cherl889
Loves this site!
Main-Tips…
1. Avoid all vegetable oils (omega-6 Poly Unsaturated Fatty Acids [PUFA]). The only oil you should use is Olive Oil but NEVER for cooking. This is my main gripe with Atkins – there is no differentiation between the fats. Omega-6s are highly inflammatory and cause untold insidious damage to your body. Don’t eat them!
2. Probably the reason why you’ve stalled so soon… Eat less protein and eat more fat. You loose weight on low-carb because carbohydrates raise blood-sugar, this stimulates the pancreas to produce insulin, which signals the liver and body to store excess glucose as fat. You only have a small daily requirement for protein (something in the order of 100-150g); beyond this the excess protein is converted to glucose, so raising insulin and fat deposition. So, make sure you are not eating too much protein. By calories (to loose weight) you should be eating 0-5% carbs : 15-20% protein : 75-85% fat. The closer you stick to these ratios the more successful you’ll be.
In practical terms make sure you are buying the cheapest and fattiest cuts of meat and NEVER cut excess fat off! Lamb breast, pork bellies, etc. Use clarified butter (or ghee) for cooking or beef dripping. Add extra butter to everything. Make accompanying sauces for your meals with butter, double-cream or crème fraiche or just add a good dollop of crème fraiche! Ditch the milk (too much lactose) and have your coffee/tea with double-cream. Thirsty? -- Drink some cream. Butter and double-cream should be your new ‘best friends’! Watch foods with lots of (hidden) protein e.g. cheese (spread some butter on it or eat with drink of d-c), eggs (discard some of the whites to reduce the protein), etc., etc. On low-carb it is easy to over-eat protein but impossible to eat too much fat. DON’T develop a ‘fat phobia’ – animal fats are wonderfully healthy (in the absence of carbs); they are packed full of vitamins and minerals, satiating and are the fuel that your body has evolved to run on (-- if you go on a low-cal/low-fat diet what fuel are you using? = your own animal [body] fat).
Mini-Tips…
1. Avoid all fruit (you probably are already) – the occasional handful of berries is OK though. Fructose (found in fruit and half of table sugar [sucrose]) is the other ‘bad guy’ in modern diets. Don’t worry about vit C – your requirement plummets on low-carb and there is ample in the few bits of greenery you eat and also in rare-cooked meats.
2. Watch for ‘hidden’ carbohydrates that can mount up e.g. milk. Read labels, and ‘study’ the nutritional composition of foods. You’ll soon learn what’s what. Eating only un-processed foods makes life a lot easier/healthier.
3. If you like a drink (alcohol), spirits are best, followed by dry-white wine. Alcohol won’t stall weight-loss as long as you are not consuming carbs at the same time.
4. Have some treats! Make some real ice-cream (egg yolks + double-cream but use a sweetener like stevia instead of sugar), have a handful of berries with double-cream or some 85+% chocolate (upto 50g a day has only a few carbs in it and it is incredibly good for you). Chips fried in beef dripping are healthy if you really succumb to a carb-craving.
5. DON’T do any aerobic exercise until you’re happy with your weight – no running or jiggling/jumping around. After you’ve reached your target weight do whatever makes you feel good – aerobic exercise is good for ‘toning’ but bad for weight-loss and is increasingly turning out to be bad for your physical health (it has +ve mental benefits though). Good exercise to do is ‘High Intensity Interval Training’ or ‘Resistance’ exercise – anything that exhausts your muscles in a short space of time. 5 or 10 minutes twice a week doing this will be more beneficial in terms of weight-loss than an hour’s worth of aerobic exercise once a day.
6. Consider taking some dietary supplements – not because you’re doing low-carb but for general health (everyone should really be taking these). The important ones are omega-3, vitamin D3 and Magnesium. These will help with weight-loss as well as improve your health. PM me for what, and how much to take.
7. Aim to eat around 2-300g of liver a week and lots of eggs (20ish). If you don’t like liver as ‘liver’ then as pate is fine. Liver and eggs are overflowing with nutrients and will quickly correct any nutritional deficiencies you may have – they are real ‘super foods’.
