When does Fat Burning Kick in?

[cugila]

Hmmmm There appears to be many versions of human biology though doesn't there?
Some things that we've held as truths for many years are now not quite what we thought.
I always think its worth keeping an open mind.

Human Biology is constant. Unless they have been building people somewhere ??

Metabolism is the only variable. Open minds as you say are great things, you get plenty of that on this Forum.

 

[Diaphanous123]

Human biology is indeed constant, but I think magicaldebs is trying to make the point that our knowledge and understanding of it seems to be constantly changing.

 

[cugila]

Human biology is indeed constant, but I think magicaldebs is trying to make the point that our knowledge and understanding of it seems to be constantly changing.

I agree, the knowledge and understanding of the Human condition is everchanging. However, the basics remain the same. Thanks for your clarification. Much appreciated.

 

[Diaphanous123]

Anyway, to go back to my original question, which was about how long it takes for what I now understand to be called the "Metabolic Shift" to fat-burning to take place...
I have now received the ketone strips and I seem to be just in the "trace" zone for ketones, 0.5 or so. Hubby (the Type 2) is the same.

Is that the level that low-carbers expect to achieve? And does that mean - hey presto - our bodies are now preferring fat as fuel over glucose/glycogen?

Thanks for your replies - we greatly appreciate any input. Cugila, I have put your resistance band suggestion to Ray, he is quite interested. Do you have a specific workout that comes with the bands?

 

[cugila]

My resistance bands only cost a tenner from Ideal World. The instructions that came with the kit was pretty useless, however I managed to get the proper instructions from a friend. So now there are loads of things I can do with the kit. It might be cheap and cheerful.....it works !

 

[carolynjw]

I've got the resistance bands too, after taking some excellent advice on here. I got mine off ebay (as I had some money in my paypal account) and use them every evening.

Good luck everyone and keep looking on this forum for advice - it is really worth it!

Carolyn x

 

[Diaphanous123]

Well, I will get the resistance bands maybe for my hubby - but he has such difficulty finding the time for exercise. At least we had a good walk (with dogs, and then round the zoo!) yesterday, and again with dogs today.

We are beginning to find that we are losing weight - albeit nice and slowly, a few 10ths of a pound per day, but it is going back in the "right" direction which is good. Also yesterday (at the zoo) there was NO suitable low-carb food so we both pigged out on sausage rolls, hubby had a pastie, and I had chocolate tiffin! When we got home my BS (non-diabetic) was 5.5, but hubbys (Type 2) was 6.8, so still not so bad considering, eh?

In future he will take my advice and take some low-carb food out with us! Although in fairness it did say they had a Southern Fried Chicken outlet which we had hoped to avail ourselves of, but as it was still winter it was shut. Tonight we tried the cauliflower "rice" idea - brilliant!

And - as a dance teacher I was a little apprehensive, but tonight I taught bellydancing for 2 and a half hours, with virtually no carbs beforehand! I wouldn't have thought it possible! Didn't even feel particularly exhausted afterwards!

 

[Diaphanous123]

Ha! After my triumphalism yesterday having done my 2 and a half hour workout, and weight loss very small but steady every day for a week or so, I have put on 3 pounds this morning! Perhaps I ate too close to bedtime, hope it is that. Type 2 hubby Ray had a similar thing a day or so ago, put 2 pounds on, then dropped it again! Perhaps the lesson is don't weigh yourself every day but it's hard.

As we have tested for trace ketosis with the strips, that is I understand sufficient to say we are now burning fat for fuel. Trying hard to drink more water with it as well.

 

[betic]

i have had a 5 month exercise on the atkins diet a few years ago....about 10 actually...and i found that once i had my self geared up and was burning the fat off, if i let just the slightest slip, i would leave ketosis and had to revert back to the start levels again..... my diet was to be honest quite disgusting...i at the time worked near to a morrisons so every day was one of their roasted pork joints and fried breakfast...tasted terrible now i think back.

I undoubtedly lost weight, and i must say it came off where it needed too which was a first in my many diets.....i think i did about 5 stones in as many months, felt good but just could not stick to mr atkins rigid diet....i was dying for a piece of fruit and some variety....this just wasnt available as it is now and the information was all atkins related, so you had no option for the diet you can have today with the low carbing.

