Mojo Request Low-carb diet blues

Maybe I can help? I hate denying myself food, but love exertion.

IMHO exercise only works with proper motivation, and motivation is an art. Each painful workout can ...
- help me reduce weight
- make me more physically able to do things I love (this used to be summit days in the Andes - life's a bit less dramatic now, but it's always better to be able to say "sure, I'd love to...." vs. "I don't think I could."
- gives me the opportunity to empty my mind. I just don't do a good job worrying about things when I am exercising.
- gives me a burst of adrenalin and overall can-do good cheer. this is now medically documented; I can't imagine why people who have depression are not being semi-forced to exercise. It's a life changer.
- gets me to places I wouldn't otherwise go.

Exercise is body work. All work needs the specter of reward -- if your rewards are aligned to your exercise, it can be very motivating and inspiring.
 
It is a balance of resistance training and the things commonly called 'cardio' that will do it. The resistance training will build strength (making everything easier), build lean muscle mass (which burns more energy all of the time), will help regulate and stimulate production of many key hormones which will make you feel better, and help you sleep better (maybe not more but definitely deeper) so you will be doing more but be better rested and just generally feel better.

Low carb is a short term fix. It is an unnatural way to deal with an unnatural condition - that condition being a sedentary lifestyle. People generations ago had to work hard and many hours so where does the human machine make up those hours of activity that have disappeared?
I have been biting my tongue for a little while while reading this thread over the past few months but I have to agree with this post.

A ketogenic diet is in fact a short term fix and I also have concerns about this type of diet being sustainable in the long term. The human body is not designed to operate in the absence of carbs. A Keto diet was originally developed by athletes that needed to lose weight in order to "make weight" for a sporting event. It was never meant to be a lifestyle. All you've done is teach yourself how to crash diet.
I think if your health was at a bad place when you started this diet then what you did was a good way to quickly get yourself to a more healthy place but you need to now learn how to integrate carbs back into your diet so you can eat a healthy way for life.
Carbs are not the enemy....but you have to learn the difference between the types of carbs. Just for argument sake....potato chips are an example of a bad carb while broccoli would be considered a fibrous carb. There's a big difference in how the body utilizes the nutrition from each though. The key is choosing the right types of carbs and consuming in moderation.

Just so everyone knows that I'm not just Sunday preaching.....I've lost about 85 lbs and kept it off for the most part for almost 10 years now. I don't want anyone to think that I'm preaching here and don't understand how difficult it is.
 
It is difficult. I went from bad food (and there are bad fats, bad carbs ... bad you-name-it, vs. good) to much better about 4 years ago, dropped 30 lbs, and at the same time changed careers -- which had the important side benefit of letting me resume an active lifestyle (I love hard exercise and working out).

For a variety of reasons (e.g., excuses), I relapsed. I knew that getting fitter again would be easy - because I like it. What I don't like is not eating ice cream, meat and cheese. And really, those things are just not good for you at the levels I like them.

Learning to eat in a life-affirming way is really hard -- and it's harder still when (for example) your spouse is adamant about eating unhealthily. Damn tough to avoid the Haagen Dazs when she's savoring every spoonful. Or when your school cafeteria literally serves junk all day, every day.

These are excuses -- I need to rediscover my motivation for the proper eating. Motivation is all in life, innit?
 
16 weeks in (as of tomorrow), and I'm down 18.2 pounds. my goal was 20.6, but all in all I'm pretty happy with where I am. I hit a plateau for about a month -- varied between 15 and 16 pounds from the middle of June until late last week -- and I think part of that may be attributable to the fact that in the middle of June I started a program of 20 minutes of spinning on M-W-F with this routine (https://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/rudy6.htm) on the off-days using 20lb and 15lb dumbbells. I started off with one set of 10 and am now up to two sets of 12. I will probably up that to three sets of 10 next week, and I notice that I have converted some of the flab to muscle, which I figure stalled the weight loss progress for a bit. Given my experience so far, I have a new goal for the next 16 weeks (through November 6) and have to lose 17.4 pounds to reach that. I am taking it step by step. I will also be going in early next month to take a three-month blood test to see how my numbers are doing (my doctor cut my simvastatin Rx from 20mg to 10mg, and wants to see what happens to my lipids). I figure that should be a good check on my progress.
 