8. You will experience weight-loss ‘stalls’ along the way – these will usually only last from a few days to a few weeks at most. Your body ‘works’ with ‘set-points’ for weight (actually it is hormone balance rather than weight but that’s too complex to go into here). Once you start eating low-carb (or any calorie restricted diet) you will, as you have done, loose a lot of weight quickly (mainly water) then because of low-insulin you’ll start mobilising/burning your body fat. Cut the cr*p out of your diet (=carbs, omega-6s, fructose, etc. – these all interfere with the hormones) and the body-weight set-points get periodically revised-down. Your body will try and ‘defend’ each set-point by which I mean it will try and keep the body at a fixed weight by controlling for example metabolism, hunger, etc. (increasing/decreasing as necessary). So, in terms of actual weight-loss that you’ll experience, you’ll see periods when weight-loss is rapid then a period when it slows down or stabilises, then rapid loss again. This is just the way your body/metabolism works. If a stall in weight-loss lasts for more than about 3 weeks then you should consider giving it a kick-start (see below).
9. Don’t be a slave to the scales. Just because you’re not loosing weight doesn’t mean that you are not loosing fat. Your body composition WILL change while eating low-carb – fat will be lost, muscle will be gained; fat is light and bulky, muscle dense and compact. Once I’d reached a ‘nice’ weight (BMI around 23 – I’m around 21 now) I spent 6 months at about the same weight but I still needed to punch a new hole (an inch at a time) in my jeans-belt once every 6-8 weeks, muscle definition appeared from nowhere and I also grew hips and boobs (up 2 cup sizes – DH was pleased!!!). Look AT your body for changes rather than just paying attention to the weight of it.
10. There are a number of tips/tricks to get you loosing weight when you stall but I won’t tell you them now! If I do, you are likely to use them too soon and miss the benefit of them when you really need them. You will loose weight quite fast on low-carb compared to other diets but a steady weight-loss is better for you and your body than going all-out, using all the tricks in the book and seeing it drop off over night. Post again or PM me when you experience stalls and I’ll divulge them one at a time!
I’ve been eating low-carb for two years – it IS a healthy diet. I originally started for health reasons rather than weight-loss but the weight fell off too. Every clinical measure of my health is vastly improved compared to the years I spent eating a ‘healthy low-fat diet’ watching my weight creep up and health deteriorate.
Anyway, glad to see that you’re eating low-carb – I’m always astonished that so few people here give it a go; ‘fat phobia’ I guess.
1. Avoid all vegetable oils (omega-6 Poly Unsaturated Fatty Acids [PUFA]). The only oil you should use is Olive Oil but NEVER for cooking. This is my main gripe with Atkins – there is no differentiation between the fats. Omega-6s are highly inflammatory and cause untold insidious damage to your body. Don’t eat them!
2. Probably the reason why you’ve stalled so soon… Eat less protein and eat more fat. You loose weight on low-carb because carbohydrates raise blood-sugar, this stimulates the pancreas to produce insulin, which signals the liver and body to store excess glucose as fat. You only have a small daily requirement for protein (something in the order of 100-150g); beyond this the excess protein is converted to glucose, so raising insulin and fat deposition. So, make sure you are not eating too much protein. By calories (to loose weight) you should be eating 0-5% carbs : 15-20% protein : 75-85% fat. The closer you stick to these ratios the more successful you’ll be.
In practical terms make sure you are buying the cheapest and fattiest cuts of meat and NEVER cut excess fat off! Lamb breast, pork bellies, etc. Use clarified butter (or ghee) for cooking or beef dripping. Add extra butter to everything. Make accompanying sauces for your meals with butter, double-cream or crème fraiche or just add a good dollop of crème fraiche! Ditch the milk (too much lactose) and have your coffee/tea with double-cream. Thirsty? -- Drink some cream. Butter and double-cream should be your new ‘best friends’! Watch foods with lots of (hidden) protein e.g. cheese (spread some butter on it or eat with drink of d-c), eggs (discard some of the whites to reduce the protein), etc., etc. On low-carb it is easy to over-eat protein but impossible to eat too much fat. DON’T develop a ‘fat phobia’ – animal fats are wonderfully healthy (in the absence of carbs); they are packed full of vitamins and minerals, satiating and are the fuel that your body has evolved to run on (-- if you go on a low-cal/low-fat diet what fuel are you using? = your own animal [body] fat).
Mini-Tips…
1. Avoid all fruit (you probably are already) – the occasional handful of berries is OK though. Fructose (found in fruit and half of table sugar [sucrose]) is the other ‘bad guy’ in modern diets. Don’t worry about vit C – your requirement plummets on low-carb and there is ample in the few bits of greenery you eat and also in rare-cooked meats.
