Low Carb Vegetarian Diet?

[Thiefofalways]

Thanks so much to everyone who responded! I ultimately decided that it was too difficult to eat the high protein, low carb diet that my body seems to thrive on on a vegetarian diet, and have now started to incorporate some game meats into my diet. I'm thinking of trying a more paleolithic diet, but I'm stumped about how to go about getting game meats year-round at a reasonable cost without actually having to go out and hunt my own food...I have too much of a soft spot for animals to hunt.

[Thiefofalways]

I highly recommend reading the books "A Kind Diet" by Alicia Silverstone and "Live Raw" by Mimi Kirk. Both are based on Vegan diets and explain the importance of eliminating dairy products. People with PCOS are highly sensitive to envioronmental toxins, and additives and toxins in foods. Dairy products are very high in excess estrogen (since this is what they give dairy cows to make them produce milk) and growth horomones which can upset the balance even in people without pcos. I have been vegetarian for a while but consumed alot of dairy and sweets. I recently went vegan and feel amazing! My acne that i have been struggling with for since my teens years has almost cleared and instead of my cycle being 50 days apart, this month it was 32! It has been a total life change (so far)

Thanks for your response, is the vegan diet still working for you?

[aan]

Has anyone tried the Eat To Live nutritarian type diet by Dr. Fuhrman? It is plant based, focused on eating foods high in nutrients (lots of greens). I am wondering if it has worked for anyone?

[Joe45]

Thanks all for sharing. There is a little issue. Some of the links are not working
properly. I'm facing the problem somewhere else in the same forum.
Can you see it?
regards

[DiamondInTheRough]

For anyone truly interested in healthy recipes with non-meat protein sources, I would highly recommend a cook book called "A Taste of Lebanon." It's middle eastern food rich in beans, legumes and other grains. This book uses a lot of burghul (cracked wheat) recipes, but most can be switched out for quinoa. Many of the recipes do have meat as well, but this can be omitted if desired.

[conception_wait]

Try lentils and veggies and fruits. its really helped keep my weight down too

[leahbear]

Thrive Diet also has tons of vegan, wheat free, mostly soy free recipes. They look weird at first but you just need to try them out and have an open mind and you'll find that most of them are super yummy. My favourite are the "pizzas". They're made of either legumes and grains, or seeds/nuts and veggies with a nutritional yeast "cheese" sauce.

I've been vegetarian most of my life and I have a mild case of pcos. I've recently cut out dairy and soy and gluten. I still eat salmon about once a week, mostly because my dad is a fisherman so I get a freezer full every summer. I tried cutting out eggs to but my body felt off so I added them back in once or twice a week. Lately I've been alternating days of veggie meals and salmon or eggs and my body seems pretty happy with it. I eat a lot of soup, either with beans and veggies or a green soup with a nut burger. Quinoa salads with lots of veggies and beans, indian dishes, tacos, egg frittatas with tons of spinach and chard, lots of Thrive Diet recipes and I usually have a smoothie every day ( tons of spinach, almond milk, flax seeds, hemp seeds, hemp protein, brown rice protein, a banana, some berries, half an avocado and a bit of maple syrup ). For snacks I'll often have hummus, bean crackers, veggies or gluten-free bread and peanut butter or a smoothy. I stopped eating pasta and potatoes, and eat sweet potatoes maybe once a week. I've cut my carbs down quite a bit, but I still feel pretty healthy. I don't keep track, I just try to stay away from higher carb foods or not eat as much of them. I do a kung fu class 2 or 3 times a week and do a P90X workout on the other days so I am pretty active, but I still have plenty of energy to get through my workouts. I've been at this for about a month ( when I got diagnosed ) and want to lose another 13 to 23 pounds. After that I'll re-evaluate everything. I used to drink milk everyday and craved bread like a mad-woman. It was rough giving those things up but the cravings died off pretty quickly and I feel pretty fantastic now. I've had pcos since my period started and I'm 37 now and *finally* had a doctor figure out what was wrong with me so I feel like I need to get this under control as fast as I can.

I think with any of the healthy choices you can make to help yourself control the pcos the best thing to do is to go for it. Give it a solid try for a few months and see how your body responds. It'll let you know if it likes it or not.

[Marguerite8]

Mrs1017 or anyone else could you please explain to me why phytoestrogens can make PCOS women feel wonky? Where else is phytoestrogens found. I have recently been diagnosed with PCOS and I still can't figure out which food makes me feel worse than others - any advice will help. Thanks!

[Mrs1017]

Marguerite8, this is a link to a blog that explains many of the things to avoid. It explains it better than I could!

http://www.keeperofthehome.org/2008/...-to-avoid.html

[Indiaust]

http://www.keeperofthehome.org/2008/...-to-avoid.html

Thanks I'm newly diagnosed... This is a great list, sadly, I love soy, caffeine and sweets!

I've been vegetarian for most my life - no fish, but I do eat dairy and occasionally eggs. I think the main issue is to be a healthy vegetarian it does take some effort. When I'm feeling lazy it's all to easy to eat crap, processed foods.

Good luck!



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[Mrs1017]

Caffeine has been the kicker for me. I've gotten down to one "real" diet coke a day, but I still drink one or two caffeine free diet cokes (and I know, I know, they have all that nasty fake sugar still). I've been able to avoid the rest fairly easily, although I do still enjoy chicken nuggets from Chik Fil A or strips from Zaxbys even though they are fried on occasion because the carbs are negligible if I eat no other carbs that day.

[Indiaust]

One diet coke a day? Well done!
I'm terrible, try 4+ a day.... Shame on me....


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[DiamondInTheRough]

When I stopped drinking soda, I would occassionally make my own drink using low-sodium soda water with fresh lemon/lime (sometimes a pinch of sugar if you want it a bit sweet), or a splash of cranberry juice (really your favourite juice would do), and I found that I truly enjoyed it and wasn't missing out.

[nomad]

I'm going to echo what others have said with avoiding bread, pasta, white rice, sugar etc, and concentrating any carbs on beans and fruits etc. As a vegetarian if you are also trying to keep calorie count down, while also optimizing your protein, you'll find that in a healthy diet, you'll probably end up eating mostly beans, nuts, vegetables and fruit and the like anyway. Breads and pasta will take up too much space in the calorie count and leave you without many of the things you need, and at the end of the day you're scrambling to get your protein. Especially if you're ditching soy, which is my case, although seitan is an awesome alternative (and cheaper too).

As for dairy, I've also limited that in my diet, but for different reasons. I'm in Canada so I don't believe hormones are added to milk here, but I just wanted to be a little careful. My understanding is that the hormones are carried along with the milk fats, so non-fat dairy is a better alternative. So I do eat non-fat greek yogurt, for the protein and calcium. Goat's milk and cheese is also supposedly a better dairy alternative. Otherwise I drink rice and coconut milks, and eat Daiya cheese for everyday, salads and such.

[leahbear]

Canada is actually worse than the states for hormones in our milk. I stopped drinking milk a couple of months ago but recently started eating organic yoghurt again.