Health & Family My low carb weight loss journal (LCHF)

In conjunction with joining @pinkboy's Biggest Loser Winter 2017 challenge, I though I would maintain a journal of my eating and activity - partly for my own benefit but hopefully other people may also find it interesting or even helpful.

First up, a bit of history to set some context.

I was always the "big kid" in most of my classes at school. Not hugely obese, but definitely overweight - and of course I got teased for it at school. I was never very sporty - but played cricket, basketball, volleyball and hockey at school. In my teenage years, my body stretched as I got taller and I became more active - having discovered rowing (and a coach who also owned the local gym), plus riding my bike to school regularly - 5km each way. By the time I finished high school, I was the fittest I'd ever been. I recall coming 3rd-to-last in the high school cross country run in year 8 and 9, but in year 11 I came 7th! That was more due to effort than skill (and the fact that most of the kids took it as an opportunity to talk with their friends), but I still recall the look on my PE teacher's face when I crossed the line so early!

Unfortunately, uni wasn't kind to me health-wise. Studying engineering and computer science - hugely long contact hours, plus the freedom of doing all of my own shopping/cooking - combined with moving to the city and so not having the sport that I was previously doing - the weight started to increase fairly quickly. Also, $4.95 all you can eat pizza at Pizza Hut restaurants on a Tuesday night with a bunch of engineers who would have competitions to see how many pieces they could eat - and how high they could make a tower of soft serve in the small dessert bowls before it collapsed. Good times.

Then later in uni I got offered a 3 month contract at Roxby Downs working for what was WMC back then at the Olympic Dam uranium/copper mine during my summer break from uni, followed by another two 3 month contracts the following year. Staying in the "single person's quarters" was basically like a huge motel - everyone got a room with an ensuite and then there was a common dining room where meals were served (included in your room rent). They employed top chefs to cook for the workers to keep them happy - so the food was good, and it was plentiful. There was not much else to do out there either!

By the time I got married (just before I finished uni), I was around 120kg. The photo on the left is me just after starting uni, the photo on the right is just before I got married 3 years later.



Over the next 5 years or so, my weight crept up over 125kg.

I think it was around 1999 that I tried the Gutbusters program for a while, which was aimed at men and based around cutting out fat from the diet and moving more (they included a pedometer in the kit). It was much more focused on waist size than weight - the argument being that belly fat (where men are more likely to store their fat) is far more indicative of health than weight - because some muscular men are quite heavy without the belly fat. I got down to around 120kg again (and 120cm waist), but wasn't really able to make more progress than this.

Around this time I was travelling a lot for work (at least 100 nights a year away from home), living out of hotel rooms and eating room service meals or at cafes. I also wasn't exercising that much - although I did spend a lot of time walking through airports! Either way, the weight started adding on again.

Photo on the left: 2004; photo on the right: 2007



With the stress that went with our diagnosis of unexplained infertility followed by the terrifying unknowns and incredibly slow bureaucracy of adoption - the weight gained more quickly. It was during this time that my weight shot up to around 140kg, I was diagnosed with hypertension (high blood pressure) and put on medication. My blood sugar levels were also all over the place - although they were still within the "acceptable" levels (ie not diabetic), I was obviously suffering from early insulin resistance - although I didn't really appreciate that at the time.

In 2008, we did a backpacking trip to South America for 6 weeks - we had been doing a lot of hiking in preparation and we did a huge amount of walking while we were there - exploring the Patagonia region plus Santiago and Buenos Aires. I lost quite a bit of weight during this time and I was feeling a lot fitter than I had in years. I got down to below 135kg at one point in this period - mostly through being much more active.

But by 2012, the weight was all back again plus more.

Photo on the left: 2008; photo on the right: 2012



In 2011 my 3yo son was getting so fast on his balance bike that I could no longer keep up with him walking - so I bought myself a mountain bike and we would go riding together. I really enjoyed riding and started taking the bike to local national parks and other mountain bike tracks around the Sydney area.

However, it seemed that it didn't matter how much or how hard I rode - it never made much difference to my weight. I later figured out that I would be eating the whole time I was riding (bananas and jam sandwiches mostly), just to keep my energy levels up - and then when I got home, I would be so incredibly hungry from expending all that effort, I would spend the rest of the day eating as well - nullifying any benefit I got from riding in the first place.

I hit my worst in early 2014 when I peaked (briefly) at around 150kg. That scared me - since I had been relatively stable at around 145kg for a few years before that. With young kids, I was more active than I had ever been, and yet I was unable to lose any weight and instead was putting it on.

