Interesting!
I am not exactly on a low carb diet, but I am eating more protein now than in my past weight loss endeavors, and less carbs. I guess I have about doubled my intake of protein food. Now, I usually grill a half pound or more of chicken breast, fish, or lean steak for dinner. That is much more protein than I consumed in previous weight loss efforts, but I keep the calories the same. Mainly I wanted to try something different. This summer I have been keeping track of calories on MFP (myfitnesspal dot com). I love the feeling of satiety that extra protein is giving me, and that is referred to in your flow chart.
I lost 8.4 pounds in July. I hope to lose another 30 pounds or so by the end of the year. My fasting blood sugar has improved this month as well.
Interesting!
I lost 8.4 pounds in July. I hope to lose another 30 pounds or so by the end of the year. My fasting blood sugar has improved this month as well.
Congratulations!
Eight in a month is fantastic. Are you using the MFP community? If so there's a low carb group that's good for information and is less judgemental than the rest of their forum.
It's the "Low Carber Daily Forum" and is pretty laid back and helpful. The main forums are getting better but they still can be "different".
I agree with increasing protein and fat. I feel so much better! I used to think there was no such thing as carb crashes or sugar highs. Now I understand I was constantly in them, all my life. I was always hungry eating every couple of hours, more carbs.
+1. Five years ago I stuck to a pretty strict >50 grams of carbs a day for six months and dropped 33 pounds (from 195 to 162). Since then I added back modest amounts of rice, potatoes, grains and the occasional splurge on my beloved chocolate and have stayed within +- 2 pounds ever since. Gary Taubes' theory of why LCHF works reads pretty well but a good deal of research counsels otherwise. This chart captures what is probably happening. From my (a users) perspective the theory isn't critical - if the practice is simple and works well what's to argue with?Nice chart. Whatever the mechanism, I have found that low-ish carbs (especially refined flours and sugars) is the key for me to keep my weight steady (along with walking 2 miles or more most days).
Congratulations!
Eight in a month is fantastic.
i lost 40lbs on a high carb low fat diet .
at the end of the day it is all about calories left .
how you get there is pretty irrelevant .
i did better then my atkins friends .
Congrats on the 40 lb loss, however, this thread was not to debate various diets, just how low carb approach works. YMMV, every one is different and some might get better results using other diet approaches.
Can someone tell me what is the evidence that this figure is " how low carb diets really work"?
Ha
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everyone has their theory's with this stuff . if you go to dr mcdougall's site there is all the evidence and theory's for a high carb , low fat vegan diet .
that is what i did to get from 200lbs to 160 .
it works on the idea that for a male diet you can eat like 20 baked potato's in day . not that you would but the point is you could never be hungry .
so if you swap out the 120 potato's in volume for other healthy like foods in volume and fat content you will never be hungry .
the idea is as fat gets lower the volume can get larger that you can eat for any given calorie amount .
the volume of food i ate in a day when everything was 2 grams of fat or less was insane . i was never hungry .
the reason diets fail is anything that restricts the calories you are happy with is a pain to the body . you can't breath 1/2 a lung of air over the long term and most diets fail because you end up hungry and eventually need more too eat . .
i can eat 2 or 3 of those weight watcher dinners lol .
so their is evidence on both sides of the fence .
having done both i can tell you they both work but i was less hungry all the time on the mcdougall plan since the food volume was so large because of the low fat . the fact it had rice , beans , potato's , pasta etc did not effect the weight loss since you ate so many things that were volume foods .
Thanks DFW. Still, I would consider this to be essentially no evidence. Typical social media. Gives people things to talk about, which seems to fulfill an important need.
Ha
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Thanks for the chart! My diet used to be terrible. Lots of fats and carbs. I gradually lost weight for the first 2 years of retirement while still eating badly. Then I started running and lost some more. I started a low carb (mostly paleo) diet mid May. I lost 10 lbs in the first week of carb cutting - more than I had lost in the previous 4 months of running / lots of carbs. And I feel a lot better eating less carbs. l'm probably bottomed out now as far as weight is concerned, but I'm continuing the low carb diet.