cutting down on carbs

Mr-White

Mr-White

Mr-White

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i stopped eating bread, pasta, rice, cereal, potatoes etc on tuesday night to try and get rid of this last bit of annoying fat around my stomach. its only been what 3 days eating things like fruit, veg and fresh meats and i feel healthier already and dont feel as hungry either. its not what i was expecting :confused:

EDIT: i forgot to mention i usually eats tons of bread and rice

MW
 
Yup, i used to be a carbs whore, and a bad carbs whore at that. I feel 100times healthier on a proper ketogenic diet, not only do I feel better, I basically haven't felt hungry, at all in over two months where as when eating carbs I was craving food every 2-3 hours from the massive sugar low. Fat/protein fill you up sooo much more and are just so much better for you.

I've dropped loads of weight, increased energy, increased strength(mostly beginner((for the 5th time)) gains being doable during weight loss), increased health, increased concentration, just better everything.

theres three main food groups, protein, fat, carbs, and I can name which two your body simply can't live without, I can also name the group that does smeg all for your body and has lots and lots of downsides to eating and the one thats completely responsible for the massive weight gain in western countries.

Depends how low on carbs you go and I'm not saying they don't have their place, a swift sharp hit of carbs will mostly go straight to your liver/muscles and is pretty decent for a pre-weights workout, though the further I go into ketogenic diet the better my body is getting at using energy from fat and the easier I find cardio/weights without carbs aswell.

The downsides are, I have so little appetite due to no blood sugar lows that sometimes i find it hard to get food down when i actually need to be eating, I also have such a ridiculous amount of energy I just can't sleep properly sometimes, I lie in bed waking up every 20 mins feeling insanely energetic :p Think i need to switch to a 36/48hour day to use up all the energy and sleep better.
 
Yup, I'm sure some carbs, and especially as i said pre workouts or more strenous activitys will be a decent time to eat carbs, but for weight loss as few as possible is working very very well for me. Is kinda hard to find a range of things to eat as, mostly I'm so damn used to eating bread, so egg mayo, which is heatlhy proteins and fats and great for you, i am usually eating with some french bread or something and on its own its just not nearly the same.

Eating lots of egg based meals as egg's are just ludicrously good for you, I have most days 1 or 2 scrabled egg meals with a range of crap in, sometimes spinach , peppers, spices, somestimes some quorn bacon, sometimes cheese, or bunch of different veg, different flavours.

Pine nuts are a kick ass food, more omega fats than anything else I've found bar supplements, snack on them a lot and can be added to food aswell.

Still have a pizza every couple weeks or so as I do freaking love pizza and a carb up day works fairly well for getting a bit of carb into muscles for one day which stay there and don't mess with insulin levels all week. Plus motivationally wise, it means a planned carb meal is something I know is coming so don't end up with a craving for something bad all the time. Though frankly for the first few weeks I liked being able to have a bad day, now I'm not really craving it, its gotten to the point I don't miss them and I'm doing much better on fat only than a month ago.

Things like, ketogenic, especially on a very low carb level often leaves people feeling a touch dizzy and crappy because the brain really takes quite a long time to adjust to using ketones instead of carbs. First time i hit ketosis I felt a little nausious, dizzy and not great, and hit the carbs after a couple days, next couple weeks I went in and out getting a couple headaches from lack of carbs, after a month I was basically completely fine without carbs from anything but veg, and 2 months in with brain using fat rather than carbs as energy, my concentration is way better aswell.

its definately hard for the body to shift over, eaten to many carbs for too long so was especially hard. Think low carb is harder for us veggies as, you can eat so many different meats that fall into low carb category, I've mostly got egg's :p

When i hit my target weight, or get much closer I'm sure I'll be adding more carbs back in, but wholemeal stuff, super low GI carbs and target when I eat them. Ketogenic diets are fantastic for weight loss, I would guess fairly damn hard for a maintainance and or bulking diet as eating that much protein and fat would be quite hard. But when i need to have more carbs I'm without doubt convinced its the crappy carbs that are the bad part, white breads(nice as they are and will be missed badly :p ) high GI carbs and having insulin spikes all the time.

HOnestly no one on earth should be eating all the crappy carbs we've grown accustomed to.

Just be careful, often after stopping eating many carbs you still have a pretty big stock in the liver and muscles but theres certainly an instant/quick change from stopping eating, but ketosis generally wont' happen for a few days, you might drop into ketosis accidentally even if you don't intend to as while some people will hit ketosis only on less than 20grams of carbs a day, plenty of people get into it with more carbs, sometimes quite a lot more. i think from promax diet shakes I had 20grams carbs yesterday, plus another 15-20 from veg, and another 5-10 from eating nuts and i definately didn't drop out of ketosis. So if you do get dizzy/feel a bit sick, smack in a few more carbs ;)

For the first couple weeks of diet it was more, a change in the way I ate because i felt like utter crap all the time, it wasn't intended for weight loss initially or for ketosis. I just happened to be on low carbs and got low enough to hit ketosis and for a couple days saw weight melt off and thought, sweet, and stuck with it read more on it and then changed diet a little more to intentionally stay in ketosis.
 