Ketosis for me was a very fine line, if i had two pieces of kentucky i would be out of it and back to the start again, it really was particular on the carb side of things..but to be honest the amount of greasey lardy stuff i ate then was nothing short of insane really, but the weight continued to drop...

i think now i am getting my sugars down to a reasonable level i will get the old strips and see if my carb level is too high for ketosis or not....the strips certainly give you a good indication if you are burning fat sugars or not, and i found them pretty precise...
good luck with hubbys weight loss any way...

 

[Ardbeg]

My experience with Atkins was very similar to yours betic.

I found myself eating monotonous stuff, like peperami's and baby bel cheeses as snacks all the time. Bacon and eggs for breakfast with steak and salad or chicken and salad for dinner.

It did become very dull and boring after a few months and when I came of it the weight piled back on quicker than it came off.

 

[Diaphanous123]

Thanks for your replies betic and Ardberg. We are both maintaining our weight well on this high-fat low carb regime. Our carbs are about 40g - 60g per day. My husband's bg is good, but not spectacularly so (about 5.8 to 7 most of the time). However neither of us is losing any weight, still. It might go down one day to go back up again the next.

I know some people are not adopting the high-fat approach, but for those who do "buy into" the ketogenesis idea, we are still baffled by the maxim that you can eat as much fat as you like and still lose weight. Much as I don't want to think we have to sacrifice carbs AND count calories, surely it is so (as cugila et al have asserted) that unless you are in calorific deficit, you cannot burn body fat - surely the body will happily fuel itself on the dietary fat and not need to consume it's stores unless you exercise restraint on the portion size and calorie front? And I fear this is where we are going wrong.

There seems to be this argument that it is self-limiting on a high-fat low-carb diet, in that you will feel so full up on your high-fat meals that you won't feel the desire to snack. We are not finding that this is the case, and still fancy that bag of Walkers Crisps in the middle of the evening (our carb indulgence) and a bit of cheese, a bite of sausage - and all this adds up, calorie-wise. The snacking urge is of course psychological as well as physical, and this does not seem to be addressed.

Hubby is finding it hard to eat less as he says he is so hungry a lot of the time, and I am too - I teach dance so need to have stores of energy for the "big bursts" I have to give my students 4 times plus per week, so I would be afraid to cut down till I felt hungry. Don't get me wrong, I am amazed at how I can teach a class with virtually no carbs consumed during the day, the low-carb is going well in that respect. The problem is the cutting down further prospect, which seems grim to both of us.

You guys seem to have lost lots of weight whilst eating a lot of fat on the Atkins regime. I wonder what we are doing wrong?

 

[Synonym]

Diaphanous – Reading through this thread I just wonder what it is that you are wanting from changing your diet. :?

Your posts clearly indicate that you are not enjoying what you are doing as it has words in it like ‘getting away with’, ‘indulgence’, ‘cutting out’, ‘counting’, ‘afraid to cut down’, ‘seems grim’ etc etc.
You seem to be fixated on the ‘amount’ that you eat as in “eat as much as we like and still lose weight” and seem not to know how little food that you actually ‘need’.

You and your husband are clearly not helping each other with positivity and may even be more in the habit of encouraging lapses.

You say “having terrible snacking urges in the afternoon and evening” , “…….still fancy that bag of Walkers Crisps in the middle of the evening (our carb indulgence) and a bit of cheese, a bite of sausage - and all this adds up, calorie-wise.” Too right it does! :shock: :shock: :shock:

I am afraid that the psychological angle is something you personally have to address and in my experience it takes about 3 days of strict control to get to the point where all runs smoothly and the cravings fade. Each time you indulge yourselves you will have to start your 3 days again! The energy kicks in at the 3 day or so point too and you will find that it comes from fat burning and not your cravings and indulgences. You know this already as you have already noted that you “Didn't even feel particularly exhausted afterwards!”

You have to want to do this so you need to get motivated or you won’t ever get to the point where it works because half-hearted doesn’t get half results it gets zero results and causes frustration to the point where you give it all up.

Has your husband tested his BG levels before and after foods so that he knows what they do to him? I did and found that I couldn’t take any of the starchy carbs at all. I found it much simpler from that point as I then never considered those at all and concentrated on putting IN to my diet all the different things that I could eat rather than cutting things OUT. A total mind shift and it really helped. So you are right - it includes psychological control.

You also seem to have confused cutting down carbs with Atkins which is not the same at all so perhaps you need to do the Atkins for yourself as you only need to diet and your husband needs to do the ‘eating to his meter’. He may not even need to LOW carb but just cut them down and it is not that difficult to cater for the two of you together.

