DP thinks low carb is a fad diet - help please!

[Nowwhatsthis]

I've got two DC, after the birth of both I've found myself overweight. Both times I've gone on to a low carb high fat diet and lost loads of weight.

I've tried a lot of diets in my life and LCHF is the only on that's worked for me.

A few years ago my marriage broke down, I was stressed out, didn't focus on what I was eating and gained a lot of weight.

After divorce etc I met my lovely DP, I was already overweight when I met him but the endless dating / wining / dining we've been enjoying have meant me not pulling my socks up and sorting my diet out.

Anyway, DP likes to eat "healthy" and going to the gym. He thinks that if I want to lose weight I should do this to, which I've tried but it doesn't work for me.

I've said I'm gonna do the LCHF and tried to explain that I've done this is the past and that it's worked for me but every time I mention it he starts mansplaining to me why LCHF is an unhealthy, fad diet that doesn't work.

I need some ammunition now to really get him on board. Please can somebody help me explain it to him? Maybe by using YouTube links.

His main concerns are:

• Fat is bad for you
• Carbs are an important part of diet and should be enjoyed in moderation
• If you don't eat carbs you lose muscle and not fat

Who care what he thinks? If you are losing weight and eating relatively healthily, then that is what is important.

Long term, very low carb is hard on your thyroid but it doesn't sound like that is your plan

I'm someone who needs to eat carbs or I become very tired and loose too much weight. My husband is like you and eats very little carbs and feels good on that. The exception is when he is exercising hard and he eats some carbs.

Do you what is right for YOU!

The question is - do people who have lost weight LCHF keep that weight off with more success than people who lose weight on other diets/woes.

I don't know the answer to that but that's the real question, surely.

My best friend lost a stone and half about 10 years ago, when she was in her mid 40s, because she was told she had very high cholesterol. So she went on a typical cholesterol reducing diet and ate almost no fat, and lost a significant amount of weight (which she has kept off for 10 years). High carb low fat worked for her.

As a side issue, I am sick to the back fucking teeth of Michael Moseley. Do the BBC believe he's the only scientist out there?

I don't believe that cutting a food group out is particularly healthy but neither is being overweight. If this diet helps you then you should do it short term to get to the long term healthy weight. So basically I agree with your DH but I still think that you should do it.

You lose muscle through not eating enough protein.

Tell him to mind his own damn business.

Sugar isn't a food group.

OP, I do understand the need to get dp on-side. It's always easier when you have support. Unfortunately the low-fat mantra is still very much the mainstream (although the tide is slowly turning as yet more and more evidence emerges) so you may not persuade him just yet.

I say show him the vids, then crack on anyway. And come over to Bootcamp!

Carbs ARE a food group.

Everything in moderation.

And no one is suggesting ''no carbs'. Just vastly reduced from the level of the average UK diet and from unprocessed sources wherever possible.

'Everything in moderation' is utterly meaningless. Your idea of moderation will differ from mine which will differ from hers, which will differ from his.

If the OP feels that LCHF works for her, and she enjoys it, who is anyone to tell her otherwise?

However, I agree about stopping eating when you feel full. Luckily eating LCHF makes that very much easier to do!

It's not cutting out a food group out at all.

There are carbohydrates in vegetables and fruit, why do people think you need to eat pasta to survive!?

The results speak for themselves, OP.

The only argument you need is the one that starts with "It's my body and what I choose to do with it is my and only my decision"

Moomin the problem for a lot of people, me included, is grasping what moderation is. Clearly to get fat, moderation has not been happening.

I've lost significant amounts of weight and maintained the weight loss before cracking on to get closer to target and each time I've found that getting rid of the carbs and sugar helps my body understand better what the concept of moderation is. It's resetting your hormonal environment and gut bacteria to drive you to make consistently different food choices - however in today's world where people bring cake to work everyday and sugar is hidden in processed food, it's tough to keep it going forever.

Also moderation is useless if the advice on a healthy diet you have been given was rubbish eg fruit juice and smoothies being a healthy drink rather than packed full of sugar. Low fat yoghurts being healthy - again no because the fat was fine and now they have been packed with sugar to make them palatable.

Moderation now looks different than when I was a child - we would have cake once a week and it never had icing on and I was still overweight I know people who think cake once a day is moderation and modern cake always has buttercream all over it. Just advising moderation is useless as nobody knows what it is!

Some people have been trying, and doing moderation, but if the advice on healthy diets was crap, or they had the parameters wrong, it won't have worked.

Do not misunderstand me - I know LCHF works because I have done it.

I just don't think it leads to a healthy relationship with food. I don't like (personally) viewing any foods as "bad". It makes me very uncomfortable.

I only lost all the weight and kept it off once I changed my entire mindset when it came to food. No diet did that for me. Not LCHF, not 5:2, not low cal - nothing. They all "worked" in that I lost weight. But I couldn't maintain them.

Just to point out too that loads of carbs in the traditional sense I. E Potato, pasta, bread etc is a very British thing. You hardly ever get a meal without them. Lasagne and garlic bread anyone? Oh, yes and I'll have a portion of chips with mine please!

DH's family are French and yesterday for lunch we had bavette and a cheese, basil and tomato salad. No pasta, no bread, no rice.

