I have become horrendously fat. AIBU to go back to low carb?

[SquishyBones]

I know it works as I’ve done it before but I worry about my bowls as I already suffer from chronic constipation.

AIBU to ask you all for tips, meal ideas etc? Also success stories!

[Haffiana]

Breakfast today was smoked salmon, cream cheese and a bowl of radishes, cucumber sticks and sugar snaps. Lunch homemade buffalo wings (chicken wings marinaded in Franks sauce for a couple of days and baked) with roasted peppers and hemp seed tabbouleh (90% pure fresh parsley and mint, yum!). Supper will be Greek salad with a Bulgarian feta which I prefer to the Greek sort.

I eat eggs very often. Things I cook/prepare a lot - chicken caesar salad (no croutons), lots of asparagus atm as it is the season with Hollandaise or butter, steak with watercress and fennel salad (lemon juice and olive oil dressing), a lot of kale in the winter (roasted with garlic and chilli for example), roasted veg, pan-fried chicken pieces with lemon, cream and tarragon added at the end to make a sauce with the pan juices with runner beans, duck breasts, Thai beef salad, spatchcock poussin, green beans in garlic and oil, mushrooms with creme fraiche, courgettes cooked and raw, celery sticks with smoked mackerel pate (smoked mackerel, Philadelphia and lemon juice), roasted aubergine with hot pepper and parmesan, bacon or smoked mackerel and avocado mixed leaf salad, etc etc. I eat a LOT of peppers, cucumbers and my most carby item is usually tomatoes which I have a passion for, so I usually fit them in somewhere.

I think the secret is to eat really well... I low carb because I feel utterly fantastic when I do so. I am full of energy, never tired or sleepy, I never get bloating, and interestingly I just about never, ever fart! Farting in my case is always as a result of eating sugar, particularly sugar from fruit.

[SquishyBones]

Might be a stupid question but the smoked salmon breakfast ... do you have to cook the salmon on the day you eat it or can you cook and fridge for the next day? I can’t be faffing in a morning but that breakfast sounds gorgeous!

[Haffiana]

I rarely cook breakfast, far too much to cope with in the morning! Smoked salmon is cold from a packet.

I sometimes have egg mayonnaise with chopped spring onions instead, which I make a lot of at a time and keep in the fridge. I sometimes put some chopped crispy bacon in it. Always a bowl of whatever crunchy salad items I have to hand with it. I also occasionally make a big salad of diced ham (could be tuna if you like it, I don't particularly), full fat cottage cheese (quite hard to find!), diced dill pickled cucumbers and diced yellow pepper all mixed together for breakfast - it can be made in advance. That particular breakfast can keep me going until supper time sometimes.

One thing I do a lot is to roast a large piece of beef very rare and keep that in the fridge to slice cold with salads. All my family now prefer cold roast beef with a salad (they often have potato salad rather than my green salad) to a full blown roast dinner!

[Davespecifico]

Lower your carbs, but not low carb. You need a balance. If you’ve gone fat, it’s more than likely that you calorie intake per day is too high, regardless of the food groups you’re consuming.

[BIWI]

Nonsense @Davspecifico!

[Ifonlywecouldwishuponastar]

I've been thinking about this too. I eat a lot of carbs. One of my tablets makes me crave them even more. So, I've been searching on Instagram for healthy eating accounts, they are really inspiring

[MiddlesexGirl]

If you ditch the drink you probably don't need to do anything else. Maybe you could even eat a bit more.

[tiredanddangerous]

It’s all about the calories op. If you’re in calorie deficit you will lose weight. Fasting and low carb work because you’re eating fewer calories. I’d rather eat what I want within my calorie limit than follow a diet which says i can’t eat bread or potatoes.

[BIWI]

Fasting and low carb work because you’re eating fewer calories.

More importantly, it's about keeping our hormones (insulin, grehlin and leptin) in balance, so our blood sugar levels remain stable.

It's not just about calories in/out.

[OmgThereAreNoPlanesAboveMeNow]

You don't cook smoked salmon. It's already "cooked". Though I do know people still pop it on a pan.

Add Psyllium husk to your diet. You will massively benefit from it

[Sherlockia]

It's about finding something that is sustainable for you. I find lower carb better than low carb. Still have porridge, bread occasionally, potatoes but cut down and don't have them every meal, Include healthy fats and vegetables everyday.

[FlowerArranger]

@EvenPhilip... Try this for delicious Meditaranian food:

www.goodreads.com/book/show/26045032-a-lebanese-feast-of-vegetables-pulses-herbs-and-spices

Just go easy on the rice and burghul

[prismWitch]

Mmm but carbs and rinks have also calories, so if you do count calories you should be able to lose weight. You would be suprised how much calories is in stuff when you start to read labels...

It doesn't matter if you eat little. 100 gr of apple (which is avg size for this fruit) has 49 kcal when 100 gr of celebrations have 497 kcal. You would need to it 100 apples to get the same calorie content. Small glass of wine (125ml) is 87 kcal it really all adds up.

You can just stat adding kcal just to see how much you eat in a day. Elimination diet only works if you want to eliminate the whole group for the rest of your life.

[SquishyBones]

I’ve lost 3lbs since I started on Monday. I know it’s water weight but still.

I felt like utter shit this morning though!

[Ploughingthrough]

Nonsense @Davspecifico!

How is it nonsense? Davspecifico is right - you ge fat by eating too many calories. If you eat more calories than you burn over a longer period then you will gain weight - that is a scientific fact. Carbs or no carbs. Yes there are other factors at play, but it certainly isn't nonsense.

