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

TL;DR version: it's easy to stay motivated and it works for me because I am no longer hungry all the time.

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By "motivator" do you mean as in what drove me to start? Or what motivated me to continue putting in the effort?

The start bit was pretty simple - I knew I was unhealthy. I just knew from observing all these other people around me continually try and fail to lose weight (not just once or twice - but over and over and over again), that there was no point even trying until I found something that would actually work. These people were never happy and constantly whingeing about their weight and never making any meaningful progress towards losing it and keeping it off.

I'm not into trying "fads" and I'm pretty sceptical about most of the claims made by people claiming to have all the answers.

I only tried a "diet plan" once before (Gutbusters) and only made modest progress - and found it quite hard work. Mostly I tried to exercise my way to losing weight - but as I described in my first post in this thread, I found that the more I exercised, the more hungry I got and the more I ate - thus nullifying any benefit I had from the exercise in the first place. Exercise actually made me put on weight!

Once I found something which seemed based on a pretty common sense approach (eating real food!!), and it was getting good results for people - and more importantly, was backed by a growing body of scientific evidence - I decided to give it a try.

To be honest though - I wasn't actively looking for a weight loss strategy at the time. I'm a fairly pragmatic person and so don't tend to do the whole self-loathing thing that much. Yes I knew I was very unhealthy. No I wasn't happy about it. But I wasn't crying into my icecream about it. I just ate the icecream and went on with living my life.

So the change was fairly spontaneous - triggered by my fascination with what I saw sports scientists doing with elite athletes. These are people who rely on their physical abilities and striving for peak performance - so if this strategy was good for them, it deserved some attention. They weren't focusing on mindset or motivation or anything else like that - they were focusing on basic nutrition - optimising what the athletes were eating to minimise excess body fat, maintain strength, reduce injury and improve recovery times.

Once I started, the motivation is pretty easy - losing several kilos a week without feeling hungry is pretty amazing. When people start commenting because they actually notice the changes as they happen quickly - that helps too. I lost 30kg in 39 weeks and I literally had people walk right past without recognising me!

It worked for me because I was no longer hungry.

That is the most important reason why I think LCHF diets are more effective than most others - because it doesn't require you to be super motivated all of the time.

You obviously need to maintain some motivation to say no to the junk and to change old habits. You also need to find new foods to eat - which is probably what takes the most effort when first starting. Some people suffer from genuine food addictions too - which requires a bit of a different approach to deal with those.

The key to not being hungry is the fat content (which is why it's LCHF, not LCLF). If you're getting hungry between meals, it means you're not consuming enough fat to satiate your hunger. It can be a bit of a challenge at times to find foods which are ***** enough - especially when dining out!

One thing I've come to realise just recently is that I'm starting to learn the difference between "hunger" and "craving" - my body sends different signals for each of these impulses now (but previously it didn't!).

Craving is where you have that physiological urge - almost a "need" to eat something. Sometimes for me it was icecream. Sometimes hot chips. For a while there I kept blocks of kitkats in the draw beside my desk. Some other people just need something sweet or sugary. Coffee has a similar effect on people too.

It makes it worse when you consider that high carbohydrate foods do not satisfy you - they don't satiate. This is why I found that it didn't matter how large the serve of hot chips was (small/medium/large/extra large) - I would eat them all because it never satisfied me - and it wasn't until they were all gone that I would pay attention to the pain in my stomach (which was an ache because I'd put too much in there - and was alarmingly similar to the ache you get when you're hungry!)

The problem for me being very overweight and already insulin resistant - I was interpreting the signals these cravings sent as basically the same as the hunger signals (but much stronger and harder to resist). Combined with experiencing low blood sugar levels, this urge to eat is fairly constant. I could not typically go from breakfast to lunch without eating something, and I could certainly never skip breakfast.

It's only once I lost quite a bit of weight that I found I was now getting different signals - the "tummy rumbling" hunger was something I had pretty much not felt in 20 years!

I now get that tummy rumbling fairly frequently - but the interesting thing is that I find it very easy to ignore those signals. Because my body is "fat adapted", I don't need to constantly feed it carbs for fuel - my body will simply burn fat for energy. Which means that eating has now become optional. I no longer have to eat regularly. It's only when that rumbling becomes too annoying that I really start to need food - but even then, a small amount of food with fat in it will stop the rumbling for quite a long time.

Take yesterday for example. I skipped breakfast, intending to have a largish lunch - knowing that I might not get much food for dinner because it was Tuesday night and the kids get to choose where we eat on the way home from Spanish lessons.

