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Count Your Blessings NOT Your Calories This Holiday Season

November 23, 2021 By April Duval

May the Thanksgiving season find you counting your blessings and NOT your calories!!

For some of us we have lived a lifetime of hearing: “To lose weight, you need to eat less and exercise more.” “Balance calories in with calories out.”  “Move more, eat less.” “A calorie is a calorie.”

Conventional dietary advice for controlling weight simply isn’t working and is not true. All calories are far from equal. For example, 1,000 calories of baked goods are not the same as 1,000 calories of meat, vegetables or olive oil. When it comes to calories, forget about counting them at all!

So what should you count?  Carbohydrates!!!

Carbohydrates from sources of grains are particularity dangerous.  Grain consumption stimulates the appetite, causing you to feel hungry all the time – some of us would even say hangry.  Grains spike blood sugar levels, and what goes up must come down.  Blood sugar highs are inevitably followed by blood sugar lows with shakiness, mental cloudiness, and hunger, a cycle that sets the grain-consumer in an endless hunt for food all day long.  A constant blood sugar roller coaster.  When we live the Undoctored lifestyle we aim to keep blood sugars steady by focusing on net carbs.

We follow this simple rule: Never exceed 15 grams net carbohydrates per meal. We calculate net carbs by the following simple equation:

NET CARBS = TOTAL CARBS – FIBER

By exceeding 15 gram net carbs per meal, it turns off your ability to lose weight for that entire day, as well as delay any hope of reversing high blood sugars and insulin resistance.  Here are four tips for managing carbs:

  1. Limit fruit. Choose fruit with the least carbohydrate content and greatest nutritional value. Berries of all varieties are a low-carb choice.  Ripe bananas, pineapples, mangoes, and grapes are higher in carbs. Eat them in very small quantities, if at all, since their sugar content is similar to that of candy.
  2. Avoid fruit juices. As with fruit, be very careful with fruit juices. You’d do best to avoid juices altogether. If you must drink fruit juice, drink only real, 100% juice and only in minimal quantities (no more than 2 to 4 ounces per meal), as the sugar content is too high.
  3. Limit dairy products. Be aware of the carb content in dairy.  Remember: fat is not the problem, we choose full fat dairy in this lifestyle.  We limit dairy because of the lactose sugar content and the peculiar ability of the whey protein to provoke insulin which can impair weight loss and encourage insulin resistance.
  4. Limit legumes, cooked potatoes, sweet potatoes, and yams. In general, don’t eat more than 1/4 cup of any of these foods per meal. Including some of these foods can be important, for bowel health: especially beans, hummus. lentils and RAW (not cooked) white potatoes.

Focus on fats
One of the most common mistakes people make in the Undoctored lifestyle is to remain fearful of fats. They continue to hold onto old misconceptions such as “fats raise cholesterol,” or “fat causes heart disease,” or “fats are calorie-dense and therefore make you fat.” None of this is true, no more true than “healthy whole grains” are a key to overall health.

Getting sufficient fat in your meal is satiating, curbs cravings and eliminates impulsive eating behaviors.  Here are some strategies that can help you get more fat:

  • Buy fatty cuts of meat–Ribeye steak, for example, over sirloin tip. T-bone and skirt steak are moderately fatty. When buying ground meat, don’t buy the lean (e.g., 90% or 95% lean); buy the fattiest you can find (70% lean).  And remember, don’t trim the fat off your meat, eat it!
  • Save the fats/oils from cooking meat–If you prepare uncured bacon or other meats, save the oils and store in a jar in the refrigerator to use for cooking. You will appreciate the deeper flavors they provide over, say, something bland and awful oxidation-prone like corn oil. You can also purchase lard and tallow, but be sure they have not been hydrogenated.
  • Use more butter and oil– Slather everything in butter or ghee!  Butter is among the least problematic forms of dairy, as it is mostly fat.  Cook in butter and good oils and add more after cooking.  Choose olive oil, coconut oil, and avocado oil. We also avoid mixed vegetable oils, corn, soybean, canola, safflower, sunflower and grapeseed oils (as they are high omega-6).
  • Eat more avocados–With around 30 grams of fat in an average-sized avocado, you can get a nice wallop just by eating one . . . or two. Avocados added to your smoothie will thicken it substantially while providing a healthy dose of fat.

Enjoy a happy and healthy holiday season!! 

From Dr. Davis and the Wheat Belly and Undoctored Team

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Comments

  1. Ayman

    November 23, 2021

    What is the difference between this way of eating and the ketogenic diet, which Dr. Davis has warned against?
    Thanks!

    • Bob Niland

      November 23, 2021

      Ayman wrote: «What is the difference between this way of eating and the ketogenic diet,…»

      At the macronutrient level, the 50g/day net carb target here is (in my personal view) right on the borderline between full-time glycemic & full-time ketotic diets. People on the Undoctored/Wheat Belly style of eating are apt to be in ketosis cyclically, perhaps during the latter stages of the involuntary fast that sleep represents.

      A full-time ketogenic diet (KD) is more commonly 20g/day net carb, and keeps you in ketosis at all times, or for most of the day.

      At a micronutrient level, the program here includes working up to 20g/day or more prebiotic fiber carbs. On a full-time KD, it requires a very deliberate effort to get ≤20g net carbs, while also getting ≥20g prebiotic carbs. The list of candidate prebiotic sources is basically cut in half. The vast majority of people doing KD are entirely unaware of this issue.

      KD is of course a high fat diet, and the list of suitable fats needs a ponder. I’m not at all sure that all KDs are aware of the hazards of several post-industrial refined grain, legume & certain other seed-based oils.

      Those might be the top issues with extended and chronic KD. Comparing this program to any specific KD would require some details about the full menu of the specific KD. The Undoctored/WB program is what I refer to as enlightened ancestral. Reverting to a true ancestral diet for each of our genotypes is now out of reach for most of us, so we have to adapt modern choices. As far as I know, there is no ancestral case for chronic keto, despite the curious fact that most, but not all human genotypes have the metabolic adaptation.

      re: «…which Dr. Davis has warned against?»

      Short-term (what I call sub-seasonal keto) is a tool in the box here, often called upon to break through a weight loss stall. What’s warned about is chronic keto (unless it’s the most benign intervention for a chronic ailment). And when KD is used, attention still needs to be paid to microbiome support, and it appears, keeping an eye on uric acid.
      ________
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