I’ve noticed a trend among the e-mails I have been receiving lately. It looks like people are trying to get back to the basics of their low-carb lifestyle and ask questions that most of us long-term low-carbers are already familiar with. That’s okay because I realize there are a bunch of new people who are livin’ la vida low-carb in 2007.

You’ll never see me complain about answering one of these elementary low-carb questions because it means there are likely hundreds or even thousands more people who have the exact same question. So, in the interest of continuing the education about low-carb living, I’d like to share with you a short, but extremely good question about low-carb.

Here’s the e-mail from my reader:

I love doing low-carb and it totally works for me, but I have a problem–horrible debilitating leg spasms. Have you every heard of this?

Have I ever HEARD of this? Oh yeah you bet I have and you can read my recommended solution to this common low-carb side effect by clicking here.

I received a perplexing e-mail from a reader this week who claims to be on a high-protein diet and having a certain strange side effect from it. Here’s what she wrote:

“Hello there. Congrats on your weight loss success. I have a question for you. I am doing the high protein diet but I am ALWAYS hungry and eat all the time. I eat all protein and A LOT of it. Was it the same for you? How can I fix this? I feel like at this rate I will gain weight not lose it.”

Sound familiar anyone? It simply amazes me how people can claim to be livin’ la vida low-carb and be in CONSTANT hunger. This is one of the major reasons why low-fat and low-calorie diets fail, not the low-carb ones people. The key difference between those failed diet plans and livin’ la vida low-carb is the satiety factor. Satiety equals NO HUNGER!

In fact, studies have shown satiety, or the ability to be satisfied after eating, to be the secret to low-carb diets and why they work so well for so many people. I was absolutely miserable in 1999 when I was on my low-fat diet and I could not keep it up despite losing a lot of weight. Why? H-U-N-G-E-R!!!

But what’s with this hungry thing on low-carb, hmm? I have to be honest with you and say that just totally baffles me because it has not been my experience on low-fat. Ask my wife Christine, I do NOT like feeling hungry. It’s one reason I started livin’ la vida low-carb in the first place. Actually, I previously blogged about how waiting for hunger is awful and it’s so true!

Being the ever-so-curious (okay, I’m nosy!) person that I am, I just had to ask my hungry, protein-eating dieting reader to share with me what she eats on her “high-protein diet.” The answers she provide were quite illuminating.

Click here to see the list of “high-protein” foods this reader has been eating that have been keeping her hungry all the time and what she needs to change about her diet to get rid of the hunger for good.

The energetic, beautiful, and talented Connie Bennett!

Back by popular demand is bestselling author Connie Bennett from the SUGAR SHOCK! blog guest blogging at the “Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb” blog with more information about the subject of hypoglycemia which you may find quite the eye-opener, especially if you or a loved one suffers from any of these nasty symptoms. Remember to leave your comments for Connie and she will respond to you at my blog. ENJOY!

Click here to read Connie’s message for you today!

My blog post from last Friday about the nutritionist who wrote the educational materials for the South Carolina “Shrinkdown” event where literally thousands of people in my home state are seeking to lose weight and get healthy caused quite a stir, primarily among the family members of the author of the nutritional information being distributed to the participants.

A nutritionist from Furman University in Greenville, SC named Kelly Frazier unfortunately took my criticisms of her anti-low-carb viewpoints as exhibiting “hostility” towards her and she believed all I did was “bash” her personally. Of course, that’s not true since my comments were directed at the substance of the “Healthy Living Guide” worksheets she authored as dietary truth about carbohydrates. None of my comments were about her as a person.

It also led her two sisters–Paula and Julie Anne–to post similar comments that I should not “bash” Kelly and explaining how everyone knows just how unhealthy livin’ la vida low-carb is. Yadda yadda yadda! We’ve heard that so many times before while refuting it point-by-point here at my blog ad nauseam.

Even still, I’m willing to defend what I believe even when the tough questions are asked of me by people like Kelly who wonder how I can support such a paradoxical nutritional approach that is in the minority of support among the so-called health establishment these days. Just because we don’t conform doesn’t mean we’re wrong!

Nevertheless, although Kelly originally expressed to me the “pain” she felt from my original post, she was very open and willing to share her genuine questions about the low-carb lifestyle and was interested in hearing my responses back to each of them. I was happy to offer those answers and provide Kelly with feedback to help her understand where we are coming from as low-carb advocates.

I applaud Kelly’s willingness to exchange ideas about this subject and I am proud of her for having the courage to do it when so many other nutritionists and dietitians would simply ignore whatever a low-carb supporter would have to say. That says a lot about her character and I’m honored she would at least listen to what I have to say. THANK YOU, Kelly!

I’d like to give a special thanks to my low-carb blogging friend Regina Wilshire from the “Weight Of The Evidence” blog for assisting me with answering some of these questions from Kelly. I include links to previous posts I have written at my blog that are relevant to each question as well to give context to my answers.

Click here to see the questions nutritionist Kelly Frazier asked about the low-carb lifestyle along with my responses to each one.

Two years after losing 180 pounds, my loose skin still haunts me

It’s been over two years now since I lost the majority of my 190 pounds and my loose skin problem hasn’t gotten any better as everyone claimed it would if you would “just give it some time.” In fact, it looks like the problem has gotten even worse! MUCH WORSE!

