MANTENIMIENTO DEL CABLEADO: DAÑOS Y REPARACIONES

We recommend that for best results during the corrective phase of your diet you keep your total daily carbohydrate intake at the Small level (about 10 grams of effective carbohydrate⁴per meal or a total of 30 to 40 grams of effective carbohydrate each day).

Once you near your target weight and have corrected any associ-ated health problems, you’ll graduate to a richer carb intake, both per meal and per day. During this transition period, increase your carbo-hydrate intake to the Moderate level (about 15 grams of effective car-bohydrate per meal or snack, for a total of 50 to 60 grams of effective carbohydrate each day).

If you’re able to maintain your correction on the Moderate level of carbohydrates for several weeks, graduate to the Large level (about 20 grams of effective carbohydrate in each meal or snack, for a total of 60 to 80 grams of effective carbohydrate each day).

Finally, if your correction holds at the Large level of carbohydrate grams for a few weeks, you can safely remain on this level for the long term. At that point, you can mix and match carb servings from all the lists to inch your daily intake even higher—as long as eating more carbs doesn’t adversely affect your health, weight, or fitness. Everyone will have a carb limit—some higher than others. Your limit is the amount you can eat each day and not regain your weight; see your blood pressure, blood sugar, or lipid readings begin to climb again; or see your GE reflux, gout, or sleep apnea return. Now let’s look at what you’ll be eating on your new low-carb diet.

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4Effective carbohydrate content (ECC) is the term we developed to describe the actual amount of usable sugars and starches in a given food. It is the grams of total carbohydrate content minus the grams of fiber, sugar alcohols, or other nonabsorbable or partially absorbable car-bohydrates in a food. All carb listings here are given as EC grams. Pick up a copy of The Protein Power LifePlan Gram Counter for a handy reference—available at bookstores nation-wide or online.

F

iguring out what to eat on a low-carb diet can be as simple as our son, Ted, used to make it: Just don’t eat white things. That simple admonition leaves all the meats, fish, poultry, and colorful fruits and veggies on your plate, but cuts out flour, sugar, potatoes, breads, pas-tries, pasta, rice, dried beans, bananas—the white things that one and all are high in starch or sugar. Unfortunately, the nothing-white dictum would also eliminate cauliflower, egg whites, cream, many cheeses, and yogurt—all “good” white things that a low-carb diet would allow.

Moreover, that scheme would leave in such things as corn, which is yellow, but quite high in starch (since it’s actually a grain and not a vegetable), as well as a raspberry Slurpee, which isn’t white either (although the sugar that sweetens it is), but which isn’t going to do your insulin level any favors. However, if you apply it with common sense, this simple rule will serve as a pretty good guide of what to eat when you go low-carb.

You could also adopt the slightly different version of this guideline coined by one of our readers: If it’s white, better go light. If it’s color-ful or brown, wolf it down. That works pretty well, too—with the same admonitions about the cauliflower, egg whites, dairy products, and 33 C H A P T E R 3

So . . . What Do I Eat?

corn—but, again, only if you’re applying it to whole foods and not to confections. Among the latter, you’d find chocolate cake, pinto beans, and pumpernickel rye in the brown category and the aforementioned raspberry Slurpee in with the sweet potatoes in the colorful one. Not to mention strawberry mousse and peach ice cream, which unless you’re making our Low-Carb Comfort Food Cookbook¹ versions of these breads and treats, would be full of those proscribed white things, sugar and flour, and would send your blood sugar and insulin through the roof. So, again, apply this simple scheme with a serving of common sense—even if it’s red or purple or plaid, if a big dose of white (sugar or flour) hides within it, consider it white!

Another patient once offered a more straightforward, but strin-gently purist guide to what to eat on a low-carb diet: If you could hunt it with a spear or gather it in the woods 20,000 years ago, you can eat it! And, indeed, if you ever have a question about what to eat to be absolutely, positively sure you’re eating a healthy low-carb meal, that scheme will never fail you. You can’t go wrong eating anything that falls into either of those categories. But there are too many deliciously wonderful foods available to us nowadays to be so restrictive, and you really don’t have to be that much of a purist to enjoy the many health benefits of going low-carb.

If you’re following a low-carb diet just to stay healthy—i.e., you don’t need to lose weight and you have no health issues, such as ele-vated cholesterol, triglycerides, blood pressure, or blood sugar that you need to correct—just eat as much as you want of the foods listed here and don’t concern yourself with amounts. If you do have correc-tions to make, follow the simple guidelines we’ve outlined in Chapter 2, Getting Ready to Go Low-Carb.

Now, let’s look at what’s cookin’ in a low-carb kitchen.

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1The Low-Carb Comfort Food Cookbook (Wiley, 2003) contains over three hundred recipes for delicious low-carb breads, pies, cakes, muffins, pasta, pizza—even fried chicken—to make going low-carb easier than ever.

In document Facultad de Derecho TRABAJO FIN DE GRADO (página 38-42)