Help! Low-carb not working - what am I doing wrong?

[Gastropod]

I've been following a pretty low-carb diet for years, just for my own general health reasons. But have put on about a stone in the last couple of years, partly due to reduced mobility and partly, I'm sure, just through eating too much.

Started cracking down on my carb intake about 6 weeks ago, but my weight has not budged. I am eating zero fruit, zero carby vegetables.

Typical day would be:
Breakfast - smallish bowl of 10% greek yoghurt with a few hazelnuts and almonds or a 2-egg cheese & veg omelette
Lunch -mixed salad with tuna mayo, or cheese & salami, olive oil, white wine vinegar
Dinner - either another big salad with cheese/cold meats, or grilled chicken/fish with mixed veg of some kind and a creamy sauce, or a coconut milk chicken or prawn curry with cauliflower rice
Snacks - brazil nuts / cheese / salami. I usually end up having one early evening snack as I eat late for family reasons

Drinks - black coffee, a glass or two of dry white wine in the evening at weekends, or maybe a gin & zero tonic. I try to drink lots of water but I really struggle with this, as I've never been a big water drinker and I hate having it sloshing around inside me and constantly having to go to the loo. So drinking more than a litre a day is a huge challenge.

What am I doing wrong? Too much cheese/nuts? Not enough water? something else? It's so frustrating. My partner is following the same diet and he is losing a kilo a week.

To lose weight on this type of eating plan you need to be in ketosis first. So your body burns fat. You're probably not in ketosis so its not working. Your calories may be higher due to the fats in your diet and all the dairy.

Drop your carbs to less than 50g per day to induce ketosis.

I didn't work for me at all, I've found doing 16:8 is more much effective. I don't eat many carbs as I'm diabetic, but once I cut my eating down to an 8 hour window I started losing well.

I’d do a few days of weighing everything and tracking your carbs. Things like nuts are low rather than no carb and can easily stop you losing- just a handful can make a difference. I think when people say “snack on nuts” they mean one or two.

Thanks for the comments. Indeed, I started the first three weeks tracking all carbs using the Carb Manager app. According to that, I stayed under 25g carbs per day for pretty much those first three weeks. Since then, I thought I was still being strict and would think I was still not exceeding 30g most days. But maybe I'm underestimating.

Is there a better carb tracking app? The one I used was very US-centric, and most of the foods listed were packaged American products, measured in oz. That made it hard to match my actual food intake with what was suggested in the app.

Thanks also for the fasting suggestion. I have tried 5:2 in the past, with varying results. In the end I stopped as I found I could never predict my fasting days due to a changing work/home/leisure schedule.

White wine (even dry) is sugary and the alcohol itself is calorific. You can still gain weight on keto if you are eating more calories than you burn. You are eating cheese, salami, oil, fatty dairy, creamy sauces and nuts while sedentary.

Your body runs off glucose and also needs fats/proteins for other functions like muscle repair and brain maintenence. Any protein and fat not needed for that will be converted by your liver to glucose and burnt or revered to fat and stored. If you eat more than you need, you will gain and if you eat less you will convert fat stores to glucose and lose.

Being in ketosis helps with weight loss as it should help regulate your appetite and lowers your insulin so you may gain slower while in a calorie surplus than you might on a carb heavy diet. You will still gain though.

@LavenderfortheBees thanks for your thoughts. This is where I get confused, however. My understanding of the low-carb/high-fat WOE is that you don't really count calories. Obviously if you're eating vast quantities of nuts and cheese, you are going to gain weight. But I'm really not.
The carb tracking app that I have been using also includes the calorie count, and believe it or not, it's been coming in at around 1500 cals per day, even on the odd days where I do have a glass of wine. I certainly don't drink to excess, and don't drink every day.
I can't increase my activity at present, though I do exercise as much as is tolerable. Do I cut out all fat from the diet as well?

If you google the DIETFITS study at Stanford University, you will see that both low fat and low carb diet patterns have pretty similar outcomes in the long term. There’s nothing magical about low carb in itself. Even when people known to be insulin resistant tried a low carb diet, they were not necessarily more successful with that than with a low fat diet. Interestingly, there was a wide, but similar set of outcomes with both diets, with some people hardly losing and others losing quite a lot.

This is a long-ended way of saying that maybe you should consider a different approach? The DIETFITS study referred to suggested that, overall, women were more likely to be successfully on a low fat diet than on a low carb diet whilst for men the opposite was true.