In February 2014, I purchased a height adjustable desk and started working standing up - initially for short periods each day, but eventually for most of the day. Over the next 12 months, I actually lost about 10kg and got back down to 140kg. I was doing a lot more bike riding in that time too - plus my son started Little Athletics and I somehow managed to be made age manager for his group - so I was quite active with that as well.

But by mid 2015, the weight had started creeping back on again. It was May/June 2015 that I launched PropertyChat and I was working up to 16 hours a day for literally months on end getting the site and my business running. I was taking too many shortcuts with my eating and hardly getting any exercise at all.

It was in September 2015 that I watched an episode of the ABC science show Catalyst that I had recorded - Catalyst - Special Edition - Low Carb Diet: Fat or Fiction. My weight at this time was around 146kg.

From that show and the supplementary material they linked to on their website, I found the work that sports scientists were doing with nutrition and top level athletes to be fascinating and it started me doing more research into the topic. I read a lot of material by Tim Noakes, Jeff Volek, Stephen Phinney and others - and started reading through medical research papers on low carb diets and other research being done into long held dogmas around saturated fats and other aspects of dietary advice.

Through my research, I came across a website called Diet Doctor founded by a Swedish doctor, which I found to be full of very useful and sensible information - including a lot of discussion about side effects (and how to minimise them) and the downsides to low carb diets. It wasn't all hype - they weren't selling anything (there is a membership option on the site to get access to more videos and such - but it's not necessary for most of the information) - and it was based around eating real (unprocessed) food - meats and vegetables. Pretty difficult to argue with eating real food.

Based on the information I'd been reading, I decided to try some experiments myself and see what impact some basic changes to my diet had on my weight.

My early results were astounding. Just by cutting out the carbohydrates and looking to add a bit more fat to my diet, I lost nearly around 5.5kg in the first few weeks alone. That was more than any amount of bike riding had ever achieved for me.

I was down to 140kg, had already lost 5cm off my waist and thought I should start recording my progress to see how I'm progressing and putting in more effort to see what I could achieve. So in late September 2015, I started a weekly process of measuring myself (every Sunday morning before I ate anything) and I started eating a proper low carb high fat (LCHF) diet.

Based on the suggestions on the Diet Doctor website, I was aiming for no more than 50g of carbohydrates per day "moderate low carb". That's all I counted - carbs, and then I added fat (butter, cream, oil) to foods to increase satiation and reduce hunger.

I spent a lot of time reading nutrition labels in supermarkets and realised that there was probably less than 5% of products sold in the supermarket which actually qualified as real food. The hardest part was giving up Weetbix. I've been eating Weetbix for breakfast pretty much every day since before I was 5 years old ... so over 35 years of habit was difficult to break.

I cut out all junk foods, eating only dark chocolate (70%+) in moderation, stopped all soft drinks (Bundaberg Apple Cider ), flavoured milk and fruit juices, limiting myself to Lipton's Peach Iced tea only (and even then, ideally no more than a glass a day - around 250ml). These changes probably did more for me - at least initially - than anything else. Once I calculated just how much carbohydrate was in my daily eating - it was clear why I never made much progress - there was no way my body could use all that energy and so it was getting stored as fat.

Never believing I could lose that much weight - I set my initial goal of getting down below what I was when I got married. I hit 120kg after only 5 months of LCHF. My "stretch" goal was to get down below 110kg. While ideally I would have loved to get to 100kg, I thought that was asking too much - so 110kg was my target.

Here are the results showing what I achieved between September 2015 and August 2016:



My lowest reading at the end point was 109.7kg! That's over 40kg less than my worst in Feb 2014 - and 35kg of that directly attributable to changing the way I ate.

I did do quite a bit of bike riding in December 2015 and then again in January 2016 while away on holidays - but otherwise, I wasn't riding any more than I had previously. Indeed, I didn't ride at all from March to August 2016 (I record everything on Strava - so I have records of this).

So, having reached my initial goal and being delighted with what I'd achieved, I kind of eased off on how strict I was being with my eating. This lead me to plateau and for the next 6 months I kind of hovered around the 110-112kg mark. Given how much better I was feeling and looking - I was initially happy with this. When people you haven't seen for 6 months walk right past you without recognising you - that's a pretty satisfying feeling! The downside was that I had to buy a heap of new clothes - but that's a downside I'm happy to live with!!