I have been biting my tongue for a little while while reading this thread over the past few months but I have to agree with this post.

A ketogenic diet is in fact a short term fix and I also have concerns about this type of diet being sustainable in the long term. The human body is not designed to operate in the absence of carbs. A Keto diet was originally developed by athletes that needed to lose weight in order to "make weight" for a sporting event. It was never meant to be a lifestyle. All you've done is teach yourself how to crash diet.
I think if your health was at a bad place when you started this diet then what you did was a good way to quickly get yourself to a more healthy place but you need to now learn how to integrate carbs back into your diet so you can eat a healthy way for life.
Carbs are not the enemy....but you have to learn the difference between the types of carbs. Just for argument sake....potato chips are an example of a bad carb while broccoli would be considered a fibrous carb. There's a big difference in how the body utilizes the nutrition from each though. The key is choosing the right types of carbs and consuming in moderation.

Just so everyone knows that I'm not just Sunday preaching.....I've lost about 85 lbs and kept it off for the most part for almost 10 years now. I don't want anyone to think that I'm preaching here and don't understand how difficult it is.

A no-carb diet would definitely be unnatural and unsustainable, but a low-carb diet is actually possibly more aligned with the natural state of not only paleo, but also agricultural societies. The thing that has changed from even a couple of generations ago is not the presence of carbohydrates, but rather the proliferation of high-glycemic (i.e. highly refined) carbohydrates. In my diet, I am still eating carbohydrates (probably about 100-150 grams a day) but these are balanced by the presence of sugar alcohols and fiber. Rather, it's my consumption of simple (i.e. quickly digested) carbs that has been drastically reduced. Remember -- not all carbohydrates are equal!
 
A no-carb diet would definitely be unnatural and unsustainable, but a low-carb diet is actually possibly more aligned with the natural state of not only paleo, but also agricultural societies. The thing that has changed from even a couple of generations ago is not the presence of carbohydrates, but rather the proliferation of high-glycemic (i.e. highly refined) carbohydrates. In my diet, I am still eating carbohydrates (probably about 100-150 grams a day) but these are balanced by the presence of sugar alcohols and fiber. Rather, it's my consumption of simple (i.e. quickly digested) carbs that has been drastically reduced. Remember -- not all carbohydrates are equal!
I absolutely agree.
No carb and low carb are different worlds apart.
About 150g of carbs is about right for an average size adult man.
 
I've been doing the keto thing for about 2 1/2-3 months, combined with exercising hard at least every other day if not every day alternating weight lifting and HIIT every day. Before starting, I weighed more than I ever have (237 at 5'9, 56 years old), binged on sugary stuff every day, ate lots of bready and starchy stuff. etc. and felt horrible. Physical aches and pains, my left hip and leg would start to go numb during the first set of the gig, trouble getting up 2 flights of stairs to my apartment, fairly high level of generalized anxiety, bad sleep, etc., etc.

The keto thing seems to work the best for me, probably b/c it's a modified paleo diet. Paleo has always made the most sense to me. I've dropped about 17 lbs in the last couple of months, and the waistline is heading the right direction again.

I've also had to come to grips with the fact that, since I am a compulsive/addictive personality, moderation really doesn't work for me. I have been trying to get my health/diet in optimum shape for probably 20 years, and have gone up and down in fitness and eating habits many times over those years. My downfall always seems to be trying to sneak a little bit of my "trigger foods", ie any kind of candy, cake, heavy bread stuff like pizza or wheat bread, etc. and then eventually falling off the deep end. At this point, I have accepted the fact that I need to treat it like alcoholism, and just maintain total abstinence from that stuff, one day at a time. I don't always like that, per se, but I really love the way I feel in general when I go this way. All the symptoms above start to disappear as I keep it up, I sleep better and need less sleep, need for medication goes down, etc. I seem to be okay with the occasional (read - less than weekly) serving of french fries or maybe a little bit of rice, but I can physically tell the difference between those and pizza, cake, candy, etc., and it's a BIG difference.

