The original was TaB, which is still sold today.
- intopieces 14y agoDiet Coke contains HFCS, and is no better for you than regular coke. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/11/diet-soda-diabetes-risk-type-2-artificially-sweetened-sugar_n_2663247.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/11/diet-soda-diabetes-...
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- rb2k_ 14y agoCoke Zero? Works for me, but I'm fine with the taste of aspartame
- nawitus 14y ago10k years is plenty enough: http://www.salon.com/2013/03/10/paleofantasy_stone_age_delusions/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/10/paleofantasy_stone_age_delus... In fact, 10k years is enough for dogs to have evolved to digest carbs a lot better. There's even specific genes that are known to help that.
- lukifer 14y agoJust because those genes exist doesn't mean they're evenly distributed. For example, look at the spectrum of lactose tolerance: some people do just fine, some people get a little gassy, some people get severely ill.
- suchire 14y agoYes but that mostly is distributed according to dairy consumption from around 500 years ago. Grain consumption is widespread across the globe in almost every culture.
- tassl 14y ago10K years hasn't been enough for cats, apparently. Plus, the lifespan of a dog is ~7 times shorter than the lifespan of a man, which will give them at least 7 generations more to adapt. Obviously there has been some adaptation to the change of diet, and it is also obvious that this diet was not letal to human (or nobody would have adopt it), but this does not implies that it is optimal for human consumption. Most people in my region are not lactose intolerant... but do you know what? I threw up every time that my mother had me drink a glass of milk because it was "healthy" and good for my bones. If adaptation depends that much between humans (the % of lactose intolerant or lactase persistent is not the same in the US than in China or Africa, for example), trying to correlate anything with animals seem completely off to me.
- jckt 14y agoMore like 2-3 times shorter. Humans have barely gone past 30 years of age for most of the last 10k years, and I don't see how dogs' lifespans were improved in recent centuries.
- AUmrysh 14y agoI felt very lightheaded most of the time, but I did feel more energetic. It was very strange feeling. It's not something I'd do for the fun of it, but I'd certainly do it again as a diet because it seemed to work.
- manmal 14y agoProbably your brain's glycogen stores were exhausted, and not enough fat there to power the brain. I feel like this all the time when I go low-carb - I suspect I have fat malabsorption or something.
- malbs 14y agojust curious what, if any, training you did during your primal trial month?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- andrewfelix 14y ago"in a nutshell: man only started eating a significant amount of carbohydrates about 10,000 years ago." This is a myth and patently wrong. Anatomically modern humans evolved on a diet of cooked food, the bulk of which was tubers and other root vegetables. EDIT: 'tubas' -> 'tubers' derp.
- lukifer 14y ago"Carbohydrates" should be replaced with "grains".
- onan_barbarian 14y agoThis is also patently wrong; a paleolithic human could not have subsisted on a diet of tubas, as they were not invented until the mid-19th century.
- LaGrange 14y agoParent said "modern", not "paleolithic". You are not a paleolithic human, and if you are, welcome, time traveller.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- cynicalkane 14y agoModern humanity evolved to eat tubers in the last few centuries?
- XorNot 14y agoWe evolved to drink milk in only about a thousand years. It was evidently so successful that huge swathes of the population are now lactose tolerant - but only if they descended from particular groups which had access to it.
- LaGrange 14y agoYes. We evolved to cope better with bubonic plague in a matter of decades. It all depends on the amount of evolutionary pressure.
- Swizec 14y agoI don't eat sugar sugar anymore, but consume plenty of fruits, so I wouldn't consider myself addicted to sugar. However, I simply could not eat enough calories through the day to fit my lifestyle without eating carbs. I tried, it didn't work. Burning ~400 calories every day before breakfast and adding another ~900 calorie burn at boxing practice every two days ... just nope. I can't even fulfill my caloric goal when eating carbs on the days I have boxing. My stomach can't process that much food.[1] When I was strict about avoiding carbs, I lost about 5 or 6 kilograms quite quickly. Took me about 11 months of grain eating and concerted attempts at a caloric surplus to gain back the weight. [1] One of the strangest feelings I have ever felt is being hungry while having such a full stomach it feels eating another bite will make you vomit. This often happens after boxing when I mess up my "every 3 hours" eating schedule and haven't eaten enough calories before going to practice.
- whatusername 14y agoIf you were to do so -- you'd need to re-examine the role that fat played in your diet. The technical layman's reference would probably be "Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living" by Phinney/Volek. (or possibly the Performance one for athletes)
- Devilboy 14y agoYou didn't eat enough fat. If you cut carbs you must increase fat intake because that's the only other source of energy.
- eru 14y agoOnly: fat is quite filling. So it's hard to eat enough calories from fat alone. (At least I found fatty meat quite filling. Gulping down cream or double cream is easier.)
- randallsquared 14y agoSince it's relatively easy to eat 4000 kcal a day without trying (in fact, just by not trying to not do so), I can only imagine how much you must be eating. 6000 kcal? 8000?
- rb2k_ 14y ago> I am now skeptical of this claim as lowering carbs makes me feel hungry and tired, The initial tiredness is known as keto-fever or induction flu: http://lowcarb4u.blogspot.de/2010/02/induction-flu.html http://lowcarb4u.blogspot.de/2010/02/induction-flu.html Goes away after a few days.
- crusso 14y agoThe first time I low carbed on Atkins, the cravings and bad feelings built up for about a week - but then on the 8th day, it was like I had passed some invisible line. I felt great. It's really worth pushing yourself past this point - for no other reason than to gain the experience of what it's like to burn fat as your primary energy source to see what people have raved about.
- silasb 14y agoI'm on Keto now. The biggest change that I noticed while being on Keto is that I eat a lot less and I get fuller on smaller portion sizes. Typical breakfast is 3 pieces of bacon (yummy) with peanut butter. Large cup of coffe with 1~2 tablespoons of coconut oil. Lunch is a small $3.50 salad at the salad bar. Dinner is typically cheese and deli meat with more peanut butter. I drink about 60 oz. of water a day plus 2 large coffees. I'm only tired because I'm staying up late and not getting good night of sleep. Hopefully ASMR will help with that.