Unfortunately though, I've become "lazy" in the last few months and so my eating hasn't been ideal. I think I've been opting for "convenience" too much (packaged / processed food) plus a bit too much junk food has crept back in. My weight crept up to around 115kg, but then jumped quite alarmingly recently to peak at 119kg.

I decided that I needed to get on top of this before it got worse, so I've decided to go "very low carb" for a few months to see if I can break through my previous plateau and make more progress. So for the past 2 weeks, I've been aiming for under 20g of carbs per day and have systematically been removing all the remaining junk foods from the house. I've got half a bottle of iced tea left - at 5.3g of carbs per 100ml, a single 250ml glass is over 13g of carbs - nearly 2/3rds of my daily allowance! So it has to go. Looks like it's soda water with a slice of lemon from now on. I'm happy that I've managed to lose over 4kg of that "lazy" weight in 2 weeks, and I've managed to get a bit of momentum happening now.

So @pinkboy's challenge has come at just the right time for me. I'm ready to get back to losing weight and I really want to get below 100kg (and more importantly, below 100cm waist!). I'll be very happy if I can get closer to 90kg!

Some more comparison photos ...

Top photo: me at my worst Feb 2014, 150kg; bottom photo: me last weekend Jun 2017, 115kg




Left photo: me when I started measuring my weight progress Sep 2015, 140kg; Right photo: me last weekend Jun 2017, 115kg. Note that's the same tshirt (tucked in at the back so it's not so baggy!) - I can only wear it around the house now because it's a bit tent-like. However, those are different shorts (several sizes smaller) - the shorts on the left wouldn't stay up now - way too big!




Finally - the "let it all hang out" shot. I don't normally stand like this - this is deliberately relaxing my core muscles to let my stomach sag. Left: Sep 2015, waist 140cm; Right Jun 2017, waist 122cm



The change looks even more impressive if I take my tshirt off - but I won't subject you all to that!!

I'm enjoying riding my bike a lot more - it's so much easier and I'm not experiencing any cardiovascular stress when riding (indeed I have to work hard to get my heart rate up). My blood pressure is good (although I'm still on medication for now - my goal is to get off that as soon as I can). My snoring was a lot better when I was down around 110kg, but having put on a bit of weight I find myself snoring a bit more now. I'm keen to lose that - because I was sleeping so much better and feeling so much more awake in the mornings when I wasn't snoring so much!

More importantly, this whole thing has given me the confidence that I know I can lose more weight - I have the right framework to succeed now and I know it works for me - I just need to put it into practice. That confidence is very liberating.

Index to my daily eating / exercise log entries:

1. Jun 5; mixed berries with cream; cauliflower base pizza; take-away roast pork with cauliflower bake
2. Jun 6; salami; Nando's Portuguese chicken skewer and tenderloins
3. Jun 7; take-away roast pork belly with cauliflower salad; wagyu beef sausages
4. Jun 8; bacon & eggs; baked garlic parmesan fish
5. Jun 9; Wagyu beef burger; take-away roast chicken with steamed vegetables
6. Jun 10; KFC original recipe chicken; Bolognaise with cheese
7. Jun 11; bacon & eggs; lemon roasted chicken with steamed cauli/broccoli and sauteed cabbage
8. Jun 12; Coffee Club mushroom ricotta and spinach omelette; chicken cauli and broccoli
9. Jun 13; take-away southern style fried chicken; restaurant steak and vegetables
10. Jun 14; take-away roast pork belly with chicken Caesar salad; oopsie burger
11. Jun 15; cheese & spinach omelette with bacon; lamb rissoles with steamed cauli/broccoli and sauteed cabbage
12. Jun 16; Wagyu beef burger; leftover hotdog meat
13. Jun 17; Oopsie bacon & egg sandwich; bolognaise with cheese
14. Jun 18; berries & cream; KFC tenders; roast pork and steam veggies
15. Jun 19; Roast pork and sauteed cabbage
16. Jun 20; take-away southern style fried chicken; garden salad
17. Jun 21; take-away roast pork belly; steak and vegetables
18. Jun 22; inside out burger; restaurant pork belly with pumpkin mash and roast pea
19. Jun 23; roast pork; bacon and cabbage
20. Jun 24; inside out burger; restaurant garlic prawns and zucchini flowers
21. Jun 25; chicken and garlic filo; beef and cauli-mash cottage pie
22. Jun 26; lamb roast with broccoli and cauli-mash
23. Jun 27; take-away southern style fried chicken; restaurant roast pork with veggies

 

Haven't read this yet (have a few things to rush off to) but the photos tell the story.

What a big difference. Well done. You must feel great.