What am I doing wrong?

[poshtotty]

Me again.....

I started LCHF on 16th March and absolutely love the concept, and the food I'm now eating. I'm also glad to feel after years of putting other people before myself, I'm now looking after myself and my diet better than I've probably done in my entire life.

My fasting BG's are slowly coming down from 11 to 7 and my 2 hours after meals have dropped from 13 to 5 on average. There's been a noticeable difference in my mental clarity too and slight increase in energy levels. I'm committed to the LCHF regime

Last week I had lost 3lb in 2 weeks, but this morning's weigh-in showed I'd gained 2lb and I have absolutely no idea why. I've not had any moments of weakness on the LCHF in fact I've noticed I seem to have lost my sweet tooth altogether, which is another bonus. I don't drink alcohol and only drink one cup of tea in the morning and a cup of coffee with cream in the evening. The rest of time I drink fruit teas (mostly liquorice) and water.

Weight loss is important to me and I need to see it happening to remain motivated, especially after reading all the success stories here. Any suggestions as to what I'm doing wrong or how I can kick-start the weight loss please?

Normal daily food intake is

Breakfast - Homemade protein shake made with unsweetened almond milk, berries and fresh ginger root

Celery sticks spread with pate or full fat cream cheese with garnish with fresh chives

Pan friend fillet steak with homemade mushroom or peppercorn sauce or salmon fillet baked in oven in olive oil with salad or spinach, courgettes, mushrooms, cauli or Scandichic's yummy chicken casserole

Puddings are fresh strawberries and clotted cream or sugar free jelly with cream, or cheese and celery

Occasional 9bar snack if out for a walk which is longer than 1 hour.

I rarely feel hungry now

Thanks

 

[Mud Island Dweller]

Are you excercising?
If so dont use scales as the muscle that you gain weighs more than fat. Think a kilo of feathers in a sack as opposed to a kg of steel in same size sack.
Go onto google and look up fat calipers (may be as weight calipers) which should come with a chart. You then pinch and measurse various areas. Waist Triceps Thighs etc. The calculation will tell you your fat % this is what counts not weight.

 

[Truffle]

Hi Dianagrace - that also happened to me and I realised that I was eating too much of the good stuff!
Cheese, pate, almonds and salami were my downfall and because of that I spent a week counting the calories I was eating and they were really quite excessive.
So now I still LCHF but actually just eat less than I was before and things started moving again.

 

[poshtotty]

Thank you both. Really good advice.

I ought to have known that eating all that lovely cream, cheese and pate was too good to be true!!

 

[Mud Island Dweller]

l eat lot cream and cheese uggs to pate

 

[AndBreathe]

LCHF didn't suit me. I found the HF part too much.

As a way of living, I understand the tenets and clearly there is a lot of evidence to support it, but I can't help thinking calories come into it somewhere along the line, with a great deal of importance on the impact of fats sating hunger pangs, thus effectively capping the calories consumed. But, surely if my BMR is 1244, then I apply the Harris Benedict Equation for an active person (a factor of 1.725 for a very active person, exercising 6-7 days a week), I have a a calorific need of 2145 a day. Surely, if I eat more than that, even if it almost purely roast chicken in cream sauce (just an example, obviously), I would gain weight?

Shouldn't there be a weather eye kept on calorific intake? Perhaps, irrationally, I worry about the regular consumption of clotted cream at over 100 calories per tablespoon. Surely that all adds up?

Sorry to potentially deflect your thread Diana. I'm happy to be shot down in flames, but playing devils advocate, to an extent.

 

[lunarlinda]

Yep, I think that high fat may be a drawback for some people wanting to loose weight. I've just read the Southport GP's paper and forgive me if I've missed something, but he called it Low Carb diet, not Low Carb High Fat and he didn't give an example of, say test case 1, 55 yr old's food content. Just LC would result in weight loss, but did they eat HF too ?

 

[Beshlie]

I seem to remember him saying 'healthy fats' eg: salmon, tuna etc. I don't recall anything about high fat except for the full fat yoghurt at breakfast, so, in effect it's more like low carb, lean protein and a little high fat. That's how I read it.

