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So, I was inspired watching this thread go last fall and tried to walk more, as well as installing the free version of the LoseIt app (I was weighing in at about 340 then).  LoseIt said that I could get by with 2600 calories per day given my weight loss goal (I wanted to get to 270 at least, and maybe set a new goal from there) which seemed weirdly high, and after a few weeks of logging I realize I never eat that many calories anyways.  But my weight didn’t really do anything; and I lost interest when the snow started falling.  

This spring when I noticed that I had slowly climbed up to 350 (which is also the maximum rating of my bathroom scale) and, at about the same time, got to talking with a guy in my ward who is a fan of putting oneself into ketosis for general health as well as for weight loss—he’s got about five of us in our ward doing it.  He’s also very into balancing your macronutrients and so on; but really I haven’t been doing much of that except for keeping my net carbs below 30g per day (realistically I find I’m eating about 35-45) and relying on meats to make me feel satiated.  I’m trying to get back into walking but haven’t yet done much yet; but since April 2 I’ve lost 22 lbs.  (They say the first ten pounds or so is water weight, but I’m taking it!)

My long-term plan is to continue a very-low-carb diet in a four-month-on, two-month-off rotation (taking a break during June and July, and during the Thanksgiving-Christmas holidays), and just see where it goes.  This is the first time I’ve set out to lose weight and actually made good headway on it (I lost eighty pounds on my mission, more or less unintentionally), so . . . that’s something.  

Edited by Just_A_Guy
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  • 4 months later...
On 5/6/2018 at 9:35 PM, Just_A_Guy said:

So, I was inspired watching this thread go last fall and tried to walk more, as well as installing the free version of the LoseIt app (I was weighing in at about 340 then).  LoseIt said that I could get by with 2600 calories per day given my weight loss goal (I wanted to get to 270 at least, and maybe set a new goal from there) which seemed weirdly high, and after a few weeks of logging I realize I never eat that many calories anyways.  But my weight didn’t really do anything; and I lost interest when the snow started falling.  

This spring when I noticed that I had slowly climbed up to 350 (which is also the maximum rating of my bathroom scale) and, at about the same time, got to talking with a guy in my ward who is a fan of putting oneself into ketosis for general health as well as for weight loss—he’s got about five of us in our ward doing it.  He’s also very into balancing your macronutrients and so on; but really I haven’t been doing much of that except for keeping my net carbs below 30g per day (realistically I find I’m eating about 35-45) and relying on meats to make me feel satiated.  I’m trying to get back into walking but haven’t yet done much yet; but since April 2 I’ve lost 22 lbs.  (They say the first ten pounds or so is water weight, but I’m taking it!)

My long-term plan is to continue a very-low-carb diet in a four-month-on, two-month-off rotation (taking a break during June and July, and during the Thanksgiving-Christmas holidays), and just see where it goes.  This is the first time I’ve set out to lose weight and actually made good headway on it (I lost eighty pounds on my mission, more or less unintentionally), so . . . that’s something.  

Any updates? I'm happy you have found something that seems to be working for you, but I do have concerns about the method used.

This study shows how a meat-based low carbohydrate diet appears to be associated with increased mortality including heart disease and cancer deaths.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2989112/pdf/nihms-247461.pdf

The good news is that if you're finding that low-carb eating is helping, you can still enjoy the benefits by moving to a plant-based version which the study above showed to be protective against all-cause mortality.

Please understand, that I'm genuinely interested in your results and concerned for your well-being and not trying to use your personal experience as a platform to start any kind of argument about diet superiority.

Here are some quick links to learn a little more about low-carb plant-based eating using the Eco Atkins plan which is the model used in the study above.

https://www.atkins.ca/how-it-works/library/articles/the-eco-atkins-diet

https://www.livestrong.com/article/424438-50-grams-of-carbohyrates-a-day-diet/

In fairness, while this plan is indeed a low carbohydrate eating structure, it won't be ketogenic under normal circumstances at roughly 26% energy coming from carbohydrates which would be close to 163 grams of carbohydrate or 650 calories from carbohydrates based on a 2500 calorie diet.

All the best!

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9 hours ago, SpiritDragon said:

Any updates? I'm happy you have found something that seems to be working for you, but I do have concerns about the method used.