However, I got a call from the school at 11:30am that my daughter was unwell and I had to go pick her up and then decided to take her to see a doctor. Because I knew my lunch plans were about to be tossed out the window, I ate a little salami (only about 20g of it!) before I left and that kept me going all afternoon - stopped the rumbling for quite a while. It was after 6:30pm before I got anything substantial to eat for the day - and while I was aware that I was hungry - it was just an annoying feeling that I could easily choose to ignore (especially given I wasn't around food at the time!).

I haven't yet seen how far I can push that (ie how long I can last without eating). I still crave food at times - but since I'm now eating delicious food without guilt (higher fat cuts of meat, bacon, eggs, cream, butter, sausages, roast chicken with skin on, roast pork with crackling, etc), when I need to satisfy that craving, I can look forward to something that's both yummy and also going to help me reach my goals without feeling hungry again an hour or two later.

It's quite liberating to have this freedom to ignore food. It no longer has this hold over me where I have to eat frequently and I no longer feel guilty about eating.

More importantly, because I know my approach works so well for me - I don't have to feel as guilty having the occasional higher carb meal (eg eating cake at a birthday party, or taking the family to the Lindt cafe or San Churro occasionally). I know that if I go back to being strict the next day, the effects of an occasional day like that won't cause my momentum to stall. The key there being "occasional" (which is what has tripped me up in the past).

I'm already about 1.2kg down so far this week since we started the challenge (that's 5.3kg lost in 2.5 weeks) - I've done zero exercise in this time to achieve this (although exercise is still important for health) ... and more importantly, I'm not hungry.

 

I had this recipe recommended to me: The Lucky Penny Blog: The BEST Cauliflower Crust Pizza!

The taste was okay (actually much better the following day!), but I tried to stretch one large cauliflower to two pizza bases and so each one was a bit too thin. I also think it was a bit too moist - need to work harder to wring the moisture out of the cauli in the teatowel (but the teatowel was already starting to rip so I need to work on my technique!).

I should start a new thread for low carb recipes.

 

I think we can all come up with plenty of anecdotes which prove any particular strategy.

I think calories in versus calories out is an oversimplified measure which completely dismisses the impact on hormones (insulin) which affect the metabolism.

My father in law is almost as tall as I am and ever since I met him (about 26 years ago), has eaten far more than I do. He is constantly eating bread with jam on it - I remember he would come home from work and make a stack of 5 or 6 jam sandwiches and eat them all with a cup of tea. He eats cakes and biscuits and his meals are large (but generally healthy). Whenever we go to the shops, he would buy a large milkshake and scoff that down too.

Even at my worst, my mother in law would serve me plates of food the same size as she would serve him, and I would struggle to finish them - while my father in law would have finished and be out in the kitchen tucking into a bowl of preserved fruit with custard on it. He never played sport, and other than walking, did no exercise.

My point is that he was always eating. I mean all the time.

He has never been overweight and at around 80 years old, his doctor has told him that if he hasn't developed diabetes now, he never will.

I think calories in vs calories out simply doesn't explain how people like this can eat continuously and never put on weight. His insulin response to food has to be different to mine - there's simply no way I could eat what he eats and not put on massive amounts of weight.

 

Interviews with real doctors (not "diet gurus") who use low carb diets to treat real patients.

Isn't Weight Loss All About Calories? - Diet Doctor

We’ve been told for decades that in order for us to lose weight, we need to expend more calories than we take in. But is it really that simple?

Three of the top low-carb doctors in the world give their quick and spontaneous answers to this annoying question in the video above (transcript).​

The last interview in that series was I think the most useful:

Dr. Eenfeldt: Isn't weight loss all about calories?

Dr. Westman: Well, I think calories matter. The energy balance equation where we talk about energy in... calories in, calories out is a good construct to help, guide people... It's more complicated than counting the calories on a label, for example.

Because the calories are handled differently depending on what type of calorie it is, based on the metabolism for that individual calorie. But I think that it's pretty clear that when people are losing weight, they are eating fewer calories than they were before.

And then of course if the weight loss program that they are doing changes the metabolic rate, that's another factor you have to take into account. But I think it's fair to say that low carbohydrate diet isn't magical. It follows the rules of science that we understand, having to do with energy balance and the calories.

So when I teach the low-carb diet, I don't talk about calories. We don't have to teach calories, but people are still eating fewer calories in general. That's, you know, not the case for everyone. That's the role for the practitioner to help people troubleshoot those situations.​

 

Absolutely.

As I keep saying - I believe the best diet for anyone is the one they can stick to.

I think the biggest problem a lot of people have with "going on a diet" is that when they reach their goals they then "come off their diet" and revert back to old habits, thus undoing the work they did.

