New to Low Carb? Feeling Lost? "Paralysis by Analysis?" READ THIS.

Hey Everyone,

As promised, here’s the follow-up to my post on taking an Information Vacation from social media if you're feeling overwhelmed and panicky from confusing keto information coming at you from all sides. Since there will no doubt be loads of people new to this diet in the new year, I figured this was a good time to put this out there.

If you’re new to low carb, or maybe haven’t even started yet, this one’s for you.

If the reason you haven’t started yet is that, despite being an intelligent, grown adult, you can’t seem to make sense of the eight thousand pieces of conflicting information you’ve read about low carb and ketogenic diets, this one is definitely for you.

If you have already started, and still can’t make sense of the eight thousand pieces of conflicting information you’ve read about low carb and ketogenic diets, this is also for you.

You are not alone!

Here’s a quick list of words and phrases extracted from emails I receive from people looking for help with low carb or keto:

• Confused
• Overwhelmed
• Conflicting info
• Stalled
• Frustrated
• No idea what to do!
• Totally lost!

  

If you’re brand new to all this, I have to be honest: I don’t envy you. As I mentioned in a recent podcast interview (probably my most fun and controversial one yet), getting started with a low carb diet was much easier 17 years ago, when I first gave it a try. Back then, the internet existed, of course, but the contingent of people talking about low carb was much smaller. There were only a handful of low carb chat rooms and forums, virtually no blogs, and if I recall correctly, neither podcasts nor YouTube even existed. So there was a lot less information available to newbie low carbers, but ironically, that was a good thing. Because now, while it’s wonderful that low carb and keto have become so popular, and there are more blogs, books, Facebook groups, podcasts, and YouTube channels than anyone can keep track of, unfortunately, for every good, reliable, accurate piece of information about these ways of eating, there are four pieces of nonsense and falsehoods that have to waded through first.

Like I said, I don’t envy the newbies.  

When I was brand new to this, around the year 2000, I had two main sources of information: the bulletin boards at LowCarbFriends.com (which I’m delighted to see still exist, as I haven’t logged in in about nine years), and Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution. (Linking to the 1997 version because the one that got me started—the 1992 version, with the blue cover—is apparently no longer available.)

That’s right: the Atkins book.

Totally Overwhelmed by Conflicting Information on Low Carb or Keto? Take an Information Vacation!

Are you completely overwhelmed by information about low carb or ketogenic diets? Is your neck about to snap from the multiple times you’ve gotten whiplash from trying to follow an endless onslaught of contradictory advice on reduced carb ways of eating?

If your life revolves around weighing and measuring your food, tracking your heart rate, your sleep, your bowel movements, your workouts, the number of steps you take in a day, and more, and you’re afraid that if you let up for even one second, the entire edifice you’re propping up is going to come crashing down around you, this post is for you!

If diving down every low carb rabbit hole you find has become your main hobby, I totally understand. Perhaps, like me, you spent years doing what you thought were “all the right things” to get healthy or improve your physique. And, perhaps, like me, after years—decades, maybe—of that failing you, you discovered the world of carbohydrate reduction. And after learning nearly all the health and fitness tenets you once held dear were false, you now have a desire—no, an obsession—to learn as much as you can, as fast as you can, from as many different sources as you can. No one could blame you! You’ve got years of misinformation to correct, right? Nearly a lifetime of programming to de-program.

However.

However, if your determination to understand the relevant biochemical pathways and mechanisms even better than the people who make their living measuring the amount of insulin secreted by a mouse pancreas, or measuring the ATP synthesized by cultured neuronal mitochondria from rats, has begun to interfere with your overall quality of life—and possibly even the results you’re getting from your low carb diet, because of all the darn stress—it’s time for you to…

Cool Find Friday: DaVinci Sugar-Free Syrups

Welcome to Cool Find Friday!

This will be a series in which I introduce you to products I’ve found that make following a low-carb or ketogenic diet more tasty and pleasant. I specifically said low carb or ketogenic, and not “Paleo,” because some of the things I plan to write about will have ingredients that would make a strict Paleo eater cringe. There might be artificial sweeteners. Some of these products might have sucralose or stevia, instead of organic, non-GMO erythritol defecated by rainbow-maned unicorns. There might be gluten (*gasp!*). There might even be a bit of soybean or canola oil. (Even though I wrote this post about canola being not-so-great. What can I say? Prominent low carb & keto researcher Stephen Phinney MD, PhD, who has been conducting primary research on ketogenic diets almost longer than I have been alive, promotes canola as a good fat source in his books, and even though I don’t use much canola in my own diet, when Dr. Phinney speaks, I listen.)

If you’re looking for dietary sainthood, move along; my blog isn’t for you.

Cool Find Friday will feature food products, cooking gadgets, and maybe even some helpful websites or podcasts I stumble upon. I might also include mini-book reviews – my take on a book I’ve read, but not one detailed enough for me to make it one of my too-long full-length book reviews. *Shrug.* I dunno. It will probably evolve over time, but for now, those are the types of things I see myself covering here.