Low Carbs Newbie :P

[Rhino]

Hiya guys,

Attempting a shot at a low carb diet, today is day one so will see how we get on. I'm 21, 6ft tall and weigh in at around 100kg. I workout a bit, and this week will be doing 4 cardio sessions (burning around 500 cals per session) and maybe 1 or 2 weight sessions.

I have already lost over 6 stone via exercise and sensible eating over the last few years, but now I want to shift the rest of the belly and lose bodyfat, gaining muscle size on the way.

I use My Fitness Pal to monitor my calorie intake, but now I've shifted over to low carbs, using the pie chart as a gauge of how my carbs look for the day, here is todays:



Even with this, I still have quite a few cals to have before I hit my daily 2400. Should I eat as little cals as I can or is it a good idea to stick to that figure?

Just after some advice for breakfast, main meals and snack options that keep things interesting, only thing being I'm a fussy eater :/ I use a whey protein isolate shake post workout which is awesome as it is much lower in carbs than standard whey protein. Snack wise I have been having Babybel Light (quite a few I might add) and boiled eggs, but not too clued up on what else would be ok. On the forums I heard talk about peanut butter?

I have worked out my TDEE at around 3000 calories per day, with this in mind I set myself up for around 2400 calories per day.

I used to just count calories and not worry, but now with making sure I'm on low carbs, should I still hit around 2500 to ensure I don't lose any muscle?

Just after some general advice and any tips you guys may have. I know everyone is different but with the above in mind, do you think it will be long before I start seeing the love handles fade away?


Ta Folks

 

[Kat1e]

Wow - first of all well done so far. That's amazing!

Rather than try answer all your questions - my suggestion is that you run this as an experiment of one ie figure out what works for you. So pick something, do it and see what happens. Change one thing, see what happens etc!

For lots of info to get you going especially incorporating muscle building, body fat loss etc suggest you look at marksdailyapple - really useful
Good luck and look forward to seeing what happens!

 

[Rhyannasmum]

Hi,

I low carb and calorie cycle to help me shift my last few pounds of weight loss. Like you I'm trying to lose fat and build muscle and doing a mix of cardio and strength training to help with that.

I seem to be quite carb sensitive. If I stay below 50g of carbs a day I'm OK. Above 50g of carbs a day and I gain. For me carbs seem much more important as to whether or not I lose than cals. I've also bought some body fat scales as once you get down to those last few pounds and exercising to build muscle, results don't always show as weight loss. For instance over the last month my weight has hovered around the 9.12 to 10 stone mark. Now I've added in calorie cycling I'm seeing a downward trend again, but it's painfully slow and one day of 50+ carbs sees me back at 10 stone. However, my body fat percentage is down 3% over the last five weeks.

You may find that once you're into the swing of low carbing that your calories are not so important.

Im not much of a snacker during the day. Nuts are good to snack on, but they're very moreish and calorific so you need self control for them. If I do snack during the day I find a boiled egg with some full fat mayo is filling. You could have celery with peanut butter, that's filling too. I snack in an evening when I'm relaxing after the kids are in bed. A few berries or some dark choc are my favourite evening snacks.

I see you mention Babybel lights. It's hard to low carb and eat low fat. For optimum results you might want to consider low carb, high fat. So full fat cheese, cream, yogurt, mayo, butter, meat eaten with the fat. That's a good way of getting your cals up too. Takes a bit of getting your head around, but really you don't need to fear fat in your diet.

 

[Rhino]

I see, all good points guys thankyou.

Also finding it hard to do my gym workouts and working (postie so do 5 miles a day walking with heavy kit!) and I feel so drained and ratty, does this feeling go after a bit?

Thanks everyone for your comments, I wouldn't be where I am today without them.

 

[Rhyannasmum]

Feeling drained and ratty is common to start with. Your body is used to burning sugar for fuel. You now want it to burn your own fat for fuel, which it can do, but the switch over can take anything from a few days to a few weeks.

Get reading Marks Daily Apple, if you sign up for his emails you get tons of free stuff to read. I think you'd find it useful and interesting.

 

[Phoenyx]

Exercising and low carb is hard until you've adapted to burning fat as your primary fuel. This can take a week, or more (up to three is not uncommon) but is so worth it! To help, if you are very active, make sure you are taking in enough fat - around 60-70% of your calories.