I’ve blogged about this issue in the past:
- “Indiana Reporter Left Hanging After Weight Loss, Too”
- “Dealing With Excess, Loose Skin After Weight Loss”
- “Is There Loose Skin After Atkins Weight Loss?”

I’m still eating low-carb since this has become my permanent way of life and my body fat percentage has continued to drop down from over half when I used to weigh 410 pounds. I’ve even made reducing my body fat one of my goals for 2007. Nevertheless, now that I’m 220 pounds, I want to LOOK like I am 220 pounds. The fact is I don’t like what I see every single time I look in that mirror.

Click here to see more pictures of my loose skin in my stomach and thighs and why I believe skin removal surgery is the ONLY way I’ll ever be able to look at myself like everyone else sees me now.

Weight loss is indeed a powerful thing that can transform your life forever for the better in more ways than most people even realize. Besides the obvious things like being able to move around better, feeling more confident about yourself, and just plain looking good, there are some other fringe benefits to losing weight that most people don’t really think about too much.

A friend to this blog and Director of Nutrition Information at Atkins Health & Medical Information Services Jackie Eberstein wrote in this Glee Magazine article about how weight loss can actually lead to better sex. You heard me right! Wanna spice up your love life? Then start shedding them pounds!

And it stands to reason, too. After highlighting this Duke research study last year that found skinnier sex is better than fat sex, I shared a few comments about how my 180+ pound weight loss on the Atkins diet has improved that area of my life so much more than I could have ever imagined. It’s amazing how being overweight can harm you like that, but it really does.

Click here to read more about how a little work towards losing weight now can produce an incredible turnaround in your love life sooner than you think.

Are you consuming a lot of bacon and not losing weight?

Courtesy of our friends over at The Weight Loss Daily Blog, I learned something new about the food that most people erroneously stereotype as the staple of livin’ la vida low-carb: BACON!

Although the idea that those of us who are on a low-carb diet sit around all day snacking on bacon, eggs and cheese is completely untrue, the popular perception by most uneducated people about this way of eating is that you should eat that way. That’s why the people who go on their own version of “the Atkins diet” are robbing themselves of the right way to do low-carb.

Because it seems the nitrates and nitrites that are added to bacon as a way to help preserve their color and protect against the growth of bacteria is actually the culprit in the added risk of cancer and those dreaded weight loss stalls.

Read more about how eating bacon could possibly be keeping you from losing weight on your low-carb lifestyle and that consuming lots of cured meats could be putting you at risk for cancer by clicking here.

Vee Jefferson should be feeling mighty proud of herself right about now.

In the two years I have been writing about low-carb diet and health, never has anything caused more anger and disgust from my readers than this Augusta Free Press article about the low-carb lifestyle. I quite literally received a link to this article from nearly a hundred different people begging me to respond.

When I saw it earlier this week, my first reaction was to ignore it and move on. But the more I thought about it and the more people who kept telling me about it, I changed my mind and decided to confront Jefferson’s thoughtless column directly.

As a registered nurse for the past decade, she has been sharing others her wealth of wisdom about health. I think her patients should demand a refund of their money for her health advice because this woman is clearly delusional about diet and nutrition.

In her column entitled “Low-carb diets – some dangerous truths uncovered,” Jefferson immediately laid the groundwork for her attack against the low-carb lifestyle by declaring it as “a very unhealthy way to lose weight.” She adds that it is “dangerous” for reasons that go far beyond the high-fat content and added calories.

Here are just a few of her LESS inflammatory comments about low-carb:

“These are the diets that can kill if the dieter is not familiar with the dangers.”

“One thing I really want the person considering doing a low-carb diet to understand is how dangerous a muscle cramp can be. Your heart is a muscle! And what do you think happens if your heart starts to cramp?”

“If you do insist on starting on a low-carb diet, make sure you take a break from it at least every two weeks, by resuming a normal, healthy carbohydrate intake.”

GOOD GRIEF, somebody get this woman a valium or something! Click here for my personal response to each of these asinine charges by Jefferson as well as many others she brought up in what has got to be described as the most vicious hack job against the low-carb lifestyle ever!

Have you been caught low-carbing and driving yet?

This is going to sound like a joke to you, but it’s dead serious. If you are on the low-carb lifestyle, then you very well could fail a breathalyzer test administered to you by a police officer to test your blood alcohol content even if you haven’t drunk a single drop of alcohol at all!

Find out how this can happen and why this is a unique experience for people on a low-carb diet by clicking here.

One of the major criticisms of the Atkins/low-carb lifestyle is that it makes you feel sick like you have the flu. Headaches, body aches, shivers, cold sweating, dizziness, nausea and more! Who wants to go through all of this just to lose weight?

Well, that’s the topic of Atkins weight loss success story Kent Altena’s latest video entitled “Induction Flu: Signs of Problems or Progress?”

If you feel sick when you start the low-carb lifestyle, then that is a VERY GOOD thing. You WANT to get the Atkins flu because it means your body is transitioning from carb-burning to stored fat-burning. WOO HOO!

bq. Other than the first few days or weeks, low-carb is not that bad. But you will go through the pain up front, so BE READY FOR IT! Don’t let it knock you off course because this is arguably the most important part of livin’ la vida low-carb you will go through. Be tough and make it through. You WILL survive and be successful on the Atkins diet if you simply persevere in the early days.

Click here to watch Kent’s video and to learn more about what is arguably the most unpleasant part of going on a low-carb diet.