Thank god for provolone cheese, NY strip and Ribeye steaks, and macadamia nuts. Not everything has to taste like Kale and broccoli. :grin:
 
Thanks!

I wish I could get my head past whatever it is that makes me hate the idea of exercise.

It's not a lack of activity though. I do stuff now.
And if you told me I had to ride 50 miles to do <some activity or go to some event that was appealing>, I wouldn't hesitate to at least try.
When I was younger I walked everywhere or rode a bike. My girlfriend lived on the other side of the city. It was about a 90 minute walk. Work was an hour walk away. I worked at a resort that started as a tennis club and grew to a full facility with a hotel and conference centre. I played racquet ball and squash at work after my shift if were on days. I went swimming. The job was physical too. Very physical.
There was full gym with any and every machine that was available at the time - I tried but it just did not hold my interest.
Why am I lifting this weight just to put it back down?
But while working, I'd carry an eight foot banquet table in each hand and walk the length of the facility with them. I'd lift five banquet chairs at a time (and I hurt my back again lifting a bucket of water...) I'd do things like that because I was accomplishing something that needed to be done.

I know. Excercise accomplishes good health. Yada Yada Yada.
That's the mental block for me. I know it's true, but it just doesn't compute.

The doctor told to walk for 30 minutes, three times a week.
Makes sense.
But wait, I'll just end up back at home? Having accomplished nothing of substance (in my mind)?
And it's hot/humid/raining/snowing/cold?
If we race to the finish line, I'm already there!! Why leave?

Yeah I do understand. While I do exercise, I do it because I like it mostly. But I can't ride stationary cycles for very long...you don't go anywhere. When I ride, I do so alone primarily because it's me time and I kind of sight see while I'm riding (looking for cool animals, cars etc). I don't want to ride with others because then it could be a competition which I'm uninterested in or make my ride conform to someone else. But I do need to go somewhere and not just around in a circle or spinning in a gym. They all serve the purpose of getting exercise but there has to be some fun factor in it. I never liked running even back when I could because I never found it fun, some love it but I wanted to run only if it was a game of football, basketball etc.
Going to the gym to lift is a direct result of a lot of rehab/PT when I was younger and it just became something that I knew I needed to do in order to have a good chance of walking normally as I got older. This is probably the only exercise I do for exercise sake though I do like being in shape and I really like the fact that the knee replacement that was a potential for me, and still is, has been pushed back a number of decades.
 
One thing we've been doing that helps -- we eat a lot of Chinese food, but don't eat rice with it. Instead, I shred cabbage, carrots and other vegetables and stir-fry them with tofu to use as the base for the Chinese food. We actually find that's tastier for us than rice, and a lot healthier (i.e. a billion Chinese CAN be wrong...)
 
One thing we've been doing that helps -- we eat a lot of Chinese food, but don't eat rice with it. Instead, I shred cabbage, carrots and other vegetables and stir-fry them with tofu to use as the base for the Chinese food. We actually find that's tastier for us than rice, and a lot healthier (i.e. a billion Chinese CAN be wrong...)
Buddha's Delight was basically the same thing. It's what my local takeout joint called it.
I always got it with my order.

I only eat rice about 4 times a year, and it is a rissoto.
 
Rode 30 miles today in 1:49. Then had a greasy cheeseburger for dinner.

The beat goes on ...

Rode 63.8 miles in 4:18, 5500' of climbing...no cheeseburger but Lasagna for dinner tonight eat0eat0
No I don't usually do that distance. At least once a year I ride my age in miles...I went a bit over today. I'll save those miles for the future. The trouble with riding your age is it always seems to be longer every year :shrug:
 
One thing we've been doing that helps -- we eat a lot of Chinese food, but don't eat rice with it. Instead, I shred cabbage, carrots and other vegetables and stir-fry them with tofu to use as the base for the Chinese food. We actually find that's tastier for us than rice, and a lot healthier (i.e. a billion Chinese CAN be wrong...)

