I’m sure my nut butter habit is making me out weight on!?

[OverwateredCheeseplant]

I’m obsessed with almond butter. I have it on toast twice a day. Since this habit started I’ve developed a bit of a tummy and my jeans are tight! I watch what I eat and my habits haven’t changed in any other way. I thought nut butters were meant to be healthy?!

Yes it’s healthy but it still has calories and too many calories will make ones jeans tighter.

Also your having it on toast twice a day so I think that’s probably the issue here. Cut down to once a day?

Alternatively buy bigger jeans.....

All calories are not equal, how your body processes the food is important... 500cal worth of broccoli or peanut butter isn't the same as 500cal of sweets

I agree with PP that the extra bread is more likely the culprit.

I'm low carb and have a tablespoon or two of peanut butter most days and am loosing weight. I have mine with celery 👍👍

Sugar spikes are dealt with by insulin, so where things are running as they should it would be brought down naturally by the body.

‘Healthy’ is a loaded word, because so many people don’t really understand how things work. Healthy doesn’t mean you can eat a fuckload of it and still stay skinny. Yes nut butter is full of nutrients, but they come in a fat based package, so it will be calorie dense.

And yes, absolutely, it is just as much the second piece of toast that’s causing the weight gain.

I’d have the nutbutter off a teaspoon instead, or just eat actual almonds.

Yes I suppose my point is that if looking for calories to cut down on there may be better ways to do it, depending on what the rest of your diet is like.

Have it on celery or cucumber.

Or cut down yoru carbs from other meals . Are you eating lots of fruit ? Swap out some for more vegetables.

I was horrified to discover, when I started logging my food into MFP,
that the tiny level teaspoon of pip & nut almond butter I was having daily was around 100 calories

If you have been mixing it with honey as well!!! ..... schar GF multigrain bread is 80 cals a slice so if you are having a (small) teaspoon of nut butter on top that is 180 cals twice a day. It all adds up unfortunately.

I agree with PP that the extra bread is more likely the culprit.

It’s this kind of thinking that is the reason that so many people are overweight. Bread is not the culprit here! Carbs are not the enemy!

Weight gain is simply calories in vs cals out (for most people). Nut butter is incredibly calorie dense.

Yes I blame Deliciously Ella too!

I’m nearly 40.

The problem is that I have insane sugar cravings. They bug me all day long. I’ve just bought some bananas in case they work to curb it. I thought having some almond butter would be a good way to satiate my sweet tooth without eating chocolate bars etc but perhaps not!

Carbs are the enemy for many, many people. Not all calories are equal abd it’s not as simple as calories in vs. Calories expended when one is weighing up health and nutrients vs weight. I’d much rather have an extra teaspoon of the nutrients in a natural product like nuts than the pretty much empty calories in an extra piece of toast.

Carbs are also the enemy when people start from the premise that nut butters are ‘healthy’ and then mix them with honey and eat them on toast x 2 daily.

It really doesn’t matter though, and I’m not going to argue about it here.

If you’re struggling with sugar cravings then bananas are not going to help curb it. Fruit is just sugar in another form, as far as the body is concerned. Neither is toast with nut butter and honey.

Look at low carbing and/or blood sugar diets, and read up on the science of how your body deals with glucose.

Your age will have something to do with it too - you will likely need marginally less calories in than you are used to, and this will continue to be the case as you get older.

And in that case blood sugar spikes definitely are relevant - you want to avoid them as much as possible as they will trigger the next sugar craving when the inevitable dip comes.

It’s this kind of thinking that is the reason that so many people are overweight. Bread is not the culprit here! Carbs are not the enemy!

I agree with this really. I think a lot of the info about carbs being bad etc is just causing further confusion and 'issues' around food. And then you add to that all this stuff about coconut oil and nut butters being super healthy, whilst totally forgetting that they have absolutely tonnes of calories, and it's a recipe for disaster (well it has been for me anyway).

