I've been losing 2/3rds pound or 300g per day

nintenho said:
I know what you're saying but you could still feed the same "slow burn" metabolism with carbohydrates. I'm saying that any extra calories you eat in fat can only be stored as fat while carbs first fill up your glycogen stores and then go into fat.
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Of course you could, nobody's claiming you can't lose or stabilize weight with high carb diet - the claim is that it is much easier with low carb diet, because it is easier to keep net calories negative. And as you pointed out yourself, the glycogen metabolism inhibits fat metabolism - stored fat does not go away as quickly when there is glycogen available to burn, whereas if your glycogen stores are low, the stored fat gets into use sooner. The glycogen reserve does not give you advantage there unless, as noted before, you practice sport competitively.
 
I wouldn't be able to stick with a low carbs diet. Tried it before and it's not for me. After a week I ended up feeling extremely lethargic. Couldn't take it any more even with vitamin supplements. I lost more weight in that week that I anticipated, so I guess it is indeed a good way to lose weight but not good for my physical well feeling. I don't think that type of diet is very conducive to living in a city like San Francisco. The more carbs for me the better, considering if I were to walk from here to Ocean beach that alone is good enough for 200 - 300 calories depending on which way I take and how fast I go at it. That's only a 4 mile walk and takes me about 1 hour 20 minutes to get there. Really not feeling a ketogenic diet for that type of weekly/daily activity. That doesn't include exercise. So now it's been colder and I haven't been out as much. Packed on 10 lbs. since early November and kept my diet the same. Less cardio for me resulted in most of that being muscle gain. I like the somewhat buffer look.
 
Ketones really do suck. I'm diabetic and have had high levels of them in the past due to insulin issues, and they made me feel the worst I've ever been; lethargy to the point of almost not being able to stand up, with a splitting headache and really bad nausea. Of course, thats at a higher level than most people get to, but it is a nasty enough experience for me to want to avoid them at any significant level.
 
Each person is indeed an individual, but in ketosis, you are not supposed to feel lethargic, have headaches etc. It's the transition phase when you are running out of glycogen when these symptoms occur, in actual ketosis people normally feel great (just like Squilliam described in the first post). Sonic, did you count the calories when you tried it? Sounds like you were running on too low calories, a large weight drop could suggest this way. You really need to add fat to your diet if you drop the carbs, otherwise you are running too lean (Squilliam's diet sounded too lean, but if he feels OK, good for him). It's the fat that is converted to ketones in ketosis - if you don't supply it to the body, you are running out of energy too fast.

Can't really argue against someone with first hand experience of diabetes, but a ketogenic diet is supposed to be pretty much the best possible diet for diabetics. Then again having ketones in blood _together_ with glucose is a really bad thing, leading to ketoacidosis (which is not the same state as ketosis). Perhaps this is what you were referring to, cjo?
 
WhiningKhan said:
Can't really argue against someone with first hand experience of diabetes, but a ketogenic diet is supposed to be pretty much the best possible diet for diabetics. Then again having ketones in blood _together_ with glucose is a really bad thing, leading to ketoacidosis (which is not the same state as ketosis). Perhaps this is what you were referring to, cjo?
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You don't need particularly high levels of glucose in the blood to lead to ketoacidosis (although it contributes by dehydrating you, which makes the concentration of ketones in the blood higher - which is what causes alcohol-induced acidosis). If you are on a ketogenic diet, you will have ketones in your blood, which are acidic, and your body has to work harder to maintain the pH balance of the blood.

"Normal" people would probably struggle to get to the same ketone levels as a diabetic, but I could imagine that more extreme ketogenic diets would start to get close (insulin is what stops ketone production, and without carb intake, the body isn't stimulated to produce as much insulin) which doesn't strike me as a brilliant idea. The body is designed to burn carbohydrate - it is far more efficient and the byproducts are far less toxic, and i'm not convinced that depriving the body of its preferred fuel is the best thing to do.
 
I ate around 200 calories less per day than I did on regular diet. Maybe I wasn't getting enough calories as you say, but my energy level was depleted. When I went to ride my bike my energy was zapped in oh 20 minutes and I was dogging it the rest of the way. I maintained my normal protein intake of fish, chicken, steak, shellfish, nuts, beef, pork whatever. And I always have some type of green vegetable at dinner in a decent quantity.
 
Sonic said:
I ate around 200 calories less per day than I did on regular diet. Maybe I wasn't getting enough calories as you say, but my energy level was depleted. When I went to ride my bike my energy was zapped in oh 20 minutes and I was dogging it the rest of the way. I maintained my normal protein intake of fish, chicken, steak, shellfish, nuts, beef, pork whatever. And I always have some type of green vegetable at dinner in a decent quantity.
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OK, while your diet may have been low carb, it is likely it was low carb in the wrong way - your metabolism went mainly into proteolytic mode, not into ketogenic. You have to add lots of fat into your diet. If you are accustomed to eat typical industrial low-fat products and just drop the carbs out of your diet (in the worst case just replace the carbs with protein), it's not going to work.

http://www.second-opinions.co.uk/fat-not-protein.html
 
The performance of the body under ketokenic diet is somewhat of a mixed back according to me :)
I generally felt that I felt more energetic and for example at gym heavier low rep exercises (1-6) was easier to do, but higher than that was hard.