Forgive the directness of my post but I hate to see you wasting all that time and getting nowhere.
:roll: :x :roll:

 

[Diaphanous123]

Synonym
No offence taken in fact we appreciate your directness, and take on board your comments about negativity. We have lost (and regained) weight many times on low-fat regimes in the past so are veterans of dieting.
Let's face it. it's only human nature to want to have your cheese and eat it, and we all want to become and stay slim with the minimum of hunger pangs.
My point though is that the exponents of ketogenesis seem to assert that you CAN eat as much fat as you want, that you can IGNORE calories, and still lose weight, In the past we have always restricted caloric intake as a means to losing weight, but that is not what seems to be advocated by the high-fat "brigade".
We are familiar with the mental shift that takes place once one accepts one is on a calorie-controlled diet, and that once you click into that state you can convince yourself you are not hungry, and tuck any cravings to the back of the mind.
It boils down to: calorie control with low-carb high fat - OR - low carb, high fat, **** the calories, and still lose weight? I am trying to establish the science of this, or more particularly, do people have experience of succeeding with weight loss on the latter regime?
Incidentally, Ray does seem to have started losing now, despite the Walkers indulgences! Lets hope it continues.

 

[Ehlana]

Diaphanous - I too seem to have been dieting all my life and its only in the past 2 years I have managed to lose any weight. I am in agreement with synonym that a lot of it can be due to attitude - and it took me years to figure out that you shouldn't diet but eat to your body type.

For example; I realised that any type of grains in a morning sent my sugar levels into double figures and I was starving only an hour after eating - there is nothing you can do as the instinct is to replenish and you generally want carbs! However, swapping porridge for a high protein shake with fruit I don't feel hungry for 3/4 hours and am satisfied with a small snack of mixed nuts to keep me going until lunchtime.

If you can keep this up (its not always easy), then I have found some simple rules can keep you on a slow and steady progress. I never count calories as that would just make me totally obsessive about food.

If I was to give any advice I would ditch the crisps, because quite frankly I think they are probably one of the worst snacks going, once I stopped crisps, milk chocolate and bread I was far happier and didn't think about food so much - plus I started to eat much less naturally.

I hope this helps - this is only my own experiences, but as T2 with PCOS weight has always been high on my agenda.

 

[Diaphanous123]

Thanks Ehlana
Whilst I would not claim that crisps are the better part of our diet, (I think I would find myself on a sticky wicket there!) it is almost our only high-ish carb indulgence (oops, sorry Synonym, used that word again! :lol: )
I am intrigued though Ehlana about what you mean by eating by your body type? Both Ray and I are apple shapes although his visceral fat is higher than mine, which I understand is pretty normal, gender-wise. Can you clarify that?
And just to set the record straight, we are not at all miserable on the low-carb regime, and are doing quite well, morale-wise. I am on anti-depressants and HRT though, and I do get a mid-evening carb craving which makes my stomach gnaw at me and keep me awake in the night if I don't give in to it to some extent - like a bag of said Crisps or a couple of slices of buttered toast).
Must confess, Synonym, that I am not fully au fait with the differences between Atkins and general low-carb advice, but I will do more research on this. We are aiming for plenty of veg, plenty of eggs, meat and fish, (though trying to watch portions of protein a bit as protein metabolises into glucose eventually) and plenty of allegedly good fats such as cream, butter, olive oil, coconut oil and fat on meat.
I think perhaps a little tweak downwards on the overall quantity of food we eat is probably the answer? Or possibly one or two really "good" days on portion sizes per week would give a kick start?

 

[Synonym]

Hi Diaphanous

To be honest, you would do much better to forget diets like Atkins which only work for you when you are 100% (plus!) committed. You cannot ever truly come off that kind of diet as the weight goes straight back on and you can end up yo-yoing.

You shouldn’t be considering what you are doing as ‘a diet’ anyway as it should be a change of eating and lifestyle which will be for the rest of your life. You say you are veteran dieters and that your weight has gone up and down so clearly that old way of tackling your problems does not work for you.