Actually, this sounds more like what Chinese people eat than fried rice. Fried rice is not really Chinese food.
 
Quick update: As of this morning, I'm down 24.6 pounds since I started (in March). I've been doing a daily fitness routine (mystery workout of the day -- focuses on a different part of the body each day) and since it's fall soccer season, refereed three games this weekend (7.5 miles as measured by my GPS watch over the course of these games). I still have quite a ways to go until I feel I will be at equilibrium, but figure that the pace (i.e. a bit under five pounds a month - or one pound a week) is hopefully sustainable. Also, my Doc allowed me to cut my simvastatin doseage in half (from 20mg to 10mg - she wants me to remain on it for it's additional cardiac benefits) and my last cholesterol reading (non-fasting) was 157. I'm hoping that by my 60th birthday next April I will be down another comparable amount!
 
I started a few months ago and I have lost over 2 stone, my spare tyre/extra bellyfat has almost completely disappeared.

I now wear M sized t-shirts as opposed to L/XL, gone down 2 jeans sizes :thu:

I have not had Carb cravings, eat smaller portions and stopped snacking all the time. I feel fitter as well
 
I've been holding steady at around 55 pounds lost for the last few months.

I've started to buy new clothes. Pants are two sizes smaller.
Suit jacket size varies with cut and style, but I bought one that was two sizes smaller as well.

My energy level is up. I'm getting shit done in the garage!!

I think the biggest win for me is that I can have a cheat/treat meal and not feel any urge to have another.

The only thing I've found to be a problem is eating enough to match my activity level.
I eat enough to feel full, but then get busy and find that I might not have eaten enough. I don't get hungry. I just feel like I need a boost. Peanut butter on 99% dark chocolate is my fix, but I want to make some fat bombs because they are a bit more convenient.
Also, a Lindor truffle has only 6g of carbs. So, if I'm well under my carbs for the day, that's a nice treat without going off the rails.
 
I have been doing the keto thing since around May or June, with a few slips on carbs here and there, but absolutely no sugar/cookies/candy/dessert, and can safely say that this is probably how I should have been treating my food sensitivities all along. I am at 209 lbs today, (down from 237 when I started), and the main thing is that I really like how I feel when eating this way. Cravings are minimal, sleep is a lot better, and my moods have stabilized. I have been on a moderate dose of one antidepressant for years now for generalized anxiety and panic attacks, (which also has the beneficial side effect of toning my tinnitus way down), and I was able to cut that dose in half a few months ago.. My moods are more stable and anxiety is greatly lessened, while cutting the dose down has caused my emotional state to feel much less "flattened" while still giving me some relief from the tinnitus. All in all, great news!
 
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I'm at 165 and holding. I'm keeping to about 75-100 carbs per day. I've had regular deserts at our Sunday dinner and not felt the least bit guilty about.

At 5' 8" I'm wearing 34" pants that fit loosely. I started this voyage at 203 with very snug 36s, and a few pairs of 38s for when I wanted to be more comfortable.

I'm walking daily and doing sit-ups, crunches and other ab exercises. I'd lift weights, but my left shoulder is fubar.

Best of all is I don't feel fat anymore.
 
I absolutely agree.
No carb and low carb are different worlds apart.
About 150g of carbs is about right for an average size adult man.



First, congrats on losing and keeping it off. That is a true commitment and you should be proud.

As far as carbs go, I think this is where people get tripped up. Compared to what we eat when we are eating bad, 150 is probably low carb in comparison but in reality, it is a good level, maybe a little low for some but good. And like you said, it really depends on where you are getting them. Below that, and especially down in the 50 range is definitely low and I agree that it is a temporary situation. I have found that going pretty low will help me get weight moving off. In the old days, I could just clean it up a little and lose the few extra I had added on but any more it takes a more severe approach to get any movement. On top of that, I'm having some back issues so physical activity is difficult.
 
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