It really is a case of cutting calories, I know not all calories are equal etc, but the simple fact is that the 'eat less, move more' and the 'before you stick it in your gob, stop and think' diets are the ones that work!

I’m going to focus on eating as much veg as I can and make that my basis. Sadly ‘healthy’ websites and instagrams such as deliciously Ella have become endless ads for sweet products. I remember she once made a dessert with an absolute shit load of coconut oil and maple syrup in. You can imagine that it’s a healthy way to have a sweet but it’s not, you may ask well have cheese cake.

I'm in hospital convalescing from an illness, and am eating nut butters to keep my weight up - have a pot of Meridian's cocoa and hazelnut one in front of me right now.

They're full of nutrients and good fats are an important part of a balanced diet. But if you want to lose weight on them you need to be careful about measuring the amount you use and making sure you're not going over your calorie limit - as others have said My Fitness Pal can be a bit of a wake-up call.

I have previously lost weight on high fat, high protein diets (eg India Knight's idiot proof diet) without calorie counting but found that for me eating unlimited fats only worked until I had about half a stone left to lose. After that I needed to calorie count or switch to low carb, low(ish) fat, high protein.

But if you're eating the nut butters on toast it sounds as if you're not low carbing. Have you tried them on plain rice cakes to reduce the calories? There are also chocolate cookie Snack a Jacks which give you a bit of a chocolate hit for 60-odd calories.

Re veg, could you make your own dips for crudités - tomato salsa, guacamole, baba ganoush, hummus etc. Thinking they would be marginally healthier than commercial ones if not lower calorie.

Although again you would probably want to be tracking the calories and nutrients from the olive oil and avocados etc.

I find that eating LCHF reduces my sugar cravings. I used to be DESPERATE for some chocolate or a biscuit about 1.5-2 hours after a ( high carb ) meal. I think it was my blood sugar plunging .

This is interesting. Ok, so how do I do LCHF if I’m dairy intolerant?

Very easily actually - it’s not hard to do at all unless you’re a vegetarian. You can go on over to the low carb topic; There’s a low carb bootcamp that’s just finished and you can read through the threads to understand it. There is a very good spreadsheet which will be linked to in the starting thread for each week, it will have all the things you need to know to get started.

(If you are a vegetarian you can still do it but it takes a bit more planning and can feel like a bit of a slog, but you can still get along quite well, especially if you like eggs. Normally you might use a lot of butter and a fair bit of cheese in your diet, but being lactose intolerant you would probably need to be careful with those.)

Ninkaninus is right. People forget that we are all different but very few of us are ok with wheat bread or it's products (sadly when you think of the vast amount of it sold at us all the time)

Rye, spelt or Kamut bread is much easier to digest and usually doesn't 'spike' our blood sugar levels like wheat. I reckon that almond and pnut butter is better than coconut, which is being pushed at us all the time, though not like wheat is.

When you say very few of us are OK with wheat bread or its products could you explain a bit more? I'm not sure that's the case. I know some people cant eat wheat, but to say that very few of us 'are OK' with it seems surprising. Re blood sugar, the GI of bread made with wheat can vary hugely depending on what wheat flour is used (eg white, wholemeal etc) so it isn't all bad.

Backseat There's a very interesting book written by William Davis MD called Wheat Belly and he goes into the problems in depth. I didn't say it was bad for everyone I said a few are ok with it.

It leads to sleep\exhaustion, obesity and temper problems etc. I won't go on but suffice to say I don't eat it generally (it's difficult to avoid completely) I always know when I've had some for sure! I don't have coeliac though , that's another problem with it.

Thanks. I've just looked up the book and the first think that came up described it as 'questionable at best' by scientists.

Oh of course , a lot of them don't want to hear the truth, it might affect their funding.. Funny how many people are so unhealthy and obese with the NHS overcrowded to breaking point.

William Davis MD has no axe to grind.