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I think if you have a reasonable exercise regime, then its not necessary to drop right down to the Atkins level of 20g of carbs a day, you can still lose weight at say around
50g, which isnt as restrictive as 20g
 
wohoo said:
I think if you have a reasonable exercise regime, then its not necessary to drop right down to the Atkins level of 20g of carbs a day, you can still lose weight at say around
50g, which isnt as restrictive as 20g
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im not sure the weight of carbs i'm eating now but the only carbs ill be getting is from fruit and veg. my workouts arent that brutal atm as im still trying to get back into it and getting used to the drop in carbs. today i just did some cardio and some light weights

MW
 
Carbs are the bodies preferential energy source.

Take away an atheletes carbs and see him perform.

What total tosh. This whole anti-carbs thing has been taken way too far with many people.

Ant :cool:
 
I throw carbs in my morning shake otherwise im dead for the day. and carbs pre and post wo. Otherwise its protein only with limited fats. The body performs amazingly on low carbs. Much cleaner way of living especially if you control the fats (atkins style bacon+egg diets lead to lethargy which limits weight loss)
 
WantoN said:
Carbs are the bodies preferential energy source.

Take away an atheletes carbs and see him perform.

What total tosh. This whole anti-carbs thing has been taken way too far with many people.

Ant :cool:
Click to expand...

No, its not, for several hundred million years we didn't eat carbs, only in the last millenia or two when we've started to mass produce them more easily have they become prevelant in our diets. Fat IS the prefered energy source, think about it, did we evolve to use carbs, which cause all manner of problems in the body and are worth 4calories per gram, or to use the incredibly more energy efficient 9 cals a gram fat.

The problem is, it doesn't take 5 minutes to stop eating carbs and have the body get back to its business of burning fat. SO people try low carbs, feel like crap for a couple days, never give it a chance and judge it on that.

Ultra_Extreme said:
I throw carbs in my morning shake otherwise im dead for the day. and carbs pre and post wo. Otherwise its protein only with limited fats. The body performs amazingly on low carbs. Much cleaner way of living especially if you control the fats (atkins style bacon+egg diets lead to lethargy which limits weight loss)
Click to expand...

atkins style diets give you lots of energy, most people who get into a proper ketogenic state say they feel less hungry and have shedloads of energy and are often less tired. I mostly would say though that extreme low carb is mostly great for fat loss, limited carbs help you feel more hungry which is very useful when you, need to eat more food. If i had to eat 3000 calories tomorrow, on fat and protein only I just couldnt' do it, carbs would help cut down the physical mass of food I'd have to eat, and increase my hunger throughout the day aswell. Atkins itself is pretty weird as, as far as I know they say to just eat as much as you want, just make it basically no carb. Its basically a ketogenic diet with a few, weird ideas that really I guess were added to make it his own personal take on the diet so he could market it, otherwise he would have been promoting others idea's which won't help him much. Not sure atkins is the best take on ketogenic diets, a lot of competing body builders are now saying TKD's, or CKD's depending on goals, plain old ketogenic for all out fat loss and the other two for clean gaining. IE with a cycle, high carb days on workout days, no carb days for cardio. or targeted ketogenic diet, take all your carbs pre/post workout to you have extra energy for the workout, resupply muscle with carbs right after, then go back to burning fat for normal fuel. THe thing being that ketosis isn't really a necessary component unless you do want to lose weight, you can still lose weight on a ketogenic style diet, without actually getting carbs low enough to hit ketosis and still have fat as your main influx of energy. The body is stupidly adaptable. You can be in ketosis, eat 100grams of carbs and drop out, or you can be in ketosis, drop 100grams of carbs in 30 mins before a massive workout, burn off all the carbs have a perfect work out, eat some carbs after which go straight to your muscles and still be in ketosis losing weight while your body starts to rebuild muscle.

I think the body seems to do best when its main energy source is fat, covering its daily energy requirements, or basal metabolic requirements, but uses carbs for intense activity, sport, lifting or whatever. The difference being you probably won't burn more than 500, possibly 1000 calories in a workout, while throughout the day you can easily burn 3000. Carbs as fuel for your resting energy requirements is what the key issue is, as really, thats not what they are for.


But like i've said, high carbs vs a low/controlled intake of carbs, or a next to no carb diet and I wouldn't choose a high carb diet ever again.

For someone with a large muscle mass, or trying to gain mass again carbs aren't bad. But they really should be added in a more targetted way as and when needed on top of a high quality protein/fat diet.
 
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No, its not, for several hundred million years we didn't eat carbs
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I'm very dubious of this as a statement. I would suggest that as omnivores humans have eaten a signficant amount of carbs for their whole existance. If you take our nearest relatives being great apes which are largely vegetarian, then it may well be we eat LESS carbs than we used to whilst evolving from some form of common ancestry. We aren't designed as obvious hunters or typical scavengers, so we were probably never carnivores, in which case we will have been largely using carbohydrates in our diets in the past.

