My top 5 low-carb recommendations

Top five Low Carb Recommendations:

Today somebody at work said they spoke to a friend at the weekend and somehow ended up that they recommended they contact me, of course I was happy to help and after they exchanged my e-mail I sent off a quick reply on the experience we have had, it made me think what are the top 5 recommendations that I would give to people trying to go onto a low carb diet:

1) Give it a month – In the first few weeks you will struggle but after that it becomes so much easier. Really I am not just saying that, I find other diets are a war of attrition and my hunger always wins but not so here.

2) Drink Broth – The additional salt makes you feel so much better and really reduces cramps.

3) Don’t eat out – Such a risky game and so much temptation. You can do it but no chips, no rice, no pasta 

etc etc

4) Cook in bulk – Low carb can be tricky because easy and quick food is hard to come by. Cook a roast at the weekend as large as possible and eat the food over the course of a week. I do the same for lunch and it makes life so much easier, if anything easier than when I was not on low-carb.  

5) Don’t cheat – It is just not worth it because of point one. You go over on the carbs and you have to go through those 2 weeks again.

As a bonus note for people that like to know what they are doing research and read.  I would start with The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living. You can learn so much and see so many extra notes to help motivate you through this process. I am not going to include things like be motivated because they are essential on all diets, you can’t be successful unless you are willing to put the effort in.

Electrolytes on low carb

I have been reading a low of books and resources on low-carb and other diets and one crucial thing to remember is that you need your electrolytes, basically this means making sure that you keep your sodium and potassium levels at a good level. 

A lot of this information is available from the awesome book, The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living (I will try and get round to a review soon). 

Firstly don't forget that sodium (mainly taken in through salt) and potassium are essential for life so you really do need to ensure that you get good level, in fact someone on a diet recently told me that they had some major problems whilst dieting after this potassium levels got too low (they were not on low-carb). 

The reason that salt, or sodium, is crucial on a low carb diet is because the reduction in carbs changes the requirements for salt in your diet. This is because a low carbohydrate diet will increase sodium excretion by the kidneys meaning that is is lost from the body and therefore needs to be replaced in the diet. A high car diet will do the opposite and causes the body to maintain more salt and therefore less is required in the diet. 

A great way round this and I am afraid I can't remember where I first saw it as it is everywhere, is to drink some broth / stock. We use a certain kind of broth, bouillon, as we find that not only does it taste pretty good but it has a good carb to salt ratio. There are some common side effects to not having enough salt which include headaches and weakness and constipation which can be a common problem on low carb anyway as you lose all the fibre from not eating foods like bread. 

Potassium is another key thing that we need to get in our diets, it is again crucial for life and the most common source is fruit. Low salt and potassium are both common causes of cramp, which when I am out running is the last thing I need. Potassium is also required for ketogenesis (the process of burning fat) and so makes it even more important on this diet. 

So how can we get Potassium in on a low-carb diet? 

Well personally I think that spinach is a great way to go. If you see the list on this link then you will probably notice that there is not a huge amount of low-carb high potassium food. Spinach is pretty good for this diet as well and I regularly have it both boiled up for dinner and just some from a bag for lunch and sometimes breakfast, it should be enough to help top up my potassium levels if nothing else. Spinach is also good for magnesium levels, see the following link for a great run down on a lot of these issues.

Ideally I think to get enough potassium you should take a supplement however you would need to take a lot of it to get up to your RDA anyway. 

So I guess if you are struggling with any of the symptoms list on various low carb pages, this could be due to a deficiency in salt or potassium levels, the answer is of course to have more of them. Just don't overdo them, so I suggest you do some research and log your levels and try to get in your RDA.

My experience:

A few weeks into this diet and I started getting cramps on my running, I started drinking the broth and straight away they eased up, to this day I still rely on it to keep my salt levels up and reduce cramping. On my recent break I wasn't able to keep my salt levels as high as I would like and although I didn't get any full blown cramp I could feel the early onset kicking in. 

And a science sodium "joke" to end on: 

 Sodium sodium sodium sodium sodium sodium sodium sodium Batman  

A few more links (ok so one): 

http://www.low-carbdiet.co.uk/potassium.htm