I lost 15.5 kilos (75.5 to 60 kilos) this year by reducing calories. I reduced carbs but I have not cut them and I won't do that because I don't believe it is sustainable for most people for the rest of their life.

[NoWordForFluffy]

It’s all about the calories op. If you’re in calorie deficit you will lose weight. Fasting and low carb work because you’re eating fewer calories. I’d rather eat what I want within my calorie limit than follow a diet which says i can’t eat bread or potatoes.

Definitely this! I've no inclination toward reducing any food group so when I've lost weight before I've always just looked at CICO. I'm not interested in any other method.

[GinDaddyRedux]

Agree with previous posters that all these faddy diets are an industry serving people who want quick results and to "cheat" ther body's natural way of doing things.

There is no substitute for mindfulness around calorie intake. I have just seen my parents achieve real sustained weight loss after 25 years of struggles, just due to calorie counting (tracking food intake via an app) and regular, sustainable exercise.

I think quite a few people set up a "baseline" of what they expect to eat and drink in order to be happy, and then look to extreme solutions such as fasting or whatever in order to continue to allow the majority of their days to comprise of that intake.

If you drink 1/2 to a whole bottle of wine every other night, and eat high carb/processed foods, it tends to go one way. It's not however what people want to hear hence diets that try and trick the system by carving out space through sporadic food denial etc, something which I just can't ever see as sustainable

[MsTSwift]

Intermittent fasting isn’t a faddy diet people done for centuries. I find it a helpful way to reduce food intake over course of a day. Then the food I do eat is normal healthy all food groups. Cut out unhealthy snacks in the week but have at weekends. Bmi was 27 now 21 am 2 stone lighter and I feel
Much healthier. It’s finding what works for your body.

[Gwynfluff]

the diet 'industry' is only in business because of the inability of (mostly) women to understand that a diet that works 'every time' or 'last time' is a diet that doesn't work at all. Because none do.

Christ who needs enemies, eh? Yes, definitely us silly women not understanding. Not that there is a targeting of the industry at women as there is more emphasis on them being slim to be ‘attractive’. Men tend to be targeted more by fitness plans but again, there is lots of overlap now.

That said the Covid stats have shown there is more male obesity in the U.K.

[MsTSwift]

I haven’t paid anyone a penny. I have realised I’m too fat read into current research on this and changed diet and exercise accordingly. Not “on a diet” but “changed my diet”. I like the mindset of timing as it means I can still have food I enjoy (home made cream tea) without being 2 stone overweight

[BIWI]

"If you’ve gone fat, it’s more than likely that you calorie intake per day is too high, regardless of the food groups you’re consuming"

This is the bit that's nonsense. If you consume too much carbohydrate it means you'll gain weight much more than if you cut the carbs down. Calories are not all equal.

[RandomLondoner]

There was a documentary when Atkinsons was near its peak popularity that showed the reason eating meat works is that people feel satisfied quicker and eat few calories.

The diet worked, but not for the reasons claimed. The actual rationale behind the diet (that it did something to metabolism?) was bollocks.

I've noticed that when I eat shit food, I eat more. I need a quantum of enjoyment, I think I unconsciously increase quantity in an effort to make up for lack of quality

The same documentary also featured a thin man who could eat what he liked without getting fat. But when they monitored him they found that he was always moving. They literally showed him just sitting at a kitchen table, and his foot was compulsively tapping the floor. He was fidgeting away calories every waking minute of his life.

[BIWI]

The actual rationale behind the diet (that it did something to metabolism?) was bollocks.

Would you like to substantiate that claim?

(Oh, and it's 'Atkins' by the way)

Low carbing works because you control the amount of insulin released into your blood, (which keeps your blood sugars stable) and impedes the laying down of fat. It's to do with the interrelation of three key hormones, insulin, leptin and grehlin.

[Shinyletsbebadguys]

I think OP it's about reading the research yourself. Everyone on here will have a set opinion , CICO is science but people who trot it out as a catch all pay little attention to the fact that not all calories are equal in terms of their affect in your system.

You could follow calories in calories out by eating oranges all day and nothing else....hardly going to be healthy is it ?

Look , yes personally I am keto, strict keto, lost 8 stone and have kept it off. However that's because I have a metabolic based disorder and have to account for that, other people do well on slimming world (my dsis is doing weight watchers and it works for her ).

Noone else truly knows your body and how it reacts. Noone can say categorically that keto or low carb or basic CICO can work for you. It's all very well quoting "it's science " but actually there are multitudes of studies showing multitude of things because ultimately we all have different systems , competing conditions etc etc.

I for example eat well over my calories out, particularly currently where I am tied to my desk and laptop all day, I have still lost weight (which granted I don't currently want to).

Keto works for me both because I fit the model of research but also because it fit my natural palate, my natural way of eating. It's not magic. It's just a fit for my profile.

For my dsis and dm if they start eating fat laden foods they find they can't stop eating them and overindulge. For me the same thing happens with sugar.

Look at the research yourself , if low carb is for you then consider magnesium (which in fairness due to the degradation of soil quality over the last few decades we all often lack) it may help with the constipation, I do and I am never constipated (I was a huge amount whilst eating a traditional diet...family history of diverticulitis as well...although I own I know little about the genetic effect of this so could not be related ).

Everyone will offer you a magic wand and there just isn't one, it's what works for you and your body.

[Ihopeyourcakeisshit]

I'm sure Atkinsons was a typo?
There's a danger of undermining your argument when you have to pick on something else