Over the past few days as I’ve read & researched more, & also engaged in discussion on a couple of email lists, it’s become quite clear to me that there’s a vast difference between the health results in various low-carb diets, or in what individuals are doing with them. And I’m planning to learn more about this.
At this point, I am still more interested, for myself, not in a “high” protein diet but in a “higher” protein diet — changing my ratio from more or less 50% carb/20% protein to 40%/30%, with the other 30% taken up by as-healthy-as-possible fats. But even if I never make a choice for low carb/high protein myself, I do want to learn more about it not only for my own knowledge, but also so that I can be well-informed in talking with other people about that kind of diet.
This might just be a case of what fits one person might not fit another. But I think I and some of my correspondents are pretty well agreed about the importance of choosing good quality carbs, good quality proteins, good quality fats no matter what proportions one eats them in. Given other differences between my & my correspondents — whether one is diabetic or not, or other health issues, or even just things having to do with self-knowledge or different food preferences — we are going to be led to make different dietary choices.
One of the concerns I have with the “insulin-resistance” diet I mentioned yesterday, which goes by the carb-protein linking idea (eat 7 grams of protein with every 14 grams of carbs, based on reader comments at Amazon), is that it doesn’t seem to distinguish very strongly if at all between refined fast foods & organic & whole foods. But even with the diet author’s failure to do make that distinguishment, I still can, & will.
I am satisfied to lose weight at a slow rate through a diet that I think I can retain indefinitely (i.e., the rest of my life), which I don’t think I could do with a low carb diet, just because I have never been by preference a big meat eater. There are in fact some times of my life where I might have practically been a vegetarian by default, simply becuase of how little meat I ate. But I do like chicken a lot, & I enjoy turkey, the occasional beef steak, bison meat (much more tender than beef, in my experience)…
Oh, and fish! Salmon, sometimes halibut. And kippers has long been one of my favorite snacks. How lucky for me that they have all those nice Omega-3 fatty acids too!
