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

I'm now more of the opinion that weight management is 100% about what you eat - not about exercise. Exercise is for health - not for weight control.

Eat to lose weight. Exercise to stay healthy.

I've found that the more I exercised, the more I gained weight.

Sure, it is possible to exercise your way to a lower weight - but it isn't sustainable. Look at all the biggest loser TV shows where the majority of participants who lose significant amounts of weight after being flogged by personal trainers - gain it right back again once they leave.

More the point - if you are already obese, you generally can't exercise enough to burn the fat without starving yourself at the same time. And starvation isn't sustainable either.

To be clear - I do NOT believe in counting calories. All of the reading I've done indicates that the calorie deficit model is an overly simplistic view and unsustainable by the majority of the population. Yes, some people can make it work - but it's not easy, otherwise we wouldn't have so many people failing at their diets.

Everything I've read in recent research - matched with my own personal experience - indicates that hormones (specifically, insulin) is primarily responsible for what happens in the body when you eat.

Just look at the different types of sugar (glucose, sucrose, fructose, lactose, etc) - they are all metabolised differently in the body. Some go straight to the muscles. Others get converted to fat. Some use water to do their thing (and hence can act to dehydrate the body).

The biggest issue is that everyone's insulin response to food is different. Some people have a naturally high metabolism and can eat and eat and never develop insulin resistance or put on excess weight. Other people can put on weight just by looking at a donut - so it seems.

This means that you generally can't give two people exactly the same food and expect exactly the same response.

Take diet Coke - it has zero calories. But drinking it leads to cravings in some people, while in others it easily satisfies their craving for sweetness. It the calorie model were all there was to it, you wouldn't get different responses to the same calorie-less drink.

I've read case studies where people were eating a low carb diet, but not losing weight. Investigating further, they were drinking a lot of diet drinks - which, despite being sugar-free - were causing an insulin response (and thus the side effects that go along with that, such as craving food)! The exact cause of this wasn't known - but it has been documented often enough to be a very interesting phenomenon.

In my case, I count carbs - but only to the point of learning how much of things I can eat and what types of foods. I count nothing else. Not calories, not fat, nothing - only carbs.

If a food has no carbs - I'll eat as much of it as I want. No restriction.

The ONLY trick is that you need to learn to listen to your body. Let your body tell you when to stop. If you're not hungry. Don't eat. It's as simple as that. If you are still hungry after eating - then you should eat more fat.

I can have as much fat as I want in my diet - the more the better. However - the catch here is that you CAN'T eat as much fat as you want. You'll feel over-full, possibly even sick. You won't want to eat more.

I sometimes have smoothies made with frozen mixed berries from the supermarket, pure cream and milk. I know if I put too much cream in it (more than about 50ml), I'll start to feel it in my gut - after just a few mouthfulls, I'll feel like I've eaten a large meal. That's the fat acting. It's self-limiting.

Same if I put too much butter in when cooking eggs. I feel it. So I've learned to regulate how much I have by listening to my body.

Some people advocate intermittent fasting. I ended up doing this unintentionally before I even knew it was a thing. If I wasn't hungry - I wouldn't eat and so I would end up skipping meals. I rarely eat breakfast now (after 20+ years of being too scared to leave the house without a bowl of weetbix because I knew I'd be ravenous by mid-morning) - because I just don't need it.

I can get up in the morning, eat nothing, then go for a 2 hour bike ride at medium-to-high intensity at lunchtime, and then come home - and still feel like I don't really need to eat lunch. That's because my body is now adapted to burning fat for fuel, not carbs - and I carry plenty of that fuel with me.

Insulin changes how our body reacts to food stimuli. The most scary thing I've learned after having lost all this weight (I didn't understand this at the time - only after losing the weight) - was that when I was insulin resistant, the feeling I used to get from being over-full (as in, gorged yourself on food you shouldn't have eaten) is alarmingly similar to the sensation of being ravenously hungry.

Think about that. You've already eaten too much. And your body is giving you a signal which is very similar to the one that says "you've got to eat more".

What's more, I never got genuinely hungry because if I didn't eat regularly, I would get hypoglycemic (sugar low) and would HAVE to eat. The effect of insulin in my blood was telling me that I had to eat - and so I did.

I didn't realise this until I lost weight and started experiencing genuine hunger pains for the first time in a very very long time. I'm talking about the tummy rumbling, ache that you get from a very empty stomach. I realised that I simply had not experienced that sensation in about 20 years!!!!

