Ask the guy who lost 200 pounds in 9 months

In My Humble Opinion
41

Congrats on your accomplishment and your efforts to reach your new goal.

I only wanted to second Renee’s observation that learning to cook makes following a low carb (or any, really) diet a lot easier. In addition to being cheaper in money, you can customize your food the way that you want. We would not have been able to keep on our diets if we had to rely on either take-out or grocery store pre-made options. Seafood has been the big linchpin for us, as my girlfriend is a pescetarian. (Though eggs are O.K. for her too: I just go along with it.) Many vegetarian options are quite carb-y, and so we use seafood (boiled shrimp, a variety of grilled fish) as many Atkins dieters use bacon or sausage. I understand this may be tougher to do in many parts of the country, versus the Gulf Coast; still, there’s a lot of tasty frozen seafood available to help break up any monotony low-carb dieters may feel.

We didn’t need to lose near the amount of weight that you are describing, but the low carb diet did work for us, and it is a diet that she is comfortable maintaining for the foreseeable future. I have added some carbs to my diet—life is not worth living without bread or alcohol—but I am finding it possible to maintain my current weight, some 50 pounds below where I was. I was like you with the soft drinks growing up. And after 25-30, it starts to catch up with you. Diet Dr. Pepper has been a godsend to me. (In moderation, and I’m aware the Atkins books discourage diet soda consumption)

As competitive as I infer you are from your previous posts, have you tried linking your exercise to some sort of sports activity, organized or not? I personally find it a PITA to exercise for exercise’s sake. I can do it, once it becomes a habit after a month, but it’s much easier for me, if there’s some athletic goal that I can see the exercise making it easier to accomplish.

Other than that, yeah, after 30-35, your body takes awhile to warm up and get into whatever activity you’re trying to do. I stretched, running track and playing soccer in high school, but if I didn’t, no biggie. That’s definitely not the case now. I need to thoroughly warm up, stretch, and gradually get into exercise, or I end up pulling a muscle, spraining something, etc… And going crazy in the weight room after a period of not much activity, just wrecks me for the next several days.

Anyway, best of luck to you, and thank you for sharing your tips and experiences.

42

I just want to mention that I went low carb about 10 years ago along with my wife with successful weight loss, but like you I slacked off. I’m on it again, for two weeks now, because my doctor is unhappy with my cholesterol and wants me to cut out red meat and eggs.

That ain’t gonna happen. The doctor has forgotten the excellent cholesterol numbers I got 10 years ago when I was on Atkins, probably because he never took me seriously. Never wrote it down. “Just keep on doing whatever it is you are doing.” he said. He told my wife he’d never seen such a drop in LDLs without drugs.

So in two months I’m going to get my cholesterol tested again and fess up to the doc that I did it my way.

BTW, I check my BP daily given I’m on BP meds , and I can’t help but notice a gradual drop in both numbers since going low carb.

43

One thought re weight loss strategies is that the best one may vary greatly from one person to another. The best diet is the one you can talk yourself into sticking with, and the best exercise is the kind you’re willing to do on a regular basis.

Hell, the same diet might not even work for the same person twice; you may get fed up with the sort of dietary choices it gives you. My wife lost 75 lbs. on NutriSystem 20 years back, but she just can’t do that one a second time. And I’ve lost the same 15-20 lbs. four or five times now (and need to do it again), and I don’t think I’ve done it the same way twice.

44

It isn’t a rhetorical question and I am not attacking you. It is a legitimate question that I wanted an answer to.

45

treis, I’ve already asked you to stop badgering here. If you want to debate SenorBeef or others, you’re welcome to do it elsewhere. Otherwise, your question has been addressed, albeit not in the manner of your liking. “Why can’t I criticize you” type questions after you’ve hijacked the thread are exactly what I asked you not to do. You’ve made it expressly clear your motivation here is to challenge and debate; you have been asked to stop as this thread as you’ve taken this to the point of hijacking. Now stop.

If you honestly don’t understand what you’re doing wrong, PM me or post in ATMB. Continue in this vein in this thread and you will be warned.

This goes for others – please take the hijack debate comments to another thread and do not respond here.

Thanks.