 

[lunarlinda]

I seem to remember him saying 'healthy fats' eg: salmon, tuna etc. I don't recall anything about high fat except for the full fat yoghurt at breakfast, so, in effect it's more like low carb, lean protein and a little high fat. That's how I read it.

Ah right, well, I've tried low carbing, then in hospital yesterday I was fed carbs at both meals, ( that or don't eat), so my good start went out of the window.

 

[lunarlinda]

Ah right, well, I've tried low carbing, then in hospital yesterday I was fed carbs at both meals, ( that or don't eat), so my good start went out of the window.

I meant to say that before going in hospital, my HFLC diet didn't result in 1lb lost over 5 days, so I got something wrong.

 

[poshtotty]

Thank you @AndBreathe and @Beshlie for the insight. Sounds like a classic case of selective reading on my part!

I've gave up the cheese and cream today but am sticking with the low carbs and protein from meat and fish etc. Will report back in a few days

 

[Beshlie]

Thank you @AndBreathe and @Beshlie for the insight. Sounds like a classic case of selective reading on my part!

I've gave up the cheese and cream today but am sticking with the low carbs and protein from meat and fish etc. Will report back in a few days

It does take time to sort out which foods suit us. I am learning by testing with my meter and trying to stay in the non diabetes numbers. I have also found that, I don't feel hungry very often when I fill up with vedg. and salad which I have with chicken or some type of fish, and occasionally with grated cheese.

 

[AndBreathe]

I'm a limited carber, so not an expert. I may be wrong. I'm hoping some with a better insight might come along and comment.

 

[lizdeluz]

You seem to be doing really well with improved blood sugars. You haven't been following the LCHF diet for very long. My weight loss of just under a stone from LCHF has taken since last November, so it's not quick, neither is it obvious from day to day. I don't weigh myself until I feel I have lost some weight, usually weekly but sometimes longer. However I can report that weight loss does happen with this diet and that I do feel better eating far fewer carbs. I do eat cream and cheese, but I don't go overboard, and I eat lean meat and fish, but no fat meat because I don't like it. It's just a great relief not to be eating carbs and to be using less insulin.
Good luck @dianagrace with your LCHF diet!

 

[poshtotty]

Thank you @lizdeluz, that's really encouraging. I'm definitely sticking with LCHF. It makes so much sense and I'm certainly already feeling better for it in a relatively short time.

I saw a friend today who remarked as soon as she saw me that I looked slim! But clothes aren't feeling any looser yet and the scales went up rather than down, but perhaps things are starting to happen in ways I can't yet see. Thank you for sharing your experience. Its keeping my hope alive

 

[Robbity]

You do need to be a little bit "sensible" over what you eat, so just don't go overboard with the yummy goodies! If you are cutting right down on carbohydrates then you must eat a reasonable quantity of fat to replace them for energy.

I'm finding my weight tends to go down but then goes up again often by by several kilos, but it is keeping on with it's downward trend. I often get really disheartened then find suddenly the up/down cycle stops and my weight stabilizes at its new lower level. Sometimes you can see the difference by the state of your clothes - they'll be looser fitting, so don't always rely on what the scales say! I've lost 15kilos since December, most of it since mid January when I started on a proper low carb diet.

Robbity

 

[modesty007]

Have a look through this for some guidance on LCHF http://www.dietdoctor.com/lchf

 

[modesty007]

And here some inspiring recipes http://lowcarbhealthyfat.com/recipes/

 

[Indy51]

One thing to consider is that you more or less have this condition to deal with for many years to come - so there's no rush to lose weight. At this point just concentrate on controlling your BG levels and sooner or later hopefully your weight will follow suit and head downwards. Don't put too much stress on yourself about the weight because you don't have any timetable to stick to really.

The other thing to consider is that once you go through the switchover to being a fat burner, any fat your body needs can be accessed from its own fat stores. I treat dietary fat more as a condiment - add to your own personal taste. Some people seem to tolerate fat better than others - personally I have gallbladder issues so tend to stick more with monounsaturated fats and my main source of saturated fats is coconut and MCT oil.

 

[))Denise((]

I low carb, but I don't add extra fat. What I do is not cut the fat off meat (love a pork chop with the rind on). A snack I like is pork scratchings as are nuts.