They eat like this on a regular basis and are not following any kind of diet.

Totally agree with you on that Moomin - you can't just do a diet for a short while then go back to your old ways.

It has to be part of a total review of how you eat and a change of lifestyle or it isn't going to work. There is an American database of people who have lost significant amounts of weight and maintained the loss: key things they have in common regardless of how they lost the weight was they viewed it as a permanent lifestyle change, they continue to weigh themselves everyday and they don't change the rules at weekends. I think they are also more likely to have been successful if they had a health reason to lose weight than, for example lose weight for a holiday/wedding/look better in clothes.

Well it's true that for many people labelling some foods as bad is probably not helpful in the long term. I prefer to think of some foods as 'unnecessary'

Carbs, for me, are 'unnecessary'. I don't need them (other than the small amount I get from, say, veg and nuts) to function, or feel good, or be healthy, or be happy.

That doesn't mean I will never ever eat a piece of bread or a plate of pasta, ever again. But I know that my health and wellbeing are based on eating other delicious things instead of those. It works pretty well for me, and I think it's a pretty healthy way to view food, too.

Bibitty, there is increasing evidence that LCHF is the way to lose and keep off weight. Read John Briffa's books for more info on the studies.

Carbs are a vital part of diet, what LCHF advocates is getting your carbs from veg, salad and dairy. So full fat yogurt good (if I have breakfast I have about 150g and the fat keeps me full from 6am until lunch). Low fat yogurt I'd eat more as much and still be snacking by 10:30.

Dinner tonight is a great example. I'm having lamb marinated in olive oil, spices and garlic in a spiced tomato sauce. I'll serve it with cauliflower rice. So carbs involved, but good carbs.

Toffee can I come to your PILs for lunch that sounds delicious!

With LCHF am I right in thinking that when you get to your target weight you add a few carbs each week untill you start adding weight then you drop the next week till you find the carbs needed to maintain.

Low carbs doesn't mean no carbs

I'm also 90% veggie (ie, only like having meat or fish once a week at the most) and found it extremely difficult to do LCHF this way. If I'd had meat every day I would have found it very expensive I think.

As it is my diet is mainly veggies, some meat (usually chicken), some fish (salmon, tuna, prawns, cod), a fair amount of dairy, pulses, lentils, beans etc, grains inc cous cous, bulgar wheat. I eat white carbs - rice, bread, pasta, potatoes etc. No they are not "necessary", but they are as yummy to me as any yummy low carb meal (of which there are many) is, so I don't want to give them up.

I know tonnes of people who have lost significant amounts of weight doing LCHF. All of them have piled it back on.

It certainly has to be a lifestyle change, and it has to be one you can commit to. I couldn't commit to it, so what I do now works better for me and what I do know has also meant I don't spend all my time obsessing about food, which I did on LCHF.

You must do what works for you OP, but whatever you do, don't get into the mindset of it being a "diet", as in something you can do for a bit and then go back to eating "normally" once you've lost the weight. It's got to be something you can really stick to long term.

With LCHF am I right in thinking that when you get to your target weight you add a few carbs each week untill you start adding weight then you drop the next week till you find the carbs needed to maintain.

Yes, generally, though many LCHF dieters don't do this.

I am 100% veggie. I am having between 15-25 carbs per day and finding it really easy to stick to this. It definitely has been a life style change

Totally changed my eating habits.

I don't think I could do the 5 carbs per day Full Atkins.

*It certainly has to be a lifestyle change, and it has to be one you can commit to. I couldn't commit to it, so what I do now works better for me and what I do know has also meant I don't spend all my time obsessing about food, which I did on LCHF.

You must do what works for you OP, but whatever you do, don't get into the mindset of it being a "diet", as in something you can do for a bit and then go back to eating "normally" once you've lost the weight. It's got to be something you can really stick to long term.*

I'm the opposite though, when I've been doing LCHF before I didn't think about food at all! I felt so satisfied most of the time that I could go 20 hours forgetting to eat. The stable blood sugar levels wiped out any cravings or obsessions completely.

Of course I'm intending for it to be a life style change, which is why I want DP on board! As I've already said, when I previously come off it it was firstly due to pregnancy (and I was worried about Keri and pregnancy) and the second time was during my marriage breakdown which led to comfort eating/drinking.

Anyway, I know it works for me so I don't want to keep justifying why that is anymore.

All diets work in my experience - they all involve you cutting out something you'd like to eat, whether it's carbs, fat, protein, dairy, sugar. There is always restriction of some form, and that's how you lose weight.

Personally I'd have to agree with your DP as my time on the low carb high fat diet left me with painful gallstone (little hard balls of cholesterol in the gallbladder) but I know plenty of people have had success with it and no gallstones!

The healthiest diet is moderation, but if those of us who are overweight could get on with that we wouldn't be overweight in the first place! It's all about picking the restriction that best suits you - if you had to go through the rest of your life without carby foods or without meat/dairy, which would you choose? Go with that the restriction you could live with for life - because (on and off) you might have to.

*sorry for typos!

There's a really good concise article, google Aseem Malhotra men's health and it goes straight there, can't work out how to link on the phone. Great for naysayers of all kinds: short enough to get anyone to read but with everything you'd want to get across.