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    Low Carb Problems Solved: Say Goodbye to Stalled Weight Loss, Failed Maintenance, and Poor Blood Sugar Control: Blood Sugar 101 Short Reads, #2
    Low Carb Problems Solved: Say Goodbye to Stalled Weight Loss, Failed Maintenance, and Poor Blood Sugar Control: Blood Sugar 101 Short Reads, #2
    Low Carb Problems Solved: Say Goodbye to Stalled Weight Loss, Failed Maintenance, and Poor Blood Sugar Control: Blood Sugar 101 Short Reads, #2
    Ebook84 pages1 hourBlood Sugar 101 Short Reads

    Low Carb Problems Solved: Say Goodbye to Stalled Weight Loss, Failed Maintenance, and Poor Blood Sugar Control: Blood Sugar 101 Short Reads, #2

    By Jenny Ruhl

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    About this ebook

    This brief 20,000 word book covers the most challenging problems low carb dieters encounter and shows you how to solve each one. It distills the essential facts and strategies drawn from the research we presented in much greater detail in our full-length book, Diet 101: The Truth About Low Carb Diets.

    If you already have read Diet 101, you don't need this download. But if you are looking for a quick action-focused guide that cuts to the chase and tells you exactly what to do to make your low carb diet workable and bearable, this is the book for you.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTechnion Books
    Release dateNov 18, 2014
    ISBN9781516357017
    Low Carb Problems Solved: Say Goodbye to Stalled Weight Loss, Failed Maintenance, and Poor Blood Sugar Control: Blood Sugar 101 Short Reads, #2
    Author

    Jenny Ruhl

    Jenny Ruhl, a well-known author of business books, was diagnosed with diabetes in 1998. Nothing doctors told her about how to control her blood sugar corresponded to her own experiences and observations. To answer the questions "What causes diabetes" and "What blood sugars prevent complications" she dug into the medical journals newly available online and spent a year tracking down the facts. The result was the bloodsugar101.com web site which now gets well over a million visitors a year. She is a strong supporter of the "Test, Test, Test" strategy for lowering blood sugar. It embodies the highly effective strategy she learned on the now-defunct alt.support.diabetes newsgroup back in the days when it was frequented by quite a few bright, inquisitive engineers. She hears from hundreds of people each year who have used that technique to bring their A1cs down into the 5% range that research shows will prevent diabetic complications.  

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      Book preview

      Low Carb Problems Solved - Jenny Ruhl

      Solve Your Low Carb Diet Problems!

      You’ve read the books. You’ve followed the bloggers. You’ve done exactly what they say but now, months into your diet, you are not experiencing the rosy scenario you expected. Your weight loss has slowed to where it will be years until you reach goal. Meat, cheese, and eggs no longer thrill you and you dream of pecan sticky buns every other night. Even worse, your significant other keeps bringing home cupcakes and offering to treat you to a luxurious pasta dinner.

      A large body of research shows that most people who try low carb diets experience these kinds of problems. What’s worse, it is because they can’t solve them that so many people not only quit their low carb diets, but end up heavier than they were before they started.

      I’ve done this myself, so I know just how easy it is for even knowledgeable, highly motivated dieters to crash and burn. But because cutting carbs isn’t optional for me—I have diabetes and eating too much carbohydrate will give me dangerously high blood sugars—I have also learned how to solve these common problems. The solutions I found came from studying a large body of peer reviewed diet research published in medical journals and combining their findings with what I learned from the many hundreds of people who have shared their diet journeys on the online diet support groups I’ve participated in since 1998.

      My full-length book, Diet 101: The Truth About Low Carb Diet, explored the published diet research in depth as well as the lessons learned by the online diet community. But because that book spent so much of its time discussing what science has learned about the low carb diet, quite a few readers have asked that I give them a shorter, simpler book that would present only the actionable advice that would make it easier for them to make their diets work. So that’s what you’ll find here.

      This brief book is designed to be read over a period lasting between an hour and ninety minutes. It covers the most challenging problems low carb dieters encounter and shows you how to solve each one.

      When we discuss carbs in the following pages, we are referring to carbohydrates: starches and sugars. Carbohydrates, called carbs for short, are the nutrients that when digested turn into simple sugars like glucose or fructose. Glucose is the form of sugar our cells burn for fuel. Though most of our cells can also burn fat, important brain cells can not. So glucose must circulate in our blood stream at all times to keep those brain cells going. That’s why glucose is also known as blood sugar.

      In our discussions here we will often describe foods in terms of how many grams (g) of carbs they contain per serving. For example, a slice of bread that weighs 43g may contain 19 g of carbohydrate, mostly in the form of starch but with a small amount of sugar. You can find out how many grams of carbohydrate there are in any food you eat by reading the label or looking the food up online.

      Many, but not all, of the problems discussed below are more likely to occur when people eat a ketogenic diet. A ketogenic diet is one that is so low in carbohydrate that it forces all your cells, except for those in the brain, to switch to burning fat rather than glucose. Ketones are one kind of fat-derived chemical they burn. When we are burning fat as our primary fuel we end up with these ketones in our blood and urine. Most people will start burning fats instead of glucose when they eat less than 75 grams of carbohydrate a day, though the specific level at which a diet becomes ketogenic depends on how large the dieter might be. A very heavy person might be able to eat as many as 110 grams of carbs a day and still be eating a ketogenic diet. We will also refer to ketogenic diets as very low carb diets.

      So with no further ado, let’s see how we solve these pesky low carb diet problems.

      Problem: Your Head Aches, Your Legs Hurt, and You Can’t Sleep

      Many people never get through the first two or three weeks of a very low carb diet because they encounter some very well known side effects that are glossed over or ignored in the bestselling books. These side effects can be so disturbing they make people decide it isn’t healthy or even safe to continue the diet.

      This is too bad, because if you understand what causes these side effects, it is possible to avoid most of them. The rest go away within a short time as your body adapts to this new way of eating.

      Headache and General Weakness

      Headaches and general weakness occur at the beginning of a ketogenic diet while your body is making the shift from burning glucose as its primary fuel to burning fat. Some Atkins dieters describe this combination of symptoms as induction flu, and, at their worst, these symptoms can make you feel as if you were ill.

      Aches and exhaustion may occur because it takes some time for your muscles to switch from producing the enzymes that process glucose to those that burn fat. During this switchover period, rather than burn fat, some cells may end up using an alternate, anaerobic, process to produce energy. Anaerobic respiration produces lactic acid, a substance that causes muscle pain. It may also produce the headaches some people report early in their diets.

      Another reason you may get a headache on a low carb diet is that you aren’t eating enough. Some people respond to the hunger-controlling effects of the low carb diet by eating a dangerously low amount of food. Doing that will also make you feel ill.

      Not drinking enough fluid is yet another reason for headaches. Drinking some clear broth that contains both sodium and potassium can be very helpful for abolishing these headaches.

      If you have cut out caffeine, which some books prescribe as part of a low carb diet, this too will cause headaches.

      Fortunately, these headaches and induction flu should pass very quickly after your first few days on the diet. If they

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