If you look more recently over the last couple of millenia when civilisation started blooming you will see the diet of all humans throughout the world had significant carbs. We talk of staples in our diet, that may be rice, or wheat, or corn or any number of starchy carb based foods. These have all made up the lionshare of our diets for a long time.

I think it's very easy to see a diet that has worked for you, have read into a lot of the sometimes real , sometimes pseudo science of it and take it as complete fact and assume that anything else is flat out wrong. You have clearly done well in the last couple months with your methods losing a couple of stone, all credit to you, and I can see why that may make you quite evangelical about it and your methods. I could equally show you my results earlier this year where I lost over 3 stone in about 3-4 months too, but with a very different diet, in fact largely carb based. I have maintained this weight loss for the last 3 months returning to exactly my old diet just less of it as it was always healthy just too much.

I do an awful lot of work with people with obesity most days through my work. I have come to the decision from my anecdotal evidence that it really comes down to how committed someone is as to whether they succeed. Lots of diets will do just fine if someone can really stick to them. I have suggested various different methods for different people. I prescribe medications to some, even occasionally to those I don't honestly feel it will help as they aren't committed, if they at least fit the criteria and are safe, as sometimes they just need to see some help offered and a degree of support from clinical followup.

sorry this turned out longer than I had intended, but the take home points would be carbs are not inherently bad imo, and committment is above all the most important thing for weight loss
 
The mass processed carbs we take are very bad for us in long run, if you take carbs from a natural source it isnt bad, but when you count up the carbs we take from natural sources, its at a reasonable level, its only in last 20-30 years we have started taking junk carbs, and those really add up.

So essentially when we say we are cutting carbs, it means we are cutting junk carbs out of our diet.
 
cutting junk I agree with, but that is cutting unnecessary junk both carb junk and fat junk. It's becoming more common for people to talk of cutting out almost all carbs as though they are inherently bad as a foodstuff that I disagree with.
 
rice was barely eaten, at least in Japan, till sometimes AD, it started to be grown in larger numbers in 300-400BC but was in such small numbers only the incredibly rich of the time ate it and even then in small numbers. Almost all the "carb" foods we eat, all rices, grains, wheats did not just grow in massive fields by the ton till we planted and mass produced it, none of it was widely grown till a couple thousand years ago. Before then, humans lived on mostly meat, and fruits and the like.

Now you can say, well we ate all meat, and you're a veggie so you're going against what you should. Largely, yes, I am going against what I was designed to do. But we really don't live by or eat in the way we did as we evolved anyway, at a certain point lifestyle vs morality changes and as you become more advanced they natural, instinctual things we used to do seem more and more wrong.

The idea being, if in 50 years we get star trek style replicators that make "perfect" meat without the need to grow and kill animals while the later is perfectly normal morality will push a lot of people to the former. While given the option 200 years ago, few if any would take it.

As for our nearest relatives, thats a relative question, change less than 1% of our DNA and you have completely different species with so many differences its astounding, its really has no place in discussions like this as they may be relatively close to us in terms of DNA and evolution, but so are Dolphins, we're simply not even close to similar to them despite our genetic similarities.

The other reason people talk about carbs as bad, is, its been shown more and more that we can actually benefit from eating a small quantity of trans fats, saturated fats, in moderation are good for you when previously, with our governments massive "fats are bad" campaigns we've basically been led to believe there are lots of bad fats, very few fats are good which is completely incorrect. Where as, bad carbs, really haven't been proven to be anything but bad, and good carbs longer term effects on use aren't really great. Really carbs should only be used for short sharp bursts of energy, and eaten realatively to a degree where you get rid of them pretty quickly after eating them.
 
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Of course they didn't grow in massive fields till they were planted in that way, but likewise they were planted for a reason. People didn't just start growing them for No swearing. Big Kev and giggles or liked the look of a field of wheat. These were food stuffs that made up a significant part of their diet previously that when they found they were able to cultivate them it was seen as a sensible thing to do so, otherwise they would have made no attempt to do so.

Government saying fats are bad is that too much fats are bad. Yes there are 'good' fats that the body needs a certain amount of, but largely people take far too much of fats that aren't good. A general message to reduce fat intake for a population group is a good message. Now how you have read that message is different, but the message probably isn't aimed at yourself either. There are a LOT of people who are completely clueless and if you start talking micro managing their diet they just can't take it in. cut down on your pies/bacon/crisps/cakes is something anyone can take in as a message. This will reduce their calorie intake and will have a generally positive effect on their lipid profile i.e. it is a positive health message. A population based health message must be simple to take on board or it's pointless. Do you think the 5 fruit and veg a day is based on research that shows 5 is better than 4 or that 6 is dangerous? of course not. It's an arbitrary figure based on what most nutritionists would consider making a relatively healthy diet and a target that is achieveable

I am not convinced there is a wealth of good research that shows all carbs are bad either, in fact I would state that there is none. as you mentioned regarding fats moderation is important, but I would take that as a given for any part of your diet which includes fats AND carbs
 
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