2. Watch for ‘hidden’ carbohydrates that can mount up e.g. milk. Read labels, and ‘study’ the nutritional composition of foods. You’ll soon learn what’s what. Eating only un-processed foods makes life a lot easier/healthier.
3. If you like a drink (alcohol), spirits are best, followed by dry-white wine. Alcohol won’t stall weight-loss as long as you are not consuming carbs at the same time.
4. Have some treats! Make some real ice-cream (egg yolks + double-cream but use a sweetener like stevia instead of sugar), have a handful of berries with double-cream or some 85+% chocolate (upto 50g a day has only a few carbs in it and it is incredibly good for you). Chips fried in beef dripping are healthy if you really succumb to a carb-craving.
5. DON’T do any aerobic exercise until you’re happy with your weight – no running or jiggling/jumping around. After you’ve reached your target weight do whatever makes you feel good – aerobic exercise is good for ‘toning’ but bad for weight-loss and is increasingly turning out to be bad for your physical health (it has +ve mental benefits though). Good exercise to do is ‘High Intensity Interval Training’ or ‘Resistance’ exercise – anything that exhausts your muscles in a short space of time. 5 or 10 minutes twice a week doing this will be more beneficial in terms of weight-loss than an hour’s worth of aerobic exercise once a day.
6. Consider taking some dietary supplements – not because you’re doing low-carb but for general health (everyone should really be taking these). The important ones are omega-3, vitamin D3 and Magnesium. These will help with weight-loss as well as improve your health. PM me for what, and how much to take.
7. Aim to eat around 2-300g of liver a week and lots of eggs (20ish). If you don’t like liver as ‘liver’ then as pate is fine. Liver and eggs are overflowing with nutrients and will quickly correct any nutritional deficiencies you may have – they are real ‘super foods’.
8. You will experience weight-loss ‘stalls’ along the way – these will usually only last from a few days to a few weeks at most. Your body ‘works’ with ‘set-points’ for weight (actually it is hormone balance rather than weight but that’s too complex to go into here). Once you start eating low-carb (or any calorie restricted diet) you will, as you have done, loose a lot of weight quickly (mainly water) then because of low-insulin you’ll start mobilising/burning your body fat. Cut the cr*p out of your diet (=carbs, omega-6s, fructose, etc. – these all interfere with the hormones) and the body-weight set-points get periodically revised-down. Your body will try and ‘defend’ each set-point by which I mean it will try and keep the body at a fixed weight by controlling for example metabolism, hunger, etc. (increasing/decreasing as necessary). So, in terms of actual weight-loss that you’ll experience, you’ll see periods when weight-loss is rapid then a period when it slows down or stabilises, then rapid loss again. This is just the way your body/metabolism works. If a stall in weight-loss lasts for more than about 3 weeks then you should consider giving it a kick-start (see below).
9. Don’t be a slave to the scales. Just because you’re not loosing weight doesn’t mean that you are not loosing fat. Your body composition WILL change while eating low-carb – fat will be lost, muscle will be gained; fat is light and bulky, muscle dense and compact. Once I’d reached a ‘nice’ weight (BMI around 23 – I’m around 21 now) I spent 6 months at about the same weight but I still needed to punch a new hole (an inch at a time) in my jeans-belt once every 6-8 weeks, muscle definition appeared from nowhere and I also grew hips and boobs (up 2 cup sizes – DH was pleased!!!). Look AT your body for changes rather than just paying attention to the weight of it.
10. There are a number of tips/tricks to get you loosing weight when you stall but I won’t tell you them now! If I do, you are likely to use them too soon and miss the benefit of them when you really need them. You will loose weight quite fast on low-carb compared to other diets but a steady weight-loss is better for you and your body than going all-out, using all the tricks in the book and seeing it drop off over night. Post again or PM me when you experience stalls and I’ll divulge them one at a time!
I’ve been eating low-carb for two years – it IS a healthy diet. I originally started for health reasons rather than weight-loss but the weight fell off too. Every clinical measure of my health is vastly improved compared to the years I spent eating a ‘healthy low-fat diet’ watching my weight creep up and health deteriorate.
Anyway, glad to see that you’re eating low-carb – I’m always astonished that so few people here give it a go; ‘fat phobia’ I guess.
