Question regarding the WW Core plan...

[miaclear]

I just went to the Dr today for my high cholesterol. She suggested I go on a low fat - low carb diet for six weeks to try to get my numbers down without medication. Specifically she told me to follow the South Beach Diet...skipping the intro weeks. I've done SB before and never got farther than the intro weeks because it made me so sick.

I've done WW Flex but never the Core. I always assumed it was a low carb program. Is that the case? I'd love to be able to do this with the help of meetings.

[Hello Kitty]

Core's not really low-carb, and I can't recall what Phase2 of SBD entails, but I have followed core for over 2 years (well, not always :p) so I know what it's about.

Basically, you can eat to satisfaction:
Lean meats
FF dairy
Whole grains*
Fruit/Veg

So on the grains, you can eat an unlimited amount of crazy grains, like bulgur, oatmeal, couscous, quinoa, etc... Whole wheat pasta, brown rice, and potatoes are limited to one meal a day. So you're certainly limiting those bad, white carbs and added sugars, but you can see how you could make it not low carb, especially adding in fruits and vegs. It's absolutely low-fat, but you might want to ask your doc what kind of range of carbs you should be in, and if you can have more carbs as long as they're fibrous.

To the above, you get 35 WW points to consume as you wish for non-core things, and you can also earn activity points and eat those at the same rate.

FWIW, a lot of ladies on the WW board I frequent have seen significant improvements in their numbers, and they're also really helpful if you decide to go with core. :)

[miaclear]

Thanks. I didn't think it was necessarily low carb. It's obviously more carb friendly than my current diet which is full of breads and pastas. I never heard of a low carb diet for high cholesterol though, granted I've never really researched it.

I think I might try to follow it as a guideline.