"AWOL Wallaby" would make a great band name.

Indeed

"AWOL Wallaby" would make a great band name.

It definitely rolls off the tongue.

What are the most interesting band names that you've seen?

In Ohio I know there were Hootie McBoob & the Inflatable Dates and Lt. Dan's New Legs.

I stress eat a lot and I can't make myself stop.

Eliminating sugar and simple carbs is the only thing that has ever made me stop doing that.

I I'm about to launch a big purge now that I can eat food again. Next time I'm transitioning back to a maintenance diet instead of a weight loss one I'm going to see what happens if I have some sugar but completely eliminate HFCS.

Upon what do you base this?

The American Heart Association and American Medical Association being "highly skeptical" of the Atkins diet for its focus on a high protein, high fat diet that strains the heart, liver, and kidneys. It is a "gimic" diet that works in the short term by reducing calories, but in the long term can be damaging. My father has had two heart attacks and his cardiologist is quite adamant about cutting out red meat altogether--not just for someone who has already had a heart attach, but for anyone who wants to keep a healthy heart for a long life and isn't in a dire survival situation where eating large mammals is the only available source of nutrition.

The healthiest approach to long term weight loss is to cut out processed and refined foods. That takes out sugar and most "white" foods with negligable nutritional value and high caloric content.

OMG! Cordelia just gave birth to Zöe!!!!

(yes the Angel Marathon continues... haven't done much of anything else today. This show is really good!)

OK, what is "white" food?

My father has had two heart attacks and his cardiologist is quite adamant about cutting out red meat altogether--not just for someone who has already had a heart attach, but for anyone who wants to keep a healthy heart for a long life and isn't in a dire survival situation where eating large mammals is the only available source of nutrition.

That seems every bit as extreme.

I can see "limit it seriously" or "eliminate if you have cardiac problems" but "no red meat ever for anyone regardless"?

Okay, thanks for answering.

Based on what I've read so far, the research doesn't support the stance of the AHA or the AMA - I know that this sounds rather outrageous, but this guy devotes the first third of a 600 page book detailing the research upon which the AHA and AMA base their contention and pointing out the rather startling flaws, contradictory data and subjectivity in their reasoning. It's rather shocking reading, and I'd definitely recommend it. Before reading this I wouldn't have considered the Atkins approach seriously - cutting back on my carbs, yes, because I'd realised that there was something fucked up about my relationship with carbs - but I wouldn't have taken this high protein/fat thing seriously.

I'd definitely recommend this book, erin, if you're at all interested (even if only to read and disagree with). Good Calories, Bad Calories it's called.

I hope that this doesn't come across as insensitive or arrogant - I understand that with your father's health involved you will probably feel strongly about this, and I sincerely don't mean to make light of that. (fwiw, my own father came within a hair's breadth of dying from a massive coronary arrest when I was sixteen, and his health remains a worry - this actually makes me all the more interested in reading both sides of the argument.) Before reading this, I was under the impression that Atkins was an unhealthy gimmick diet, and that if it worked, it did as much damage as it did good. But there is a hell of a lot of compelling and substantiated argument in this book which is persuading me that this isn't the case.

Again, I hope I haven't given offense.

The healthiest approach to long term weight loss is to cut out processed and refined foods. That takes out sugar and most "white" foods with negligable nutritional value and high caloric content.

On this, at any rate, we agree!

OK, what is "white" food?

Food that is white. Literally. It's mostly highly refined and bleached grains - white rice, white flour, white sugar....and yummy yummy potatoes. There are, of course, excepts (jicama comes to mind as something that is white and not entirely devoid of nutritional content) but as a general rule of thumb anything "white" is gonna spike your blood sugar and cause a crash later, and you're better off going for the non-white alternative. Brown rice, whole grain flours, honey.

Generally, i trust doctors and nutritionists over anyone writing a diet book. Everyone has an agenda, and someone whose agenda is to sell their book...well, i don't really trust nutritional information from that source. But more power to you for doing research!