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LCHF Conundrum

vintageutopia

vintageutopia

Well-Known Member
Messages
401
Location
Michigan
Type of diabetes
Type 2
Treatment type
Diet only
Brief history:
Diagnosed at the very end of November and followed the eat less than 150 gm carbs/per day according to the ADA. I ate less than 100 grams, just to be safe. Weight started dropping.

In February, I stumbled across this wonderful website and began to read and reduce my carbs to 50-100 grams. My BS values really dropped, I felt great. It still left room for the occasional toast and fruit daily. And I lost 30+ lbs between November and February.

In April, I started really eating a LCHF diet with less than 30 grams carbs ( less than 20 grams most days) per day. I calculated my macros via the Blood Sugar 101 website and ate accordingly. My weight loss is stalled, I am still hungry, and my FBS and post-prandial blood sugars are higher than when I was eating 50-100 carbs.

Puzzled. Has this happened to anyone else? What am I doing wrong? :banghead:
 
B- typically eggs and sautéed leafy greens Sometimes with mushrooms. Coffee with cream. This morning, I ate 2 eggs scrambled with chard in coconut oil.
L- I am going to eat 1/2 avocado, 4 oz sirloin, 2 tbs of salsa, 2 tbsp. of sour cream (avocado/salsa/sour cream with some protein is quite typical of my lunches)
S- chia pudding and/or 1 oz walnuts, if I need it
D- grilled chicken thighs, steamed broccoli with a knob of butter. Maybe, 1/2 cup of blueberries.
 
That's not much food. All of those meals look to be around 360 calories, so its no wonder you are hungry. You also have quite a high protein content in that set up - lunch for example is 34% protein. This will cause gluconeogenesis to occur and will therefore drive your BG levels up. It will also stop you from getting into Ketosis properly.

The reason you are hungry are simply that you are not eating enough. It's less than 1100 cals a day by my reckoning. You also have a Fat:protein:Carb split that is more like 60:35:5 than 80:15:5. As a result you are likely to be generating glucose from your protein intake.

I suspect that if you were to change your ratios a little and eat more food you would see a change in what was going on.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
vintageutopia said:
Brief history:
Diagnosed at the very end of November and followed the eat less than 150 gm carbs/per day according to the ADA. I ate less than 100 grams, just to be safe. Weight started dropping.

In February, I stumbled across this wonderful website and began to read and reduce my carbs to 50-100 grams. My BS values really dropped, I felt great. It still left room for the occasional toast and fruit daily. And I lost 30+ lbs between November and February.

In April, I started really eating a LCHF diet with less than 30 grams carbs ( less than 20 grams most days) per day. I calculated my macros via the Blood Sugar 101 website and ate accordingly. My weight loss is stalled, I am still hungry, and my FBS and post-prandial blood sugars are higher than when I was eating 50-100 carbs.

Puzzled. Has this happened to anyone else? What am I doing wrong? :banghead:
Click to expand...

Without doing the calcs and understanding your gender, height and exercise levels, etc., I wouldn't want to pass any comment on what you are eating. I will comment, however, that I have personally noticed that my blood scores, based purely on finger prick testing, do better when I eat reduced carb. If I reduce my carbs too much, my bloods increase a bit. My hypothesis is that if I go too low carb, I experience more liver dumps, as my body tries to maintain some sort of status quo.

Personally, I operate at a level that suits me, rather than have a common target that leads to a bit of a struggle and a less comfortable life. I take my hat off to those who are able to operate effectively on fewer carbs, but it's not for me.
 
I agree with Tim. I think you need to up your fat intake, and reduce your protein. Around 80% fat is the level that seems to provide most with a long term sustainable diet.
Try an 8oz Rib Eye or Rump steak (rib eye tends to have the most fat / least protein). Lamb and pork chops are also good.

How much butter, cream and coconut oil are you eating per day?.
I find I need to consume around 30g butter, 30g coconut oil and 100ml double cream per day plus 8oz steak and 40g cheese (around 3,000 calories)
I am 6'-2" BMI of 22. If you are less you probably need less.
 
Thanks to everyone for taking the time to reply. For my height and weight, the website suggests that I eat 1600 calories a day. Admittedly, I am having a hard time wrapping my brain around a way to eat more fat than what I posted above, without eating only fat and nothing else.