In your last post you are even talking about “plenty” of this and that. You should only use the word "plenty" in connection with the amount of weight you intend to lose and not the amount you are going to be eating to achieve that loss!! You are actually going to have to cut down your intake in order to lose weight – fact! Sad but true. :roll:

Having said all that, it sounds as if you are almost on the right track except for the quantity and the snacks. Your posts make you sound as if you are clinging for all you are worth to being able to eat “plenty” and that will not help you so you need to forget it. Also if you cut out the snacks or change them for low carb snacks you will do much better. (Crisps?! :shock: :shock: :shock: )

No “little tweaks” or “one or two good days” – just go for it properly and it will work otherwise you are truly wasting your time. I look forward to hearing how well you are doing.

ps Congrats to Ray on progress to date. 8)

 

[Ehlana]

Diaphanous,

Well the simple answer for me RE body type is that I am susceptible to most refined carbs - they just send me into a spiral of cravings. Which just makes me totally miserable and all I seem to think about is food and when my next meal is coming from.

I too am apple shaped and its only my stomach area that is still a problem!! Even with all the running, weight-training and aerobics I still carry weight there. Very frustrating......

From your posts I think you are getting there - it took me 2 years to start to get my diet in order. Plus its impossible to stop everything all at once. Tried that - crashed and burned!!

Have you tried lightly salted Edame beans (soya) or nuts instead of the crisps? You can get the beans from M&S now. High protein but still crunchy - yummy!!

 

[Diaphanous123]

Thanks Ehlana and Synonym for your replies.
I have been on another forum more about the weight loss aspect of low carbing, and got some answers there by lurking. I have now got the plot - on a high-fat low-carb diet, it is said that you cannot gain weight, as the extra fat is excreted, but in order to actually lose it you have to watch the overall calories and cut them as well. So you do have to count calories, unless you have an appetite which is self-limiting, which it seems I don't! Of course once you get used to the new portion sizes etc, you don't have to keep quite such a close eye on the calories because you know what you are having.

Now I am trying to keep my calories at 1500 - 1600 per day, with a proportion of 60-70% fat, 20% protein, and 10% carbs, a la Barry Groves recommendations, and my weight loss (and that of my type 2 husband who is following the same regime on 1800 cals) seems to have kicked off. We've both lost a couple of pounds. Trouble is our scales just broke - have ordered some more!
Fitday.com is a great site where you can put in everything you eat for free and it tells you exactly how many calories, fat, carbs, protein you have or are about to eat. Also you can put in your daily activities and it tells you your calorific balance.

We feel we are really on track now both for weight control (both) and BS control (both - particularly Ray, but I suspect I could well have been a diabetic in the making (apple shaped, some family history, etc) and hopefully I will save myself from that by cutting the carbs now.) Ketone strips reveal that we are truly in ketosis a lot of the time - if I go right up to purple on the strip I know I need to take more water with it! (the diet :lol: ) then it comes back to trace, which is apparently all you need to be in ketosis and fat-burning. I am still fascinated and astounded at how I am functioning so well without appreciable carbs, with the minimum of carb cravings (just the odd general food cravings!) as I was a real carb addict and getting more into sugary things as I got older.

Thanks Ehlana for the tip about the beans - I think we've had those before and they are nice. Thing is though, I must stress that apart from our green veg and salads, we have virtually no carbs, so the packet of crisps is often the only carb indulgence (oh no, that word again! ) of the day, and it does not put hubby's BS up, so why not?

Will keep you all posted on our progress and thanks for the replies. Still reading loads - the Gary Taubes book The Diet Delusion is my current tome of choice, quite a big read that one.

 

[Synonym]

Well done Diaphanous, you sound as if you are just about on track now! We will be waiting to hear how things are in a few weeks time.

 

[pleonism]

I am new to this site so please forgive me if I double any information or missed reading something newbeeees should read.

Hi all,

I done the atkins many times in the past 15 years... both the old version and new one. My greatest success with low carb. diet is with the old version which basically is high fat, high protein, low low low carb. The person starting this string said earlier that they kept their carbs. around 40. I would like to say that for me this number is too high..

I try 3 things for the greatest success with atkins.

1. High fat is needed for success with atkins diet.

2. you need to find what your limit is for ketosis. My number is 31. at 32 carbs i come out of ketosis which means you need to drop carbs. for atleast 3 days to get back into ketosis.

3. if I use the cheat snacks while on atkins I always go over my carbs. no matter what the candy bar says...lol.

I have tried to watch my calories while atkinsing and found that weight loss was minimal.


Good Luck to all and god bless america, cousins.....lol :lol:

p.s. how much does a stone weigh????? in pounds please...lol. :mrgreen: