Where am I going wrong?

[HayMaker]

So this is what I’ve eaten today. How come I was ravenous and ended up eating 4 biscuits and a packet of crisps this evening?! I’m being healthy I thought, but I don’t get why I’m still stuffing my face with shit.

Breakfast:
Green smoothie with various veg, a banana, nuts, seeds and hemp protein
Cottage cheese on Oatcakes

Lunch:
Roasted tomatoes on two slices of sourdough toast with olive oil and salad leaves
Satsuma and small handful grapes

Snack:
2 seeded ryvita a with hummus

Dinner:
Orzo with loads of veg, bacon and feta

where am I going wrong?

HbA1c !

Happily. I’m on my phone, and haven’t worked out how to link yet (embarrassing!), but look up the DIETFITS study at Stanford.

Off the top of my head (meaning I might have got minor details wrong): year long randomised controlled diet. People allocated to a healthy low-fat diet or a healthy low-carb diet (by which I mean trying to eat proper food, not processed “low fat” or “low carb” products). After s year, weight loss very similar between both groups, with both groups containing remarkably similar distributions of people losing lots of weight, a bit of weight, not much weight.

Tried same process, but allocating people known to be insulin resistant to the low-carb group. No difference.

If the carbohydrate insulin model were correct, people simply wouldn’t be losing on the low-fat diet whereas their results were, in fact, remarkably similar.

An additional observation is that in most pre-industrial societies, the predominant macronutrient is a carb - maybe rice or yams. Yet obesity is virtually unknown.

Look, I’m not saying that low-carving doesn’t work - it does for many people. But it works because it leads to an overall restriction in calories, not because of any magical quality of carbs.

The best diet, I would argue, is one that you can stick to - some people find low-carbing relatively easy and don’t miss bread, pasta, cakes too much. Others find it too restrictive and would rather give up high-fat foods or processed foods, or breakfast, or desserts or whatever. So I would suggest the OP thinks about what she could see herself sticking to most easily in the long term - and go with that.

@BIWI

In a spirit of reciprocity, do you have links to any studies supporting the carbohydrate insulin model? (As I understand it, Gary Taubes and Peter Attia set up a research institute to “prove” the hypothesis, but Peter Attia left when they were unable to demonstrate any supporting studies and the institute they founded was dissolved. )

I'd recommend tracking fibre on MFP and not just calories. I aim to get 30g fibre daily. This will help you feel really full, gets your digestive system nice and regular and also the body doesn't absorb all of the calories in fibre. Don't be afraid of unrefined carbs despite what diet culture tells us.

Don't deny yourself treats if you want them but try to incorporate fibre. For example if I fancy some chocolate I'll have half of a small bar plus an apple, instead of just the chocolate. If I want crisps, I have a small bag but also have carrot sticks with it. You end up getting to eat more food by lowering the calorie density. You also get the extra nutrients which your body needs. You'll likely find that you stop craving snacks anyway since you're more satiated.

Since I started to eat this way a few years ago, I've lost weight effortlessly and have finally freed myself from diet culture and disordered eating.

Good luck, OP!

I don't have any links, which is why I was interested in research that says it's wrong/doesn't work etc. (That might seem counter-intuitive, but I am always interested in reading more about the science!)

Thank you to everyone who has given understanding and constructive responses, I have taken note of everything you have said.

I’m not going to respond to anyone who is calling me names, being rude or discussing anything relating to diet culture as this is triggering.

And agree that maybe @mnhq need to start a healthy eating board and get away from diet culture.

@mnhq another vote for a healthy eating board from me - I know it will likely result in arguments about what healthy is, but it would be good to have a place for it - maybe in body & soul rather than weight loss chat

Nobody is calling you names! Everyone who has posted here has been trying to help you.

I agree.

There’s a saying: “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”.

So, barring unknown medical conditions, if your eating habits in the past have led to weight gain, you’ll probably carry on gaining, unless you change something about what you eat. I don’t think there’s any way around that.

I’ve had a massive appetite off and on throughout my adult life and it really peaked in lockdown even though I was WFH and doing zero exercise for almost two years as I just didn’t go anywhere I was actually eating moreover . I was ordering takeaways multiple times a day, eating entire cakes I was cooking etc. slowly I’m learning to identify if I’m hungry or if I’m just thirsty, tired or stressed. Often it’s tiredness or stress. Sometimes even a short burst of exercise at home ends the hunger because it’s actually stress busting and helps gives me energy.

I'm eating quite a lot of protein now which I have through high protein yoghurt, protein powder, eggs, fish and chicken mainly. I also find the more cooking a meal involved I have ( as opposed to ultra processed food) it’s more nourishing and satiating. So yeah cooking more and adding more protein to my diet has helped me but it hasn’t been easy. I’m currently cutting out most refined sugar from my diet and that seems to have reduced my hunger too.

I definitely think tiredness contributes. I struggle with sleep and I think you reach for quick energy foods like stuff high in sugar when you’re tired! You’re definitely right about listening to your body and identifying the issue, but as I say I feel really sick when I’m hungry and that as how I felt yesterday so I grabbed the only thing nearby to satiate that hungry-sick feeling so I wanted to question the breakfast. Maybe I need to increase the amount of green yoghurt and see how that goes.

I’ve also had sleep issues for the past few years, which has improved the past year thankfully and it has such as impact on appetite! A lot of research shows a link between sleep deprivation and an increase in cravings for sugary/fatty stuff. I found the more sugary/processed foods I ate the worse my sleep got and I was too tired too cook the next so would order out again - a bit of vicious circle.

I don’t know if you eat oats but I find oats with berries quite filling for breakfast and mid morning an apple with a bit of peanut butter - keeps me going until about 1pm! If I do want a bit of sugar when I’m out in between meals I tend to buy one of those small bags of sweet & salt popcorn, they are not too sugary or salty and are low in calories.😀

Fucks sake! Stop acting as if the other posters are being deliberately triggering by discussing 'diet culture'. You posted in the WEIGHT loss section.

Here's some advice - stop stuffing your face with biscuits.

And if I ate all this I'd be stuffed. To say that you still get so hungry that you feel sick means you should go to the gp.

Why was I hungry later? Why am I a disaster at just eating like a normal person?

Because the stuff you're grabbing between meals is addictive, calorie-dense junk food that you crave. You know it's available, so you want it. Just thinking about it will make you feel starving! When you're used to eating that kind of stuff, kefir and smoothies are not going to feel very satisfying by comparison!

Wow, this is absolutely nasty. Why are you so triggered? You clearly have little understanding of eating disorders.

Both your last two posts are horrible. What a pleasant person you must be.

I’m leaving this thread and won’t be reading any replies further on. There’s no need for some of the things written here, especially by you @Redtaper. You have just called me fat twice essentially, and you have no idea of the damage that this does and how this is going to get into my head.

I agree 100% , @MNHQ having a healthy eating board would definitely be a good idea to counteract some of the noises that come from the echo chambers of the dieting tribes and their warriors.

Pseudo diet experts who gather their knowledge on YouTube video or other social media stars and not from academics.
Some of the statements would be hilarious if they weren't dangerous at the same time. Statement that saturated fats do not matter, add more butter, more coconut oil to your food, and so on.

A board in which people would share their attempts to move away from UPFs, discuss whole food, a board in which people wouldn't be pushed towards some disordered eating and incentivised to eliminate macronutrients. A kind and accepting place.

And @coronabeer nailed it. The insulin model has been tested and destroyed , even when the trial was paid by the insulin model promoters.

Now, before someone start screaming for sources, here there are.