So it was all like "hello - this is new! Oh wait - I know what this is. This is my stomach rumbling because it is actually empty and needing food. Wow - I had forgotten it could do that."

Yes, vegetables and meat are what I eat. Almost no fruit (the exception being a few berries occasionally). I avoid starchy foods like potatoes and high carb veggies like peas (which are actually legumes rather than veggies anyway). Nuts in moderation for snacking. I have lots of cheese, cream and butter - but I'm cutting back on the amount of milk I have (because even whole milk has over 5g of carbs per 100ml).

Interestingly, previously I would always look for the largest cut of meat I could get - I would devour a 400g steak, plus chips or potato and still be looking for more. Now, I can't eat that much. I buy a 180g steak and share it with my kids.

The LCHF diet I'm eating is a "moderate" protein diet - they don't recommend eating large amounts of protein.

 

Thanks!

It was kind of fun at Christmas time 2015, catching up with all the relatives back in South Australia. I had lost around 28kg at that point - which just happened to be around about how much my 7 year old son weighed.

So I was able to point to my son (who is very solid / muscled - not a lightweight!) and explain to people that I've been carrying the equivalent of a 7yo boy in excess fat around, and now I've lost it. When you put it in that perspective, it's even more astonishing to me!

Based on the (flawed IMO) BMI model, the upper end of my ideal weight range is 86kg. If I was to get down to that, I would have lost 64kg in total. That's the equivalent of one skater

 

I've never enjoyed running. Couldn't think of anything worse. Maybe I might start to enjoy it more once I'm down below 90kg, but for now I'll stick to my bike.

My son is getting strong enough to start riding off road with me - looking forward to taking him on some of my favourite MTB trails.

 

Yes and yes.

We do lots of leftovers. Quite a few dishes we cook more than we need and then have it the next day for lunch and then freeze any remainder for later.

It's easier if you work from home - but so long as you've got a fridge and microwave available, you can do most things.

There's a few meals we were already cooking which were easily converted to low carb (drop the potatoes or substitute with cauli mash etc). Interestingly, our kids never really like potato that much (other than occasionally deciding they like roast potato - and of course, hot chips) ... so simply leaving them out of the meals hasn't had any real impact.

My wife will sometimes roast some potato, pumpkin and sweet potato which she and the kids will eat - I just skip that stuff.

It largely comes down to finding some new recipes which you both like which also happen to be either low carb, or easily split. For example pasta + bolognaise ... you can just leave the pasta out, or else use a low carb pasta substitute. I'm quite happy to eat my bolognaise sauce (which has a lot of veggies in it) with just a heap of grated tasty cheese on top ... don't miss the pasta at all. I use "regular" beef mince which has a higher fat content, plus the cheese on top helps with fat content too.

That's probably the most difficult part of changing the way you eat - finding new favourite dishes. But that can also be exciting as well - gives you a reason to get out of the rut of eating the same boring stuff all the time and try new things (which is always difficult when you've got kids).

 

Funnily enough, I challenged my 5yo daughter to an arm wrestle a few months back - because her arms are short, I had to stretch out my arm to quite a low angle so I could hold her hand. But the angle was such that when she put any real pressure on my hand, it was really painful in my shoulder - so I almost didn't win!

Absolutely - my kids comment quite a bit about it. I think they're pretty proud of what I've achieved.

 

Nope - I don't work on ratios, I'm working on a very simple absolute daily carb limit.

Previously I was doing 50g of carbs per day max ("moderate LCFH"), now I'm doing 20g of carbs per day max (strict LCHF) to try and break through this plateau.

Under 20g is generally ketogenic, which isn't actually necessary for weight loss - but certainly helps.

Once I reach my target weight, I'll revert back to 50g a day, which gives me a bit more flexibility in what I eat (but still preferring unprocessed slower carbs).

If I eventually get to the point where I've reached my target weight and am a lot more active I may find that 50g isn't enough for me - or I'm still losing weight when I don't want to, then I'll go "liberal low carb" at around 50-100g per day (or more if I have to).

More info: How Low Carb is LCHF? - Diet Doctor

So sorry, can't help with app suggestions. I tend to rely on data I find on various (Australian) websites about nutrition data - but I also have a growing database of info that I've gathered myself from product websites and from the info on products themselves (I take photos of products and their nutritional information in the supermarket so I can refer to them later!)