Tim and Ian, I am most definitely not eating that much fat. It helped to see you spell out how much you eat, because I significantly underestimated what I could/should be eating.

AndBreathe, I have wondered that, as well. I felt like I was eating a more balanced diet with higher carbs.

I am jealous of those who experienced normal blood sugars and significant weight loss in their first three months of doing LCHF. That has not been my experience. Eventually, I will get there, right?:rolleyes:
 
Angie, Don't forget that some of our members are pre-diabetic and probably more likely to achieve good levels faster or more easily than the rest of us. None of are created equal so we all get different results at different rates.

Robbity
 
It sounds like the diet suited you best when you were eating 50/100 grams of carbs a day your levels had dropped and you lost weight so I don't really understand why you went lower on the carbs. There are no rules about LCHF you have to just find the level of carbs and fats that suit you best by lowering your BG and loosing weight and stick to that
 
vintageutopia said:
Brief history:
Diagnosed at the very end of November and followed the eat less than 150 gm carbs/per day according to the ADA. I ate less than 100 grams, just to be safe. Weight started dropping.

In February, I stumbled across this wonderful website and began to read and reduce my carbs to 50-100 grams. My BS values really dropped, I felt great. It still left room for the occasional toast and fruit daily. And I lost 30+ lbs between November and February.

In April, I started really eating a LCHF diet with less than 30 grams carbs ( less than 20 grams most days) per day. I calculated my macros via the Blood Sugar 101 website and ate accordingly. My weight loss is stalled, I am still hungry, and my FBS and post-prandial blood sugars are higher than when I was eating 50-100 carbs.

Puzzled. Has this happened to anyone else? What am I doing wrong? :banghead:
Click to expand...
I feel like I'm on exactly the same journey. Not where I want to be , but trying not to be discouraged. I hope with a few tweaks we'll both start seeing improvements !
 
I have had to eat more carbs since Christmas as I had to reduce fat due to a gall bladder problem,also I was loseing to much weight.
My weight is now stable and my HbA1c has gone down from 46 to 44 since October which was a surprise,I realy expected to have to go on more meds.
Its all hard to understand,but its what works for you.
 
vintageutopia said:
I am jealous of those who experienced normal blood sugars and significant weight loss in their first three months of doing LCHF. That has not been my experience. Eventually, I will get there, right?:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

I just wanted to point out that you have already experienced significant weight loss, before LCHF. That's a great success! Well done!

LCHF is one of the most extreme LC ways of eating, and it sounds as if your previous plan was spot on for the Primal Sweet Spot for Effortless Weight Loss ((http://www.marksdailyapple.com/the-primal-carbohydrate-continuum/#axzz3aa7ilDRZ) I personally believe that different people have different "carb tolerances", and some can eat more and be perfectly healthy (as long as it's real food, not processed).

I'm not trying to convince you to go back, though - in my experience, chopping and changing eating plans often is not a good idea at all! Eating more fat in order not to feel hungry, and to calm the liver, would be my first step forward. But it really comes to what works for you, and your blod glucose.
 
Again, thank you to everyone for your well thought out replies. The reason that I decided to reduce my carbs even lower, was because my FBS was still higher than where I wanted it to be, while my post-prandial BS were normal. So, more is more?

But Larissima made a very good point. If I change back right now, I am going to have a mish-mash of theories and won't really be sure if LCHF is for me. And I want it to be for me, because I already have T2 and I want to avoid future complications.

I will increase my fat intake and rather than increase my carbs significantly, I will try to meet 25-30 grams. I went back and looked at my macros on MFP and I was not hitting my fat by a long shot, my protein intake was too high, and many days I was eating only 10-15 grams of carbs. Maybe, I need a bit more? It is worth pushing forward to see if 25-30 will still keep me in ketosis, but prevent liver dumping.

I should be able to stay in ketosis if I eat 30 grams or less, correct?
 
I'm not actually counting my carbs but I reckon I have 30-50g a day now, and I'm still in ketosis, sometimes a bit low but I am. :p I think often when you are nicely burning fat, then you can up the carbs a little without any problem. But since we're all different the only way to find out is check...

Robbity
 
Good to know! I still have some weight to lose, so I want to keep it low until I reach my goal. Thanks for your help!
 
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