I think sustainable lifestyle change (what ever that happens to be for you) is required to lose weight and keep it off.

 

For sure - and the activity levels will make a difference too. If you're naturally very active, you've got a lot more flexibility in how you approach things.

Regarding exercising on no carbs - Dec 2015 I rode up Mt Lofty (in Adelaide) for the first time ever without eating anything. No fat, no carbs nothing. I regularly go for bike rides of up to 2 hours on zero food ingested.

But I'm already fat adapted, so my body readily converts fat to energy for me - and my liver function is fine, so it seems to work well. It also helps that I carry a large store of fuel with me everywhere I go (around my waist!)

If you're not fat adapted, then you'll need carbs for fuel. A lot of people who convert to low carb diets complain of brain fogs initially - most times it does pass after a few days or weeks. Sometimes people try and go too low too quickly - aiming for zero carbs isn't necessarily a great idea, and some people simply need more carbs to function.

The advice on the websites I follow if you are getting brain fog is to simply have more carbs. It will slow down any weight loss - but it's just what some people seem to need.

Out of curiosity, I'd be interested to know what your physique is like? Are you naturally lean? Do you have much body fat? I'm not sure if there's a specific body type which struggles with brain fog more than others when converting to low carb.

Passing out though seems more like very low blood pressure to me - marathon/endurance runners who drink too much water can pass out as well - from very low blood pressure due to salt loss from sweating. Tim Noakes wrote a book about this - Waterlogged

Anyway - it does sound like what you're doing is working for you? So no need to change then!

FWIW, I'm not trying to convince everyone that LCHF is the only way to go or the best approach for everyone. My goal is simply to tell people what works for me, and as always, YMMV. If I manage to motivate someone to try LCHF and find success where they've previously struggled, then great - but if you're already doing stuff that works, then keep doing that!

 

Eating log - day 3 - June 7

Breakfast: nothing

Lunch: 200g of Roast Pork Belly with a little gravy - let's call it 1g of carbs from the gravy, zero from the pork.
Decided to try their roast cauliflower salad with quinoa and kale (how trendy!) - I ate less than half of it, around 100g. Let's say 2g of carbs from the cauliflower, 1g from the quinoa (which is very high in carbs but I hardly ate any of it), and 1g from the kale - so 4g of carbs in total. Was okay taste-wise, nothing to write home about. I would have preferred some simple roast cauli with cheese on top.



I also snuck in another glass of Peach Iced Tea (nearly all gone) .. so there's another 13g of unnecessary carbs.

Lunch total: 18g carbs (mostly from the iced tea)

Dinner: 2x Top Table Wagyu Beef sausages @ 5g each = 10g carbs (wow, so much high carb filler!)
30g Masterfoods Tomato Relish (more than I really needed), 7g carbs
150g steamed cauliflower, 3g carbs

We weren't going to have sausages for dinner - but a last minute change of plans meant that we needed something quick and easy, so sausages it was. Decided to try some of these Wagyu beef sausages - they are actually quite nice (79% beef), but too high in carb content really. Fat content wasn't too bad at 16g per sausage.

We normally eat the Coles Classic Beef Sausages, which have some of the highest beef content and lowest carb content out of any sausages I find in our local supermarkets. 77% beef and only 2.1g of carbs per sausage (the difference is all in the type of filler used). Only 14.6g of fat per sausage though. Flavour is still quite good - but not really at the same level as the Wagyu beef sausages. Not sure I actually needed the relish - quite a lot of flavour in the sausage alone.

I have a few more of the sausages left which went into the freezer, so next time I'll try eating them without any sauce/relish - 10g of carbs from the sausages compared to 4.2 + 7 from the relish (total 11.2) for the Coles sausages (which I think do need some condiment), so still lower overall if I were to do that.

Anyway - 20g of carbs from dinner (my entire daily allowance in 1 meal - not great).

Snack: 1 square of Lindt 78% chocolate = 2.2g of carbs.

Total for the day: 40g carbs

That's way too high. The fancy sausages and the relish really blew the budget there that was already near its limit thanks to the iced tea.

Love the pork belly though - the meat is generally very tender and falls apart, almost don't need a knife. There is a nice layer of fat which is very filling - and the crackling is usually perfectly done. All this for zero carbs! Pork Belly FTW!

Here's what it looks like in the shop:



This has become my Wednesday lunch favourite.

Exercise: none. Ran to the bus stop with the kids because we nearly missed the bus. That's about it, other than working standing up for around 3 hours.

Still, weight is dropping - down below 114kg this morning.