 

I didn't get the whole "Fructose Friendly" stuff on their website? Are they promoting fructose? Or saying it's got less fructose?

While most of their dishes look fine from an ingredient point of view (some are a bit too high in carbs - but that's okay, most aren't) ... the majority of dishes I looked at are simply way too low in fat for my needs. I would be hungry again soon after eating them.

That's not unexpected - most people are looking for lower fat meals, but that's not what I need.

 

Yup, there's a lot of misinformation out there - as well as dogma dressed up as nutritional advice.

I like the "you need to eat 6 meals a day to keep your metabolism high" one

That's fine if it works for some people - but I know what works for me.

 

Pretty much.

A few berries and nuts. No other fruit (I miss bananas the most - looking forward to adding them back in when I'm at target weight and more active).

Lots of cheese, eggs and vegetables.

Actually, I wonder if the second level should be swapped with the third level - I'm not eating anywhere near as much protein as I used to. Probably still does account for a large part of what I eat, but not sure whether it's more or less than the cheese, eggs and vegetables.

And yes, lots of fats and oils ... but again, it's not more than the previous levels.

Unless they're not actually trying to tell you how much you should be eating.

Not sure the food pyramid model really works with LCFH anyway.

That's what this thread is about - I intend to document everything I eat for the next 10 weeks so you can see how it works for me.

 

Water is good.

Interestingly, one of the side effects (symptoms actually!) of being insulin resistant is that you're always thirsty. So for years I've never had a problem drinking enough water - I would always crave it.

But now that I'm no longer insulin resistant I find that I'm not drinking anywhere near enough water. I'm having to force myself to drink more. It's not as if I'm having other stuff instead - I don't drink tea or coffee or alcohol or soft drink or juice or milk - other than occasionally I'll have milk in a smoothie (but I've cut that out for now).

Water is very important to keeping the body operating properly - especially the digestive system - so I'm having to relearn new habits.

And yes, it can help satisfy hunger cravings for a short period. It doesn't last though!

 

No! This is the whole point. The vast majority of diets don't work because they do require amazing will power to work - and most people can't sustain that and so fall off the wagon.

This is one of the reasons why LCHF works so well. Because of the "high fat" component, you are never really that hungry.

Let me tell you from personal experience that it is much MUCH easier to say no to junk when you aren't actually hungry! You don't need to grab a snack "just in case" because you know that even if you do get pretty hungry - your body is adapted to burning fat for fuel rather than carbs ... and so you can actually go quite a long time without eating at all.

This was one of the most eye opening things I learned - once I gained the understanding that I didn't need to eat - I had far more confidence that I could say no. It's quite liberating really.

There was a transition period when I first started - where I snacked on small amounts of nuts (unsalted mixed nuts) and on cubes of cheese.

But that only lasted a few weeks until I started to become fat adapted and was burning body fat for fuel. Fat not only adds flavour to food, it also satiates you - makes you feel full and satisfied.

This is the key to LCHF.

1. cut carbs
2. eat whole foods - avoid processed foods and additives
3. add fat to satiate so you no longer feel hungry
4. only eat when hungry
5. the body will burn fat for fuel

So I'm rarely hungry - most days I skip breakfast and only eat 2 meals with no snacks in between. Some days I'll only eat one meal. If I'm hungry it means I haven't had enough fat.

There is a transition period while your body adapts to burning fat for fuel rather than carbs - and some people experience lethargy during this period - but it generally passes.

But generally no - I didn't feel tired from eating less. My body is adapted to burning fat, so it always has an ample store to draw on. I was literally riding up mountains after eating no breakfast - my body will just use my body fat.

What's more, it's the insulin resistance that has a much larger impact on feeling tired. Because your body releases insulin when you eat - food which is high in carbohydrate will cause a spike in insulin. Insulin puts the body to work to deal with sugar in the blood stream. This then causes a rapid drop in sugar levels which is what makes you tired. All you want to do is lie down and sleep. It's called a "sugar crash". You'll see this happen in kids - especially after a birthday party!

So I actually feel much more awake than I did before - I used to regularly have a nap in the early afternoon (sometimes as little as 15 minutes, sometimes over an hour!). But I rarely need that these days (depending on how much sleep I get - daughter has bad eczema and so keeps us awake most nights).