This study shows how a meat-based low carbohydrate diet appears to be associated with increased mortality including heart disease and cancer deaths.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2989112/pdf/nihms-247461.pdf

The good news is that if you're finding that low-carb eating is helping, you can still enjoy the benefits by moving to a plant-based version which the study above showed to be protective against all-cause mortality.

Please understand, that I'm genuinely interested in your results and concerned for your well-being and not trying to use your personal experience as a platform to start any kind of argument about diet superiority.

Here are some quick links to learn a little more about low-carb plant-based eating using the Eco Atkins plan which is the model used in the study above.

https://www.atkins.ca/how-it-works/library/articles/the-eco-atkins-diet

https://www.livestrong.com/article/424438-50-grams-of-carbohyrates-a-day-diet/

In fairness, while this plan is indeed a low carbohydrate eating structure, it won't be ketogenic under normal circumstances at roughly 26% energy coming from carbohydrates which would be close to 163 grams of carbohydrate or 650 calories from carbohydrates based on a 2500 calorie diet.

All the best!

Thanks for that.  I lost 40 lbs through the end of June and went off-diet for the summer.  I’ve bounced around between 308-313 since then.  I keep planning to start it up again, but I also moved back home in July (I’d been working away from my family for the past year and a half or so, and had been home only on weekends while spending weeks at an apartment about 150 miles away). I’m finding it’s a lot easier to keep to a diet when there just aren’t any carbs in the house, so this past month I’ve had a couple of false starts getting back on-diet, and then the kids insist that Daddy sample one of their fresh-baked cookies and the whole thing goes kaput. ;)  

I’ll definitely bounce your article off my friend.  I’m loath to change too much, though, simply because it’s what has worked so far and I **know** a veggie diet won’t be sustainable for me.  I graze too much; and meat is what stops the grazing.  :(  (Also—and I know this is infantile—but I hate everything about salad; from the.moment the raw ingredients enter my shopping cart, to the way it behaves on my cutting board as I prepare it, to the slime of the dressing and the awful way it all feels in my mouth, to the horrendous feeling as it slides down my esophagus.  HATE IT!!!  If it’s a salad or nothing—four times out of five, I’ll just skip the meal.)  

My thought is that once I get to a comfortable weight (probably low-to-mid-200s—mostly I just want to be able to go hiking with my kids without making people wonder if they need to call for a LifeFlight) I’ll probably try to reduce the meat intake, balance things out better, and keep portion sizes low while making a point to maintain a more active lifestyle; and hopefully I’ll be there in the next year or so.  Hopefully my body can take it for that long; and frankly, given my eating history I probably need to be worried about the cancer implications of sugar more than meat.  I don’t mean to downplay or make light of the research you cite; but my preliminary take is that dying in my 50s of meat-induced cancer seems preferable to living another 10 years at 300+ lbs and then dying in my 40s of a heart attack and/or sugar-induced cancer—which is probably the track I’m on at this moment.  

Edited by Just_A_Guy
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34 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

Thanks for that.  I lost 40 lbs through the end of June and went off-diet for the summer.  I’ve bounced around between 308-313 since then.  I keep planning to start it up again, but I also moved back home in July (I’d been working away from my family for the past year and a half or so, and had been home only on weekends while spending weeks at an apartment about 150 miles away). I’m finding it’s a lot easier to keep to a diet when there just aren’t any carbs in the house, so this past month I’ve had a couple of false starts getting back on-diet, and then the kids insist that Daddy sample one of their fresh-baked cookies and the whole thing goes kaput. ;)  

I’ll definitely bounce your article off my friend.  I’m loath to change too much, though, simply because it’s what has worked so far and I **know** a veggie diet won’t be sustainable for me.  I graze too much; and meat is what stops the grazing.  :(  (Also—and I know this is infantile—but I hate everything about salad; from the.moment the raw ingredients enter my shopping cart, to the way it behaves on my cutting board as I prepare it, to the slime of the dressing and the awful way it all feels in my mouth, to the horrendous feeling as it slides down my esophagus.  HATE IT!!!  If it’s a salad or nothing—four times out of five, I’ll just skip the meal.)  

