LE PCOS Diet - whole grains, brown rice, high carb intake
I had an couple of interesting questions from my Custom Swayers so I decided to repost my reply out here for anyone else wondering the same thing:
Question One: I noticed that gluten free pasta had no sugar added so I was wondering if I should have that instead of whole grain pasta that has added sugar, since the LE PCOS alternate diet is meant to be done sugar free.
First of all let me just clarify that "avoiding sugar" on the alternate diet means, for like 99.8% of people, just not adding sugar to coffee and not having sweet treats. I do not want you guys to worry about the small amounts of sugar added to things like pasta sauce, salad dressing, bread, pasta, etc because that doesn't matter for the vast majority of people. Only a very small group has to avoid sugar to that extent (and you will always know if you're in that category because you'll have a history of severe PCOS and will likely gain weight even on the alternate LE Diet at low cal intake.)
Anyway, we need to look at how many CARBS does the gluten free pasta have in comparison to the whole grain. Not the sugar, the carbs. Because carbs will just act like sugar in the body anyway.
So let's compare the two. We will find the NET CARBS by subtracting the amount of fiber from the amount of carbs to come up with the net carbs, since fiber does not raise your blood sugar.
Just to give an illustration I just picked a couple products at random:
Barilla Gluten Free Rotini:
47 g carbs
3 g fiber (which is subtracted)
0 g sugar
44 g net carbs
Barilla Whole Grain Rotini
39 g carbs
7 g fiber (which is subtracted)
1 g sugar (but this is already included in the amount of carbs! we don't need to count this separately)
This ends up being a total of only 32 net carbs.
Now, this all seems very confusing and daunting, but you don't have to do all that adding and subtracting. I have already done all this research and math stuff and that's why I recommend the things I do.
The gluten free pasta is higher in carbs even without the sugar (remember, we are counting only sugar in sweet treats, not the small amounts of sugar in things to make them more palatable - very few people need to worry about those small amounts of sugar!!) Those highly refined carbs in the gluten free pasta will act like sugar in your body so we are aiming at the product with the lesser amount of carbs, regardless of the slight difference in sugar.
So unless you have gluten sensitivity, please eat the whole grain products or even the NORMAL ones, because they will still be better than the gluten free ones:
Barilla Regular Rotini
42 g carbs
2 g fiber (which is subtracted)
2 g sugar (but this is included in the amount of carbs! we don't count this separately)
Net carbs - 40 g
So the gluten free pasta has 44 g carbs even tho it has no sugar, and the regular pasta only has 40 g including sugar, and the whole grain has 32 g carbs including sugar. There is NO BENEFIT to having gluten free pasta thinking you are helping your alternate LE Diet because it has "no sugar".
Ladies, please do NOT now start going through and tracking your nutrients to see what has less carbs. That is not what I am asking you to do here. Carbs will take care of themselves on the LE Diet by staying in the limits of the day.
I am only going into all this because I was asked to compare gluten free to whole grains on the alternate diet to see which was the better option. The best option is whole grain, second best is regular. Gluten free is a distant third option even though technically it has "no sugar" and is probably best only for people who can really not tolerate gluten. I'm not trying to get you to track carbs and net carbs (in fact please don't, control freaks)! I'm simply trying to show you why gluten free is not only worse than whole wheat, but even worse than regular pasta!!
Question 2: White rice vs. Brown Rice on the alternate PCOS LE Diet?
I often allow people to use white rice when they are on the alternate diet, particularly when they're on the diet for reasons of "just in case" rather than someone with severe PCOS. The reasons for this are multiple - firstly brown rice contains phytic acid that may inhibit conception and many people are on the alt. diet to help them get pregnant. Phytic acid is a chemical in whole grains that may interfere with nutrient absorption in addition to possibly having negative effects on fertility itself. Sometimes this is desirable on the LE Diet but in other cases, particularly when fertility is marginal, people need their bodies to be absorbing all those nutrients.
The second reason is that white rice is actually less bad for blood sugar than people realize. Sure, if you sat down and ate a bowl of it with nothing else, white rice could be bad for blood sugar (nowhere near as bad as white flour and sugar, though). But people rarely do that, while they're far more likely to eat white flour stuff on its own. When you eat white rice, you're nearly always have some other stuff with it, generally containing protein and/or fat. This makes its effects on blood sugar much more moderate.
The third reason is that many people just WILL NOT EAT brown rice, and for others, it makes them have terrible diarrhea so if it's gross or upsetting people's digestion to such extent that they're not getting enough nutrients and stop ovulating, that's a bad trade. Plus, if you hate a food and every time you eat it you're experiencing active disgust, that's one of those control freaky type things that may undermine your sway. With every bite you take you're thinking of your sway, how you're doing what is necessary to make your sway work, how all this suffering will pay off when you get your girl, etc (the same applies to the whole grain pasta!) We want your sway to be as easy as possible so it becomes your lifestyle and you forget about it, rather than having to go through every day sweating bullets trying to choke down foods you hate to "earn" yourself a daughter.