This is one thing I've learned in my research. Sleep is incredibly important. It's when the body gets to repair itself. People who don't get enough sleep are generally less healthy, more prone to illness - and even in elite athletes, recovering from an intense workout or a competition will take longer if you don't get enough sleep.

So when you're obese and you snore and possibly suffer from sleep apnea - then you aren't getting a proper night sleep. That plus the insulin resistance leading to tiredness during the day - makes you feel pretty crappy most of the time.

Since losing the weight, I am sleeping a lot more soundly and feeling more rested in the morning. I'm even getting up an hour and a half earlier than I was before - so that I can get some more work done before it's time to get the kids ready for school.

I think lack of sleep is both a symptom and a cause of weight issues - which makes it even more troublesome because it can become a bit of a vicious cycle.

 

Okay - the whole point of this thread was actually to document what I'm eating.

So today, I ate the following:

Breakfast (mid-morning): 100g of Coles frozen mixed berries (raspberry, blackberry, blueberry) with 50ml of pure cream (whipped). Approx 14g carbs total.

Silly me forgot to zap the berried in the microwave before I put the cream on top - so I had to let them sit for 15 minutes before I could start eating them!

Lots of carbs in those berries - too many blueberries in the Coles mix - I prefer the Woolies mix which has strawberries and proportionately less blueberries.

Lunch: leftover cauliflower base pizza (cauliflower, pizza cheese, eggs, tinned tomato, pepperoni, cabanossi). Approx 7g of carbs total.



That's what it looked like when it was first cooked - about 10" diameter. I ate about half of that for lunch.

I also had a glass of Lipton's Peach Iced tea, which adds 13g of carbs to the total. I've probably got 2 glasses left in the bottle and I'm not replacing it, so once it's gone, it's gone.

Dinner: (takeaway) Roast pork with cauliflower and gravy. Approx 3g of carbs total. Yum.

Total for the day: 37g carbs

Not great considering I was aiming for 20g. I wouldn't normally eat breakfast - but I think the cauliflower pizza we ate last night wasn't quite ***** enough for me - leaving me a bit more hungry than usual in the morning. It was the first time I'd made it, so still perfecting the recipe. So 3 meals for the day plus iced tea. Would have been a more respectable 24g of carbs without the iced tea.

I think it might help if I take photos of everything so people can visualise portion sizes.

(edit - forgot to add in the exercise)

Exercise: none. Walked the kids across the road to the bus stop before school and then went back to collect them again after school. Took daughter to soccer training in the afternoon, but spent the time on the sidelines helping my son with his homework. Otherwise, it was a busy day in the office

 

Yes. Lots. My biggest weaknesses are icecream and hot chips. I also love pizza - but I'm trying a new cauliflower pizza base recipe which may keep me satisfied.

Bread is convenient (and nice when very fresh!) - and probably what I have the most that I shouldn't given how many carbs there are in it. I do sneak in some Helga's Lower Carb bread occasionally - but 2 slices of that is still 19g of carbs, which I can get away with on moderate (50g) LCHF, but it's 95% of my daily allowance on strict (20g) LCHF.

Milk would be the main thing. Up until recently, I've been having milk - smoothies and such, but it's just too easy to consume lots of carbs from the lactose in milk, so I'm restricting it for now while I'm doing strict LCHF.

The other thing I love is burgers - I have been having a burger from the fish and chip shop from down the street every Monday lunch for years now. I've allowed it as my one indulgence even on moderate LCHF ... but there's no way I can justify all that bread on strict LCHF.

I did try buying two burgers, removing the buns and eating the fillings with a knife and fork on a plate - but that didn't really do it for me.

So for now, I'm cooking my own - I do an "open" wagyu burger ... basically I buy wagyu beef burgers from Woolworths and cook one with some shortcut bacon, egg, caramelised onion, and cheese, layer it up and serve it on a plate. Eat it with knife and fork. Very tasty and quite filling too (burger patties are 160g).

Pasta was another thing I used to love - but I've found that I don't really miss it that much.

One of the things I do miss is bananas. Used to live on the things - especially when riding my bike. They are awesome in a smoothie too.

Funnily enough, now that I've cut out sugar and most carbs - my sense of taste is much more sensitive and I find many foods simply too sweet. So although I do like some sweet things (I used to have a real weakness for kitkats!), I simply can't eat them anymore because I don't enjoy them. Sad but true.