Diabetes

Thousand Island Walden Farms Salad Dressing Packets (Six 1 oz. packets). Walden Farms dressing packets - Take them anywhere you need to have a low carb salad dressing but don't want to carry a bottle.

Ranch Walden Farms Salad Dressing Packets (Six 1 oz. packets). Walden Farms dressing packets - Take them anywhere you need to have a low carb salad dressing but don't want to carry a bottle.

Italian Walden Farms Salad Dressing Packets (Six 1 oz. packets). Walden Farms dressing packets - Take them anywhere you need to have a low carb salad dressing but don't want to carry a bottle.

Honey Dijon Walden Farms Salad Dressing Packets (Six 1 oz. packets). Walden Farms dressing packets - Take them anywhere you need to have a low carb salad dressing but don't want to carry a bottle.

Creamy Bacon Walden Farms Salad Dressing Packets (Six 1 oz. packets). Walden Farms dressing packets - Take them anywhere you need to have a low carb salad dressing but don't want to carry a bottle.

CarbThin Vanilla Zero Carb Whey Protein Shake Mix 2 lb. tub

CarbThin Chocolate Zero Carb Whey Protein Shake Mix 2 lb. tub

Sweeteners are a matter of personal preference. The spectrum of opinions on this topic range from "anything is better than sugar" to "you should never eat anything sweet again". I fall more in the middle. I think a little sweet here and there can be beneficial if it keeps you on course. Keeping that in mind, I do have my favorites and not-so-favorites. Sugar alcohols tend to fall in the latter category, although I realize some are worse than others.

In the Belly Fat Cure and other low sugar diet plans, getting your sugar grams as low as possible is very important. It is also important to eliminate artificial sweeteners in your diet. This leaves only a few options, mostly stevia and sugar alcohols. While I had used sugar alcohols on Atkins years ago, I had never heard of Stevia. In the beginning I used Stevia sweeteners in lots of things, as I was getting rid of the taste of sugar. Now, though, I really only use it in my hot teas or in some iced teas when I am out. I carry a little "sweetener bag" in my purse and always have them handy!

"Morbidly Obese" Those words dangled from my medical chart like a scarlet letter. How could the doctor have used those words to describe me? Surely, the doctor made a mistake, or maybe my eyes were mistaken. Perhaps it was someone else's chart. Cautiously, I looked at the chart and read the name: April Bradford. I was only 25 years old at the time. I was mortified and shocked, but I could not deny those words staring back at me from my own chart. The walls seemed to close in around me. How did I arrive at this place? How did this happen to me?

I recently got an email from reader Karen Kosel asking exactly that; she followed up by posting me a website that said some really unpleasant things about Splenda - to be specific, that it may cause shrinkage of the thymus gland, which is part of the immune system, and may also cause enlarged liver and kidneys. For balance, they also concluded that sucralose (the chemical that makes Splenda sweet) was probably "not as toxic as aspartame".

The Atkins Diet is probably the most well known low-carb plan in existence. Dr. Robert Atkins devoted his life to teaching people about healthy living and weight loss. Despite his success with a myriad of patients, his efforts were scoffed at and deemed dangerous by so-called experts in the health field. Thankfully the medical community is starting to realize the benefits of low-carb living and are finally showing Dr. Atkins the respect he deserved while he was still alive.