I’d love to know how you are approaching low carbing. I did it ten years ago and lost 2 stones but somehow just can’t do it this time. I know it works for me. I had loads more energy very quickly.
@BreakingtheIce
I'm pretty slack tbh. I basically cut out the obvious stuff: bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, pastry, cereals, alcohol, cakes/puddings/biscuits/chocolate. I'm not huge pasta and rice eater anyway but I thought cutting out bread would kill me because I love it, but if I miss it at all it's for the convenience rather than the taste. I don't miss potatoes or chips at all, oddly. I do miss lasagne, because you can make a lasagne out of anything and it's a hearty dinner with a bit of salad, and I miss flans. I don't sweat it about things that technically contain sugars, like fruit or legumes, because you've got to eat something and those are pretty healthy things to include in your diet.
I have cooked things for breakfast most days: eggs, sausages, bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, occasionally baked beans. I really like that and it carries me through to early/mid afternoon, when I have something light like a piece of cheese and an apple, or a spoonful of peanut butter and some berries, or half an avocado. For dinner, I always cook properly (I did anyway), but I skip the carby bits even if I'm making them for my kids. So I might have fish or chicken with salad and/or veg but I'll skip potatoes even if they're having them. I make more effort to make nice salads with a decent dressing. Or I'll have a bowl of curry but no rice. I don't get het up about small amounts of carbs, like breadcrumbs on chicken.
I found very, very quickly that the fewer carbs I ate, the less hungry I felt and the more energy I had, which was a revelation, stupid as it sounds.
If I get hungry between meals I have a cup of tea. I have a bad and longstanding chocolate habit, so I've given myself a ration of two squares of dark choc after dinner every day. Every so often I scoff a load at once, which is a bit of a problem. I tried not having chocolate in the house at all, but it meant I ended up driving out to the supermarket at all hours to get some in an emergency, which seemed worse somehow. I'm actually thinking of having hypnotherapy for the chocolate addiction, as we were bribed with chocolate as children and it has longstanding dopamine pay-offs for me that tbh are completely outside my control. Occasionally if I have a stressful day, I'll go completely off piste and have two double gin and tonics and a family bag of crisps, and at that point I think, well, I'm definitely not in keto now and let myself enjoy the break before going back to the plan the next day. I actually think that if you take a complete break from diets for a ringfenced time, it can avoid the plateau effect, but you do have to be able to go back to basics again afterwards, which not everyone can. I'm not a person who dieted a lot all through my life, so these are new insights to me, but probably totally obvious to everyone else, lol.
I'm not losing weight at the rate of some people here, but I reckon a stone every two months is fine, and is sustainable for me, especially as I do bollock all exercise. I will reach my target weight around spring of next year. In the meantime, my skin and hair look better, my joints ache less and my gut health is 1000% better. Once moving around is more comfortable, I want to start walking regularly, so that may speed things up too.
HTH. Happy to chat by PM. 