To Sum UP:
I juggle a lot of things in the foods I recommend. Ideally I would say have brown rice and whole grain pasta, but enough people have had major issues with it that it's an area I feel is open for some negotiation if you just can't stand them. White rice and white pasta are really pretty ok - MUCH better than white bread and pastry are.
Me telling people to eat stuff is useless if it is stuff that people refuse to eat, and then they end up not swaying at all and giving up on diet, or so miserable all the time that they're white-knuckling their way right into a boy by turning every mealtime into a knock-down, drag-out, confrontation with themselves.
Plus, many people on the PCOS-type diet, even when eating things like white rice at times, are still eating fewer carbs than they were to start with!! Because we cut back on calories, a whole lot of people end up eating significantly fewer carbs than they were when they were eating a more blue friendly diet, even though carbs may be a higher % of their overall diet. That, coupled with the weight loss and exercise which makes the body process carbs better, means that I can be a little more tolerant of things that are less than ideal when it is something that will be more likely to make people stick with the diet overall.
Just to show you my work on all that, yet another reply to a useful question from a Custom Swayer:
Question 3: If you say I have PCOS-tendencies and want me on this diet, why are you making me eat so many carbs?
What we are finding is that a good chunk of people with all boys seem to have higher than average blood sugar. They have some underlying tendencies towards PCOS without having it full blown. So for most people, they do the standard LE Diet with the high carbs and they eat white carbs and sugar and their blood sugar goes up for a short time and then drops low. But those with tendencies towards PCOS, eat white carbs and sugar and their blood sugar doesn't drop as fast, meaning that they end up with high blood sugar for longer in the day (and this can also raise testosterone, tho we are no longer quite so convinced testosterone is doing anything for swaying)
We are getting such good results with the alternate diet that nowadays owhenever someone has an opposite or I have any reason to think they may have PCO-tendencies, even slightly, I always have them go to the alternate diet. Even if you don't need that diet, even if you have a normal insulin response and you got a boy for some other reason that had nothing to do with the standard diet, it will still sway pink, and that way I ensure that I am not missing anyone who does have some underlying PCO-tendencies (without needing to go in for expensive testing where we are not entirely sure what markers we'd be looking for anyway)
As it is now, the alternate diet is getting better results regardless. I would honestly have everyone switch to it but too many people end up losing tons of weight on it, and many many others cannot stick to it. So we carry on with both diets but I am very proactive about switching people over to the alt. diet whenever it seems even vaguely justified.
Now, let me explain more about the "high carbs sway pink, but PCOSers should cut carbs" notion. A higher proportion of your daily calorie intake coming from carbs rather than protein and fat has been shown to sway pink in animal studies. But for a good number of people, going onto the LE Diet (even the standard form) is NOT "high carbs" per se, and many people are eating fewer carbs than they were previously. To illustrate, I'll make up some numbers for you:
Blue moms tend to be big eaters and regularly consume 2500 cals a day. Let's say they ate 80 g protein and 80 g fat every day when not dieting. This ends up to be 320 cals from protein (4 cals per gram), 720 cals from fat (9 cals per gram), and they'd get the remaining 1400 cals from carbs (4 cals per gram) which is 350 g carbs. This seems like a lot but is right in the range of what is recommended by dieticians as a healthy carb intake for 2500 cal diet.
So let's say that same person now drops to 1500 cals a day. On the standard LE Diet they'd eat 40-50 g protein, 30-60 g fat, and on the alt. diet they'd eat 50-60 g protein, 50-60 g fat. I'm gonna ballpark this as 50 g protein and fat to make this easier. So this means they'd be getting 200 cals a day from protein, 450 cals from fat, and 850 cals from carbs. This ends up being 225 grams of carbs, less than they were eating before! So even though they feel like they're eating more carbs because it's a higher proportion of their overall food intake but they are really eating fewer carbs than they were to start out with. You get the benefits of the higher carb intake as a proportion of your diet for pink, and then additionally are getting the "lower nutrient intake" at the same time. Best of both worlds. And on the alternate LE Diet, you're eating even FEWER carbs because the whole grains, fruit, and veg have fiber that negates some of the carbs you eat.
I cannot go around calling the LE Diet "low fat, low protein, low carb" because if I did people would be starving themselves. But for the vast majority of people, they do end up eating less of all three. Most of the remainder of people end up eating about the same amount of carbs, lower protein and fat. (The numbers above obviously slide around depending on what a person's normal food intake is, but the principle stays the same) I have these limits set so you guys are swaying pink while still staying healthy enough to keep ovulating, and get and stay pregnant, but in many cases swayers are eating lower carb than you were when not dieting by virtue of the calorie restriction.