46

So, RTF … which is going to be the one you “can talk yourself into sticking with”? :slight_smile:

Yo-yo’ing is not without potential consequence. For many weight loss also causes substantial muscle mass loss and weight is mostly of fat. Each of those cycles leaves less fat-free mass, a higher fat percent for the same BMI, and thus with a lower resting metabolic rate and poorer insulin sensitivity. SenorBeef, by virtue of his adequate protein intake and heavy weight training, managed to gain fat free mass while losing his weight that first time, even that rapidly. But others mileage may vary and often does.

47

SenorBeef, I wish you the best as you undertake this journey. If this method is what works for you in losing the weight, then more power to you. As you know, losing it is only half the journey. Developing healthy habits to maintain a healthy body is where success is achieved. There are many ways that can be achieved, I hope that you are able to find the success you desire.

48

I was mostly hear to read the threadshitting train wreck but I’ll help get it back on track I suppose.

What part, if any, did fruits play in your diet?

49

Are you single? And looking for someone who can cook lots of low-carb dishes? :slight_smile:

50

The issue with me trying something like this is that I’m married and having a very low carb diet wouldn’t fly with the wife who likes her carbs (but is 1,000 times better than me at managing her caloric intake and exercising so is in excellent shape).

But assuming we could work something out, since we only share 1 meal together (dinner), could this kind of diet be healthy for someone with high cholesterols? Are there options in a low carb diet that don’t include bacon or sausages, high fat, high cholesterol foods?

51

Questions:

Loose skin after a large and rapid weight loss…did you have issues when you were a teenager back then, or was the skin still pretty elastic at such a young age?

When you were being treated differently by others after your initial weight loss, did you ever come to a point where maybe the issue might not be with them, but how you viewed yourself when you were a teenager compared to how you view yourself at 30? Did you ever consider seeking psychological services since you lost that weight and the issues that stem from it?

Were your injuries that you spoke of earlier from weights, not warming up/cooling down properly, or from other sources?

52

I was going to ask about the loose skin issue as well.

Also, given that it’s been 13 or so years since you last embarked on an Atkins-type diet, have you checked grocery stores for low-carb versions of different foods lately? Since low-carb has become so popular, seems to me there are low-carb versions of virtually every type of food now (you mentioned missing pizza and ice cream in your OP.)

53

What did you eat in a typical day and when did you eat it? In your OP you mentioned your breakfast, but I’m wondering about the whole day.

54

That’s actually sort of complicated and beyond the scope of this thread really. I included it because it played a role in why I stopped bothering in the first place. It was’t just a realization that the superficial stuff matters - which is pretty obvious - but just how much, and how stark a change it was. But in as far as it matters, no, being more attractive isn’t a motivation for me this time around. I don’t care.

I cook more than I did before, but not much yet. Mostly just frying up some sort of meat/vegetable stir fry in a pan. I’ve been trying to learn a bit.

My carb intake is a lot higher this time around - before close to 0, now 20-40g per day. It allows a lot more dietary flexibility so that I won’t get bored with the food as fast although it really does seem to hurt the rate of progress. Most of the slow progress probably stems from being 30 rather than 17, and in worse shape, but during the first 2 weeks I stuck to fewer carbs and felt a little better. Still, I’m still firmly in ketosis at all times so this should work.

One of the problems with a low calorie/low fat diet is that protein typically comes with the fat. If you’re always hungry and starving your body of protein, it’s harder to build muscle, and less lean body mass is a huge crippling factor both in terms of your strength to continue working out and in the fact that you burn fewer calories. Another reason I don’t find such diets very useful.

Good luck with that. It’s kinda sad that it’s been pretty conclusively proven that you could eat the highest cholesterol food you can find all day - I don’t know if that’s bacon or what - and your cholesterol will go way down if you’re low carbing. It’s weird because medical science understands that the vast majority of cholesterol in the blood is produced by your body, and that production is linked with insulin, and yet they can’t put two and two together on the issue.

People that are in the maintenance rather than weight loss phase of low carbing tend to eat a lot more fruits, but I don’t eat many at all. I will occasionally eat berries (strawberries, blackberries, blueberries) with heavy cream - as berries tend to have the lowest sugar content - but that’s about it.

Yes. And I would definitely consider whoring myself out for good food.

It really wouldn’t matter what you ate. As I said, the typical person has 80%+ of their cholesterol come from their own liver’s production, which is triggered by insulin levels which are in turn determined by how many carbs they’re eating. If you reduce that 80%, it’ll more than offset the increase in dietary cholesterol. Of course if you do both - keep your insulin levels high, and increase your intake of dietary cholesterol, you’d be worse off. So no bacon-topped cakes.