100% what @coronabeer just said. Low carb still needs to watch calories. It is a WOE because on a low-whatever, people are obliged to cook from scratch since most processed food are a mix of carb and fat.
The carb-insulin model has been proven wrong in clinical setting. It just doesn't work and the new Ozempic drugs that for the first time in history work for weight loss works by raising insulin which just throws the whole insulin makes you fat theory in the toilet.

Cut the nuts, cut the alcohol and limit the cheese. A man has a higher calories need compared to a woman, so you can't compared yourself to your DH.

1500 daily calories might be your maintenance. To identify how many you need, you have to go by the scale. If you are not losing, you are eating too much.

Fasting is another way to cut calories. In the end, that is what everything comes about. Cut calories. Either by reducing a macro (the carbs), reducing the time in which you eat (fasting), and if you look deep, those successful, do a combination of all. They cut calories, carb, and have a strict eating window.

You don't have to do them all together.

Do you know your BMR and TDEE? TDEE won't be exact but should be within 100 cals or so.

I just did a calc assuming you are 40, 5"5', 10st10lb and mostly sedentary (normal daily movement but no heart raising exercise). That came out with maintenance calories of 1,622 per day.

That would mean if you actually ate 1500cals a day, you would only lose 1lb a month. Calories are very difficult to eyeball so unless you are weighing everything and tracking religiously, you could easily be eating more than you think.

Rather than switch to low fat (since low carb seems to suit you) it might be better to strictly measure portions for a while and see where you are.

If you're interested, we're running another High Fat Low Carb Boot Camp, starting on 19 June.

There will be loads of support on it - we're a friendly bunch

There's a preparation thread thread here:
http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/lowcarbb_bootcamp/4824352-summer-23-boot-camp-the-preparation-thread

....and a Sign up thread here:
http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/lowcarbb_bootcamp/4824156-summer-2023-bootcamp-thread-sign-up-thread

Thanks, just come out of major surgery and eating weird hospital food ATM, so should be pretty motivated by mid-June!

@Gastropod I'd consider a couple of things - firstly, do you need to eat breakfast? If you could drop that, then you're introducing intermittent fasting, which is a major help.

Second, how about cutting down/out the amount of dairy? Some people find that dairy impedes their weight loss - you are having dairy at every eating occasion.

Third - why are you snacking? By now, if you're a seasoned low carber, you really shouldn't be feeling hunger between meals!

And finally. Water. It really will help you.

When it comes to diet, exercise and health, we’re all an experiment of one. People tend to opine confidently on what works best and what’s pointless -based solely on what worked for them. I’ve tried every diet and eating regime under the sun. For me personally, low carb, high fat (LCHF) has always worked best for one simple reason — it cuts out all cravings for food and snacks. It means I eat when I’m hungry and have no desire for crisps and nuts and late-night cheese! Happy lowcarbers always report the same. But again, it doesn’t mean it’ll work for you. The one thing I’d say is that you need to be quite strict. The few times I’ve had a one-off carby day for whatever reason, it pretty much negates the rest of the week. Again, just personal, but for me, even better than the weight loss is that LCHF has a whole range of other benefits. My sinuses clear so I sleep better, my aches and pains reduce eg arthritic hands feel much better, and I have more mental clarity. Good luck!

@Gastropod - a new BootCamp is now running if you want to come and join in for the support and to share experience. We're on Week 2 but people join in all the time.

I'm posting the link from my phone so it might not work for you but you'll find it in the Low Carb Boot Camp topic, along with the Week 1 thread which has the Rules in the OP.

Summer 23, Week 2: the first weigh in http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/lowcarbb_bootcamp/4835600-summer-23-week-2-the-first-weigh-in

That’s not quite true. The magic , using your word, about low carb is it dulls appetite and controls cravings and insulin spikes. A carb heavy diet for many people leads to cravings, hunger, lethargy , insulin spikes, bloating, water retention etc. that’s the key difference.

when I am low carb I find it very easy to manage my daily intake. When I eat carbs, I want more, I am much hungrier, more cravings, and can easily feel lethargic and bloated.

that’s why people find it easier to lose weight on low carb. It is also recommended by diabetes uk to manage insulin levels.

You have to eat fat only to satiety, focus on protein more. I do 50:50 or 60/40 ideally.

also yes you need to count the calories.