Girl sway again this time doing alternate diet plus more

[atomic sagebrush]

No, it's not a red flag, what is a red flag is that you are still worrying over stuff like this.
You are completely, completely overthinking the sway diet. You aren't a diabetic, for a start. You don't even have diagnosed PCOS! Plus, you're low weight and breastfeeding, meaning you may actually NEED a bit more carbs than the average person on the alternate diet just to keep weight on and milk supply up. If you stick within the limits of the day you really cannot be getting more than the appropriate amount of carbs. (somewhere in this thread I have posted that explanation for you, using math to show how you're probably eating fewer carbs than you were before)

You can absolutely have the rice cakes. Or the wraps. Or both. People eat brown rice cakes, brown bread, brown wraps, and get good results with that. Even people with moderate to severe PCOS go onto the alternate LE Diet just the same as you are doing and have good results with it - we have seen people who have never had a regular cycle in their adult lives having regular cycles on this diet - so it just cannot be the case that you have to be so restrictive, it makes no sense and you're killing your sway trying to save it.

To explain the biology involved, if a diabetic eats a bunch of sugar and then takes a fiber supplement they will still have a very large problem on their hands. Fiber is not a fix for too many carbs; if it was, they'd give diabetics fiber instead of insulin. also, let me stress to you again that some rice cakes with 28 g net carbs is not a high carb meal in any way. Fiber can somewhat "slow down digestion" (and I use air quotes there because it's really less of a "thing" than people make it out to be, as anyone who has tried to diet by eating huge salads, oatmeal, brown rice, and bean dishes only to find themselves starving in an hour will attest) and because digestion ~may~ go slightly slower, then your blood sugar ~may~ (MAY! Depending on what else you eat!) rise slightly slower and because of the slower rise, your body starts to release insulin a little sooner, and thus your BS levels ~may~ not peak ~quite~ as high. Fiber also ~may~ help people feel full sooner and eat less at meals (again, I've found this much less of a thing than people claim). But fiber is not a magic fix for eating too many carbs, which was how your original question was phrased; if you eat a gob of empty carbs your blood sugar would rise high and fast no matter what. We take fiber for pink sways to possibly absorb some of the fat and fat soluble nutrients that may raise levels of sex hormones like estrogen and testosterone, but not because we think it has any beneficial effect on blood sugar levels.

The biggest reason, by far and away more important reason to use whole grains on the alternate LE Diet is because they simply aren't that OMG WOW type of carbs like sugar and white flour. Whole grains have complex carbs which take longer to break down - so your body handles them better even if they have the exact same amount of carbs in them as the refined products do. Additionally, whole grains have the fiber which is indigestible. Since your body can't digest it, it just moves through the digestive tract and can (just like with fiber supplements) absorb some of the fats from your diet, and additionally since they're indigestible we don't count the grams of carbs from fiber (which is why we subtract the fiber in the rice cakes) meaning that they actually have fewer carbs than they seem to.

I just used regular sugar when swaying. At that point we didn't know about having two different diets. I don't have any PCO tendencies that I know of though - my period is very regular, I have had blood sugar tests both when pregnant and not, and passed them, and while I did have a sway opposite I think that had more to do with me taking all the Ingender supplements plus prenatals with my sway. So I was probably able to handle more sugar/carbs than a person with PCO-tendencies could (I don't want anyone thinking "well atomic had sugar, that means I can too" because we're clearly seeing better results with the alternate diet than we are with the higher sugar standard one.)

Most people who use artificial sweetener probably use aspartame. Splenda is another option. I'm allergic to Splenda and I had gotten my 4th boy while using aspartame, so I didn't use any of them.

[atomic sagebrush]

Are broccoli and cauliflower completely free? Even in high doses lol I've made a creamy broccoli and cauliflower soup it has 2 whole cauliflower in it one of the Collie flowers has been blended into the base and also 2 whole broccoli. I thought I'd check since last time with the tomatoe soup you told me to count cals since it was a ton of tomatoes not just a side or few slices etc

Broccoli and cauliflower are free and unlimited, have as much as you want, no need to count them. You would need to count all the other stuff in your soup tho - milk, butter, flour, etc.

Tomatoes are different because firstly tomatoes aren't really vegetables but fruits (and technically you would count calories, but not protein and fat, it's just that there are so few calories in small amounts fresh tomatoes that we don't bother), and tomatoes have far more sugars in them than cauliflower and broccoli (because they're FRUITS not low carb veg really) and secondly because tomato sauce, paste, marinara, etc is not "just a bunch of blended up broccoli" but is highly concentrated, cooked/dehydrates so the water is boiled away, making it a lot more calorically dense than the equivalent amount of pureed broccoli would be.

[Kazzzz]

Yep i know I'm getting in my own I'm leaning towards taking this anxiety medication even just giving it a go for 6wks or something.

I really want my period to hurry up and come back I'd like to have our first attempt next month. I've reduced breastfeeding from 6 feeds in 24hrs down to 3 sometimes 4 feeds in 24hrs. Anything else i can do?

I had a beautiful breakfast this morning stir fry veges with a homemade stir fry sauce on brown rice, just thought I'd run my homemade Stir-fry sauce past you its
Soy sauce
Garlic
Ginger
Liquid sweetener
Vege stock powder
Chilly powder
Tapioca flour
I just whipped it up an was surprised how delicious it was. I added it up its only 22 cals but its 4.3 carbs is that too carby for a sause or fine once or twice a day? No added sugar in any of the ingredients I'll have to post it in the pcos chat so others can try it out its quick, easy, an super yum

[atomic sagebrush]

My point is not to beat you up over your anxiety, I'm trying to put it in perspective your worrying over these things. If you can reframe it in your mind as "this is a small thing that cannot matter, and me thinking about it so much is actually much much worse" I'm hoping it may help you to let some of it go without spending so much mental energy pondering it, if that makes sense!?