My cholesterol went from bad to perfect (I forget the actual numbers, but IIRC I was beyond what was considered ideal with the HDL/LDL ratio) eating high cholesterol food constantly.

But yes, if you were still concerned about it, you could eat chicken and turkey and lots of vegetables and that sort of stuff. It wouldn’t, in my experience, make you any healthier though.

55

No, there was no lasting indication from my skin that it had been stretched - it bounced back just fine. I suspect the same won’t be the case now though.

No. My self esteem doesn’t depend on what I look like - I’ve pretty much latched onto how ridiculously smart and awesome I am, and also my ethics, and my modesty as a way to build self esteem, so how people reacted to me didn’t affect my self esteem. I just became disgusted with how common it would be for people to treat you like shit vs treat you like a real person based simply on how fat you were. I’m not sure how psychological services would help in this case, I don’t really think I’m being crazy about the issue, just cognizant of it.

I was never injured during the actual weight loss I’m speaking of. Maybe I got lucky, maybe the low carbing faciliated active and quick healing muscles, sometimes I just pushed through what was just a discomfort rather than a real injury.

I always stretched properly, both before and after, because it’s pretty critical for a variety of reasons.

No, the injuries always came when I would be inactive for a good amount of time, and then I’d hop back into being active, generally while not low carbing, and I’d end up tearing something. It’s my cycles of inactivity combined with heavy activity that most likely give me the problems.

Actually - the low carb crazy of about 5-6 years ago seemed like the golden age, and availability of products is down significantly since. In particular, I remember one of the major giant food conglomerations (that owned like 10 brands) had a line of “carb option” foods that seemed awesome. Basically just common stuff where they removed all of the crazy amount of extra sugar they put into everything - speghetti sauce, ketchup, cheese whiz, salad dressings, stuff like that. That stuff would all be hugely useful to me now, but I can’t find that stuff anywhere.

The single biggest improvement available that I’ve found is tortillas made from wheat and oat that come out to around 5g carbs per tortilla. These are amazing - they taste pretty good, and they let me make sandwiches and wraps that I eat all the time.

Definitely nothing like low carb pizza or ice cream that I’ve seen, though. But I’m okay with missing out on my favorite foods… it would just be really nice if I had more stuff to make the foods I can eat better.

I just realized I missed the perfect reply to this.

“Yes, but no fatties!”

56

As far as I know, “low-carb and low to moderate fat focusing on lean proteins” is what both the South Beach and Dukan diets are based upon.

57

Yeah I just want to chime in and say “I agree.”

I did try to follow South Beach once. If you think eating meat might be expensive, wait until you have to try to fill up 800 cals a day with veggies…yikes!

58

What did you eat in a typical day and when did you eat it? Can you say what a typical day of eating was like when you first started your program and then what you were eating towards the end.

59

And the original Cordain Paleo Diet. Even the NIH’s DASH diet has a higher protein variation that decreases carbs to 48%:

Not touted as a weight loss diet though - a healthy lifestyle diet.

It should also be noted that the high monosaturated fat diet also had beneficial results, but of a different pattern, raising HDL and not effecting LDL.

(Raising both protein and monosaturated fats by further lowing carbs was not tested.)

There is also an Eco-Atkins approach:

Between fish (and nothing wrong with canned or pouched salmon, tuna, sardines, herring, and mackerel for lunches), non-fat Greek yogurt, poultry, and so on, you can get what most would consider high protein without high fat and have room for vegetables and fruits and even some garlicky olive oil on pasta (small portion) shared with your partnered carb lover.

60

Over the course of a lifetime, none. There are too many goodies I like too much. :slight_smile:

First, the phenomenon of yo-yo dieting is defined by fairly rapid cycles of weight loss and weight gain, with the loss coming about through denial and deprivation rather than sensible diet choices.

Since my cycles of rather modest weight loss and gain are spread out over a couple of decades (call it 5 cycles over 24 years, all within a total range of 30 pounds), and since the closest thing to deprivation I’ve ever practiced was Weight Watchers (only did that once, and never again), I really doubt this is what anyone sensible has in mind by ‘yo-yo dieting.’

Second, the cites I came across in googling ‘yo-yo dieting’ say evidence of the allegedly detrimental effects of such dieting is lacking anyway. Not to mention better, healthwise, to keep gaining and losing the same pounds than to simply keep gaining.