My thought is that once I get to a comfortable weight (probably low-to-mid-200s—mostly I just want to be able to go hiking with my kids without making people wonder if they need to call for a LifeFlight) I’ll probably try to reduce the meat intake, balance things out better, and keep portion sizes low while making a point to maintain a more active lifestyle; and hopefully I’ll be there in the next year or so.  Hopefully my body can take it for that long; and frankly, given my eating history I probably need to be worried about the cancer implications of sugar more than meat.  I don’t mean to downplay or make light of the research you cite; but my preliminary take is that dying in my 50s of meat-induced cancer seems preferable to living another 10 years at 300+ lbs and then dying in my 40s of a heart attack and/or sugar-induced cancer—which is probably the track I’m on at this moment.  

Congratulations on the weight lost so far. Forty pounds is huge! I totally understand how challenging it is to stick to any kind of eating restriction when you live with others, and one of them is to a great extent in charge of the menu. Also, who can turn down their own child wanting to a share a masterpiece made with love, even if it is killing them slowly?

Infantile or not, your concerns are valid and they are yours. No one can stand the idea of being told they can no longer eat foods that bring them pleasure, and must eat food they don't enjoy at all. What I often recommend to clients is to experiment with higher amounts of veggies and veggie dishes. For some, it works best to have a daily goal of X servings of vegetables, while for others it works best to try new veggie heavy recipes each week and develop a menu based on favourites.

Weight-loss in and of itself is helpful for reducing the risk of diseases such as diabetes, cancer, and heart disease. If you find that nothing else works for you to help bring the weight into a healthier range, than I fully agree with the idea that losing weight on a meat-heavy ketogenic diet is still going to be healthier than continuing on the path of least resistance right into an early grave. My hope is to both encourage you with taking initiative and personal accountability for your health, while also trying to share some potential options that are more safe and effective long-term. I'd be more than happy to share plenty more research on eating to prevent and reverse disease and achieving and maintaining a healthy weight if you'd be interested, but I don't want to overload you or come across as preaching at you.

I will say this, that given a chance, taste preferences can and do change and what may seem as drudgery at first can become enjoyable and preferable. This supposedly happens faster when more radical changes are taken and maintained, but in my experience adherence is often higher when people back into it in the manner I explained above, by trying more plant-based recipes or beefing up the vegetable content of existing meals and gradually working towards eating a much higher proportion of nutrient-dense vegetables and much less refined garbage with inflammatory sugars and cancer-promoting animal protein and heart-disease promoting animal fat.

Again, all the best. I truly wish you well in this journey and would be happy to help to the extent I can virtually assist an anonymous internet acquaintance (though I think of you as a friend). Feel free to pick my brain about diet and nutrition and exercise to your heart's content or tell me to take a flying leap, whatever is more helpful.

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  • 2 weeks later...
38 minutes ago, NeuroTypical said:

I'm sure there's a way to get a bluetooth scale that will automatically update my phone, but I don't do that.  I just enter my weight daily, and log everything I eat.  (The logging everything really helps with my motivation.)

That's sooooo last century. ;)

Logging everything: ::back of hand to forehead, melodramatically:: Is that cookie worth the effort to write it down in my log? :hmmm: hmm hmm Nah.

Edited by zil
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11 hours ago, NeuroTypical said:

The free LoseIt app rocks.  I've been using it since like 2013.

The last year has been ok, but a disturbing trend:
1370140214_IMG_E11821.JPG.b76fd9c0825241824f3fa8138a1bd708.JPG

 

But if you go back to 2013, I'm still ahead of the game.
120707614_IMG_E11831.JPG.3a34fabf5ada8b121d0aab5d2ea65015.JPG

Are the long slopes where you forgot to input data for a week or so? I don't know about others but I don't see how the comparison to 2013 gives much to go on, simply because 2018 doesn't seem to show a weight reference point anywhere. I'll be nice and assume that since your 245 entry in 2013 that you've dipped down to 190-200 where you are fluctuating in 2018 with an upward trend currently, but it will reverse shortly.

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Those long slopes is where I stopped using the app.  For like 6 months to a year for some of those gaps.   You can see I used it a lot at the start, then sporadically until around early 2016, then hyper used it because I had hit a new high and was ticked at myself, then stopped using it and gained it all back, then finally for the last year and a half I've been using the app religiously.

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