Low Carb question

[Blackden]

I need to do something about my weight. I've looked at lots of different diets and have been lurking here for about a month reading the different threads.
I am thinking low carb is going to be best for me for various reasons.
However I do have some concerns about maintaining weight loss after doing LC. I know that with any diet if we go back to our old eating habits we will regain. But I'm worried with LC that because some foods are strictly avoided that maybe I'll flip out and go mad stuffing myself with biscuits and all the other forbidden stuff afterwards.

to get to the point of my thread -
Has anyone here lost more than 1st doing low carb and kept it off for at least a year afterwards?

Sorry, not done that much weight loss but I'm maintaining weight via LC and the trick is to eat lots of lean protein - surprisingly filling. Eggs for breakfast and all that. I tend towards avoiding carbs at the end of the days, best advice I can give is to have very light meal in the evening and go to bed not full. I have a huge breakfast and a light meal like veg soup or stir fry, works for me.

There is two ways to approach low carb. One is a quick, fairly painless way to lose weight (& then inevitably put it all back on again). The other & better way is to look at it as a correction in eating habits, which will be accompanied by weight loss. There are huge health benefits to low carb, which in my mind make it worth sticking too. Of course if you "flip out" and stuff your face with biscuits then you'll put on weight - but you'd do that with whatever diet you were on. Last time I looked, no weight loss plan included lots of biscuits!!!!

Grrr, illiterate - "There are two ways to approach low carb."

There is no 'afterwards' with low carb

As Bugsy says, if you return to your old habits you'll put on weight, whether you eat low carb or low fat or low calorie. The slight advantage to low carb is that you tend to notice pretty quickly how crappy you feel stuffing your face with biscuits, plus you may well also lose a lot of those sugary cravings anyway.

Part of low carb, imo, is learning what actually happens to food in your body. Once you get your head round this, it's easier not to fall off the wagon because it becomes less about pure weightloss and more about maintaining longterm health. That's why we call it a Way Of Eating, not a diet.

But yes, eat biscuits, put weight back on!

I don't agree that you will necessarily put all the weight back on if you stop low carbing. I'm doing LC at the moment, and don't plan to eat this way for ever. But, because it has helped me break some bad habits and rethink my carb-love ways, when I re-introduce some carbs I will eat a lot less of them than before, better ones, and less often.
I don't see why I would balloon after stopping low-carb (which, to be honest, I don't really enjoy and find overly restrictive, but am happy to do for a while)

PVL, my experience leads me to believe that I'll always be lowish carb. To lose weight, I have to stay very low carb (below 40g a day), to maintain I can probably eat about 100g of carb. If I go higher than that I start gaining. However, I think I am more sensitive than some. You have to play about a bit & see what works. I notice the ill effects immediately too - not just in terms of weight gain, but the other physical changes. So, I was away last week & drank wine in reasonably high quantities & within a few days I was bloated & by the end of the week I had the hormonal spots breaking out on my jaw line again (which I haven't had for 7 months).

Thanks everyone. I've got to get my head round the idea that this won't be just a diet, it's a change of lifestyle. There wont be a start and end, it's an ongoing process.
I think I'm just worried about the deprivation angle and that I may go mad for a bowl of pasta after telling myself I can't have it for however long.

Thanks again!

Honestly Blackden - I'd be really surprised if after a few weeks of low-carb you actually did go mad for a plate of pasta or a pile of biscuits. You probably just won't feel the need. Pasta is actually one of the last things I'd choose to eat these days - and I used to eat it 3-4 times a week...

Unfortunately I've never quite managed to wean myself off chocolate - but now I eat a small amount of the very dark stuff instead of half a kilo of Dairy Milk - it works really well!

But the low-carb WOE really doesn't feel restrictive. I've eaten salmon, cheese, cream, butter, eggs, prawns, loads of veg and some delish meat, and that's just today...

I do agree that when you break the habit, you don't miss the carbs the way you imagine you will. But at the same time, the "I ate a fig roll and have ruined my while WOE" smacks to me of fadishness. IMO its about taking the good things and balancing it out with the reality of our daily lives, but everyone is different. some people are happ on a very low carb regime, some are not. One size fits all is a fallacy, imo.

I eat loads of delicious food. I don't find it restrictive - I just don't eat high carb foods. I never feel hungry on this WOE.

I can honestly say that bowls of pasta, baked potatoes, or biscuits are a real turn off for me now. Just thinking about them, makes me feel bloated. Like Tea, my weakness is chocolate - but I've also cut down to very small amounts of dark chocolate, rather than a bag of mini Twix!