Your cycle will come back over time, cutting back on nursing is the most effective thing, but just make sure you're not starving yourself at the same time! It will be back before you know it and you can't get this time back with your nursling, so I'd just roll with that and carry on.

Yes, that sauce is fine. Please don't count carbs, it's not at all necessary. Sounds yum!!!

[Kazzzz]

Ok no counting carbs but just so i know the range of carbs i could say eat 7 slices of wholemeal bread each day and carbs would still be in the ok range so long as fat pro an cals are in check right? For my bread 7 slices would be 182. Looking at it now i think i can see how it would be hard to go over in carbs because you couldn't eat anything else. I would need to just eat bread all day lol so now i see that having some bread, some rice and some pitta breads all in the same day is fine an still ok for carb levels. Sorry thinking out loud now. I need a high carb at each meal eitger a serve of brown rice or 2 slices of wholemeal vread or 2 wholemeal pitta or whraps etc and I'm trying to tell myself thats perfectly fine. By carb i mean bready stuff or rice not high carb veg.

[Kazzzz]

I only ask because i feel like I'm eating to much since rice ab bread are so fulling and bloating they make you feel like you've eaten to much although my meals are large lol and I'm eating either bread or rice with all 3 of my meals

[Kazzzz]

This is the last time i ask about sweetener! Would you say most mums with successful girl sways and also mums currently swaying girl used/are using either aspartame or splender or no sweetner at all? I don't want to risk my sway by using a sweetener moderately but it's amazing i love it lol. I saw your post were you had your son while using a moderate amount of daily sweetner. I know there was most likely other bigger swaying things but still makes me wonder if sweetener mite sway boy if in some woman the body sees it as sugar and acts like it is. I saw online somewhere how sweetner can trick our brains into thinking its sugar because its sweet an i wonder if the body hears the same signal for sugar when your actually tasting sweetener. Yep I'm over thinking sweetener. I over think everything. I guess thats my ocd tendency at play

[atomic sagebrush]

I will repost the longer explanation I gave where I show why it's impossible to go over on carbs but long story short, if you're eating a set amount of calories, and a certain amount of those calories HAVE TO BE 50-60 g protein and fat each, you just can't be going over on carbs even if u ate nothing in addition to that pro and fat BUT rice cakes or whatever. It's just mathematically impossible.

If you are counting protein, fat, and calories and are falling in the limits, you are not eating too much.

[atomic sagebrush]

I cannot track things to that level. There are a zillion different things we might track, but the more things we track, the greater the likelihood that we'd end up with very small sample sizes with 10-12 people in them and then just one lucky or unlucky sway in those groups could make something that wasn't swaying look like it was, or vice versa. And tracking things in combination would be even more impossible. There would be no way for me to know what everyone meant when they said they had "some" or "a lot". It would only add confusion and the swaying stats are confusing enough as it is. I prefer that our statistics are very clearcut, only tracking things that are OBVIOUS yes or no and not some vague "some of this and some of that and this other thing but only on Thursday" kind of thing. They do this complicated tracking on Ingender and it simply makes their statistics complete garbage, with people saying things like "I checked the stats and I see people who wear cranberry perfume, while standing on one foot, in months with the letter R in them, while eating oysters but only oysters that had pearls in them, and they also got struck by lightning at the same time, and their husband has only one testicle, have 100% girls" even tho there were only 2 people who did that bizarre combination. Then people drive themselves insane trying to do those things! It makes no sense and I don't want to encourage anyone to fall into that mindset by tracking so many things that the truth gets drowned in a lot of meaningless detritus, you know?

To give an example, we actually kept stats on "some" and "a lot" of aspartame (and most people who do aspartame also do Splenda part of the time anyway) over my objections (since "some and a lot" have no scientific definition) and here's the result:

Aspartame - none 74
Total success: 55
Success %: 74.32%

Aspartame - a little 48
Total success: 34
Success %: 70.83%

Aspartame - some 48
Total success: 51
Success %: 73.91%

Aspartame - lots 41
Total success: 27
Success %: 65.85%

So a lot of aspartame was only 65 but then a little aspartame was 73% and then some aspartame was back down to 70% and then none was up at 75%??? This makes no SENSE, there is no trend here, if there was a trend the % would all be lined up in order of use and would make sense - less would be higher, more would be worse. But this is just random! And what does "a little" and "some" and "a lot" even MEAN??? What one person called "some" another person called "a little" and another person called "a lot". I know for a fact because somewhere on here we discussed it, that some people were answering "a little" when they were having it once a week, another said "a little" when they had 1 serving a day. And this doesn't even get into the idea that the people using aspartame vs. those who aren't, are not random groups, and are very possibly coming into swaying with different sways overall. I just can't give you these types of answers, they're impossible to know.

I already explained to you the reason why it is fine to have a safe and sane intake of artificial sweetener. It doesn't work the way you think it does with blood sugar. If you want to leave it out, that is totally fine, but if it's helping you stick with your sway, it's also totally fine.

[atomic sagebrush]

It is mathematically impossible, if you are eating in the limits of the alternate diet, that you are getting too many carbs.

Here is the explanation regarding the carbs again, from this thread (https://www.genderdreaming.com/forum...ht=gluten+free) :

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.