Gary Taubes, one of the loudest voice in the low carb movement paid Kevin Hall to make a study, and the conclusion of Hall are:

In concordance with the model predictions, carbohydrate restriction led to increased fat oxidation reaching a maximum within a few days and remaining constant thereafter. However, neither study found the predicted augmentation of body fat loss with carbohydrate restriction. Rather, despite the reduction in insulin secretion, both studies found slightly less body fat loss during the carbohydrate restricted diets compared with isocaloric higher carbohydrate diets with identical protein.13,14
https://www.nature.com/articles/ejcn2016260 and this despite a big fat (pun intended ) conflict of interest, since Hall was paid to prove that insulin was the player of weight gain, weight loss. Oops, didn't go as planned, Taubes wasn't pleased and in a matter of years, his Nutrition Science Initiative got dissolved.

More , here:

Feeding isocaloric diets of divergent fat and carbohydrate content are a means of creating metabolic and endocrine envi- ronments that test the CIM. Such studies show that reduction of dietary carbohydrate leads to rapid and sustained decreases in insulin secretion. The CIM predicts that reduced insulin pref- erentially mobilizes body fat and thereby increases circulating fuel levels and increases energy expenditure. Although the de- cline of insulin does increase circulating FFA levels and fat oxi- dation, these changes do not consistently increase energy ex- penditure or promote body fat loss
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2686143

The insulin model of obesity is not science-based. It is an online movement supported by chiropractors (I know very weird), YouTube, Instagram, a bit of MN with two boards on low carb, and several subscriptions- centred websites. I mean, isn't it lovely to be told you have been scammed and you are not fat because of wrong food choices, but because national nutrition guidelines are a lie.

This doesn't include people who have an abnormal glucose metabolism such as diabetes type 2 . For those, absolutely , restriction of carbs is warranted, in the same way people with PKU with an abnormal protein metabolism should restrict proteins.

@MatchaTea

Thanks for posting the links to the trials which which challenge the carbohydrate-insulin model.

There was also another Kevin Hall study which compared a keto diet to a low fat Plant based diet, specifically to test the insulin hypothesis. It was in a metabolic ward (gold standard for nutrition studies) and people were free to eat as much as they wanted of whichever diet they were on (each participant did two weeks on one eating pattern, then two on the other. Although the low fat, high carb diet led to increased insulin levels, people on that phase ate around 500 calories fewer per day. They reported similar hunger levels and food enjoyment levels on each diet, so it wasn’t due to people not liking the low-fat, plant-based based food. People on both diets lost weight, but people lost more body fat on the low fat diet.

The insulin model would suggest that higher insulin leads to increased hunger. This was falsified. The model also suggests that increased insulin levels should inhibit fat loss, but this was also falsified.

I haven't called you fat, I have no idea if you are fat or not.

Hopefully you can get MNHQ to set up a board for you, although I can only imagine what a bin fire a MN Healthy Eating board will be, particularly if people use it to discuss or promote weight loss under the guise of Healthy Eating.

And the fact remains, posters can quote all the 'studies' that they like, but if one doesn't tackle the reason that one eats biscuits and crisps every day then weight loss will not happen.

Not very often I read something on this board and agree with every single word.

So, either every government and 99.9% of nutrition scientists are part of a big conspiracy and/or have been duped whilst a handful of self-professed “experts” have seen the truth.

It's true that the NHS Eat Well Guide actually seems fairly sensible these days, although one thing it doesn't do is warn about highly processed food. It recommends going for lower fat and lower sugar items, which will naturally lead people to choose products like yoghurts where the fat and sugar have been replaced with weird gums and artificial sweeteners.

In fairness, the guide does say to choose wholemeal/unrefined carbs and thinks like plain yoghurt. But I agree that the advice to move away from processed foods where possible needs to be more prominent.

Ultra-processed foods aren’t mentioned at all - although again, in fairness, the evidence wasn’t there until recently to demonstrate that they can lead to weight gain and other associated health issues independently of their typical high sugar/fat/salt content because they typically lead to over-consumption. Basically, people eating UPFs consume more calories.