This is where I must disagree...

[serendipity8791]

With my nutritionist, that is.

She is relatively anti-carbs, even the good kind. Like, any root vegetable, in her opinion, counts towards your meal-by-meal carbs quota. Same goes with peas (now, does she mean only sweet green peas or beans and legumes as well? because those are not only full of protein but also... fibre and complex carbs!).

And your carbs quota should be 25% of your plate, or just about. Most North Americans eat about one third to half their plate in refined carbs, nevermind complex... refined. As in white pasta, white rice, white bread, peeled potatoes.

She would rather I eat fats (the good kinds, like olive oil, flaxseed oil, and so on), than carbs. Huh?

What's a future vegetarian to do? (Aside from filling up half her plate with veggies, which, believe me, she isn't adverse to. As she loves vegetables! Mmmmh... kale... *Homer Simpson gurgle*)

First, I should probably lay off the soda. I drink too much of the stuff anyway. I should reserve it for the occasions where I eat greasy fast food fare. Which should be less often than I already do anyway.

The colder weather is starting slowly but surely. This is the time of year where I start craving things like soups, stews and other hearty, slow-cooked dishes. Loads of root vegetables come into my diet at this time of year. So do mushrooms. Things flavoured with onions and garlic. And apples, lots and lots of apples. Maybe I should go with that...

Comments

[brigid]

I'm always deeply, deeply suspicious when someone advocates cutting out a huge swath of foodtypes from a diet (unless you're dealing with, say, an allergy or intolerance. If you break out in hives when you eat tree nuts, don't eat tree nuts; if you're gluten intolerant don't eat gluten. But there's a REASON to avoid those foods). Human beings are omnivores. We evolved and adapted to eat a wide range of food, and that includes root vegetables and grains and fats and sugars and meats* and plants and carbohydrates. Following a "caveman diet" or cutting out anything even remotely resembling a carb, or saying that one should never eat bread made of white flour because when you mix water and white flour together it forms glue and thus white bread will literally turn to glue and glue together your intestines sounds... faddish. And short sighted. There's a lot we still don't know about human bodies and the nutrients we need to be healthy and strong. Cutting out huge swaths of potential nutrients is just... man.

(*I'm not trying to be anti-veg*n. If you chose not to eat meat/animal products for moral reasons, that's a personal choice I'm not going to argue with.)

[serendipity8791]

The thing is, people can thrive on vegetarian diets (to me, it's not a fad, it's a lifestyle choice, I'm just really lazy with cooking and eat takeout more often than not, and chicken is very convenient for that), they just need to be well-informed on what they're supposed to be replacing the meat/animal products with. A lot of people just cut meat out, don't replace it with alternate sources of protein and iron, call themselves vegetarian, then promptly get really ill. I never felt better or healthier than when I was really focused on my diet, several months ago, and was eating a properly balanced mostly vegetarian diet during the week. As part of my transition, I was allowing myself meat (poultry and pork) on weekends and I would then feel really crappy until... well, my system got rid of it in the natural way.

As a side note, the only way I will eat meat is if it's so freaking salted I can't taste the blood and urea in it anymore (which gives it that dead animal flavour, which I loathe). As a result, I suffer from relatively bad water retension and my blood pressure was borderline for my age for awhile.

With that said, I am completely and utterly angered by the whole anti-carb movement (if there isn't a good reason to avoid them, like, oh I don't know, being diabetic, for one thing). Humans have been eating carbs as their main source of calories for ages and ages, and, yes, we've been more sendentary in the past 30-40 years than ever before in the past, so that the need for that quick burst of energy to be able to get through the day is no longer there.

[brigid]

I, personally, do best when I eat a limited amount of meat. Too much makes me sick to my stomach, too little worsens my insomnia and I feel weak and tired and anemic. My dad's been a vegetarian for something like 40 years, for moral reasons, and I know a lot of people who don't eat meat for moral (animals shouldn't suffer!) or religious (my religion forbids it, it has nothing to do with animal suffering!) reasons. If that's why you're cutting out meat, then hooray! Assuming you're being sensible about it and not just, you know, eating peanut butter and cheese and giving veggies the side eye. (Fritos! They are Vegan! Om nom nom.) But that's different from cutting out meat because meat is "bad."

The carb thing, the "white foods" thing, the no-grain-ever thing, the "sugar is inherently evil" thing, whatever. A lot of them feel like nothing more than get-thin-quick diet fads suddenly touted as healthy, healthFUL eating. Which they aren't.

[serendipity8791]

In my case, the vegetarian tendency thing is a combination of reasons. I feel overall better when I don't eat it. I find the taste atrocious unless it's overly seasoned, which can be bad for you. I'm so limited on what kinds of animal flesh I can eat (allergic to bovine meat, fish and seafood), that the rest gets really boring really fast. Ethical reasons (I do feel guilty when I eat chicken, then look at/pet my bird... *pout*), both personal and religious (An ye harm none, and all that jazz). The thing is, when I get lazy, for my own sake, I'd rather revert to relatively sensible omnivorism, than resorting to junk food vegetarianism.

As for white bread, I'm one of those weird types that find whole grain breads more flavourful then white bread (while I still enjoy its more plain flavour). So I tend to not eat much white bread, at least at home. For pasta and rice I like both regular and whole grain equally, so I tend to go with white because it cuts the cooking time down a bit. And I refuse any drink sweetened with artificial sweeteners. They taste awful, plus, the eventual effects on the body are scary. Gimme my high fructose corn syrup/sugar anytime!

[brigid]

White bread of the sort you buy at the store is naaaaaaaaasty. I am a big fan of pumpernickle. MMMMM. I'm a big fan of brown rice.

I hate dark chicken meat. It tastes like blood. I can't do it.

You're allergic to bovine meat. Do you have problems with cow milk as well?

[serendipity8791]

I like the crusty white breads better than plain sliced white bread. *nods* Pumpernickle rocks my socks! I love it to death.

Same here, I hate dark chicken meat. Ew.

I'm lactose intolerant, though I can stomach small quantities of cheese and yogurt. My symptoms with bovine meat/dairy are all digestive, I get really nauseated, and intestinal discomfort with the meat and I get bad intestinal cramping, bloating and diarrhea with the dairy. In other words, as it is, it won't kill me to inadvertently eat it, but it'll make me feel really ill.

[brigid]

If I eat too much cow meat, I get really sick and I'm also lactose intolerant. A former co-worker said that a lot of people who are both are so because of a bovine enzyme they have issues with, and that lactose intolerance is sometimes linked to steak intolerance.

I looooooove sourdough bread.

[ilthit]

Carbs help retain fat so you do lose weight if you cut off carbs, even if you eat fats. As far as I recall from popular consciousness. Carbs are a great source of energy so your body uses them instead of your fat reserves, but... your body will use anything rather than your fat reserves. It likes your fat reserves. It wants to keep them for a rainy day.

However, if you're into nutrition to eat healthily rather than to get thinner, then I think you're on the right track.

Shoot, I forgot your lentil soup recipe again. :(