Also I felt that my aerobic/anaerobic threshold was at a higher heartrate, so maintaining something like 160 beats per minute was easier. My greatest exercise bike achievement was 75min with an average heart rate of 164. I'm pretty sure I couldn't do that with average daily calories of 2000, if it was mainly carb based.

However I still think a balanced maybe say 40/30/30 diet is the best for me, and the hunger does also go away once your body get's used to it. Imo aerobic excercise also reduces hunger a lot.
 
cjo said:
"Normal" people would probably struggle to get to the same ketone levels as a diabetic, but I could imagine that more extreme ketogenic diets would start to get close (insulin is what stops ketone production, and without carb intake, the body isn't stimulated to produce as much insulin) which doesn't strike me as a brilliant idea. The body is designed to burn carbohydrate - it is far more efficient and the byproducts are far less toxic, and i'm not convinced that depriving the body of its preferred fuel is the best thing to do.
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I admit, I do not know how the diabetics can handle ketogenic diets, but I have never heard of non-diabetic persons following LCHF diet (properly) of going to ketoacidosis. And ketogenic diets really are used as therapy for diabetics quite widely.

You probably are aware of all this, but just in case this provides you with something new:

- In summary, the LCKD had positive effects on body weight, waist measurement, serum triglycerides, and glycemic control in a cohort of 21 participants with type 2 diabetes. Most impressive is that improvement in hemoglobin A1c was observed despite a small sample size and short duration of follow-up, and this improvement in glycemic control occurred while diabetes medications were reduced substantially in many participants.

- Two diets - one severely restricting carbohydrate intake but with no limit on calories, and the other emphasizing low-glycemic carbohydrates and low calories - allowed high percentages of obese type 2 patients in a university study to reduce or even eliminate their diabetes medications (95.2 percent of the patients on the extreme low-carb diet and 62.1 percent of the patients on the low-glycemic diet).

- The evidence that a low-carb, saturated fat diet better for diabetics
 
Dr Evil said:
The performance of the body under ketokenic diet is somewhat of a mixed back according to me :)
I generally felt that I felt more energetic and for example at gym heavier low rep exercises (1-6) was easier to do, but higher than that was hard.

Also I felt that my aerobic/anaerobic threshold was at a higher heartrate, so maintaining something like 160 beats per minute was easier. My greatest exercise bike achievement was 75min with an average heart rate of 164. I'm pretty sure I couldn't do that with average daily calories of 2000, if it was mainly carb based.

However I still think a balanced maybe say 40/30/30 diet is the best for me, and the hunger does also go away once your body get's used to it. Imo aerobic excercise also reduces hunger a lot.
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Yeah, your diet probably fits your lifestyle quite well - in fact, exercise shifts the metabolism in the same way as the ketogenic diet, so there's indeed no motivation for you to lower the carbs more as long as you exercise. Suits you, sir.
 
Personally I have stopped weighing myself for a while I was becoming a bit obsessive. So if I wanted to introduce more fat into my diet would cream be a good choice since I already drink coffee and eat cereal.
 
Squilliam said:
Personally I have stopped weighing myself for a while I was becoming a bit obsessive. So if I wanted to introduce more fat into my diet would cream be a good choice since I already drink coffee and eat cereal.
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Cream is a good idea anywhere. And if you have the occasional bread, put a decent layer of butter on it. You said you like vegetables with meat - I like frying the vegetables in a good deal of butter or olive oil, depending on the type of vegetables. A creamy vegetable gratin is nice too. And of course coconut cream enhanced asian wok stuff is excellent.
 
Oh and one thing (you shouldn't take my advice too seriously since you appear doing fine): I've personally found it's best to have the carbs in the evening. Having carbs at breakfast made me feel hunger during the day, and not having carbs in the evening made me sometimes wake in the middle of the night not feeling sleepy anymore.
 
I had that problem with waking up early, I'll have to consider my carb intake at night maybe. Anyway thanks for the info.
 
My pants came down at the supermarket today, one of the downtrows and downsides of losing weight.
 
AlphaWolf said:
You really think the judge will buy that argument? Pervert :LOL:




buy a belt ;)
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My boxer shorts did stay up and I tend to wear shorts without the belt loops because of my awful sense of style compelling me to wear board shorts. :cool:

Pants would suck in this weather to be honest, Chalnoth is making it hot again to punish me for doubting climate change.
 
On the 8th of December I was 79.8 KG

Today (21st) I broke down and weighed myself and I am 76.15

Total lost over 13 days = 3.65
Average a week = 1.96KG (2KG)

I feel pretty great actually. I just went for a 10.8km power walk non stop for 1 and 3/4 hours @ 6km/h.

Edit: My starting weight was 93.7KG and my earlier weight loss which I never measured was even faster than this.
 
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