You will find that a lot of the low carbers here do not eat potatoes and cereals. Some do eat small portions, it just depends on your personal tolerance. Your meter is the best tool to find out what you can and cannot eat.
Hi. I'm not the best person to point you to specific books but I'm sure others will. Basically all carbs (sugar, potatoes and cereal etc) are converted to glucose in the body and that is absorbed and causes a blood sugar rise. Some of these carbs are high-GI which means they are absorbed rapidly and cause a blood sugar spike. By reducing these foods you avoid big spikes. Low-GI carbs such as lentils are absorbed slowly and make blood sugar more stable, although they still increase blood sugar if you have diabetes.
Try Trudi Deakin's Eat Fat! book - it's a good introduction to low carb diets. You should also have a good browse /read through the Low Carb section of our forum - there's lots of useful information, recipes, success stories, etc.
But here's the thing. Those are all high carb foods, and it's a low carb diet. So it's not exactly rocket science that they're excluded.
I understand what you're saying though. Cereals (grains) are the big one that most people see as very hard to completely avoid on this diet.
Let's face it, those are just so ubiquitous in our modern diet that it is initially a shock to imagine going without them. We're talking bread, rice, pasta, corn, and breakfast cereals of every kind. To many people those are the core staples which literally just about every meal is based around.
However you can go without them, and many of us are doing it. It's largely a matter of eating more low carb vegetables to replace the bulk and fibre of these foods, and more fatty cuts of meat and added fats and oils to replace the calories. It may seem hard at first, but it's not so bad once you're used to it, and it definitely works wonders with blood sugar control.
If ever I'm tempted, I can usually talk myself out of it by remembering just how bad I used to feel when I ate all that processed carbage - I feel so much better without it. Less aches and pains, less weight, less reflux, less indigestion, less IBS symptoms, no mid afternoon slump, more energy. Why would I want to go back?