why do calories not count on low carb?
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Your comments are quite well understood in the low carb forum
You would probably get much commentary in the main forum.
Some support and some not.
Do what works for you!!0 -
Calories do count, but maybe not in the traditional CICO sense. From what I understood about nutrition, the homeostasis the body likes best is achieved with a balanced nutrition. If you give the body the nutrition it needs to function properly, MOST people, will naturally maintain at satiety level. If you're not giving it the nutrition it needs to work optimally, you're shortchanging not only fat loss but health as well. So empty calories even when keeping keto is NOT conducive for loss from STORED FAT. If you're someone with medical issues or heavily rely on food for emotional pick-me-ups, then naturally the "normal" equations go out the window...and basically off the grid from what many studies say.
As someone who used to eat somewhere around 3000-4000 kcal high carb diet being effortlessly skinny ...to now fighting for every pound of fat I can lose... something clearly changed. I suspect there's an imbalance somewhere in my endocrine system. Granted, I have been able to up calories from 1200 NET kcal high carb gaining weight to around 2000 NET kcal low carb maintaining weight. The difference is huge. But I STILL have to go very low to shed scale weight. Meaning, the 500 kcal deficit/day rule does NOT apply to my body. The numbers simply don't add up in my case. IME, calorie and carb cycling is the only thing that works for ME.
Re satiety and keto. I've been doing predominantly keto carb levels at 20-30g for almost 2 months now. I have NO trouble eating 3000 NET kcal/day if I unleashed the feeding monster, lol. Normally I can reign it in around 2000-2500 kcal NET. But I can still eat MORE, especially if I get used to a certain calorie level over several days in a row. Let's say a week, then I can gradually push in more food each day. BUT, if I do a fast in between, it naturally resets hunger satiety. So the day after a fast, I will feel full again on 1200-1500 NET kcal. This is sort of logical. Very obese people didn't become fat overnight. It takes months, years of consistent overeating to train the tummy to handle such large intakes.
The body and hormones, microbiome work in mysterious ways we are only starting to see. My body often reacts in direct contrast to the conclusions many studies say. IMO, we all have to find our own way by trial and error. In other words, listen to your body, not the internet
Edit: For example, if a calculator on the internet says you're gonna lose x amount of weight/week with 1500 net kcal/day. ...and you're not losing fat, then clearly the calculator is wrong, not your body and what it interprets as a hormonal state that can allow it to lose weight.1 -
@Foamroller
I like the last line
Our bodies can't be wrong
So true. They are the bodies we live in and we have to learn the idiosyncrasies of them.
I don't seem to go exactly by the calorie calculators.
I just adjust and move on. My complaints don't seem to impress my body
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I don't think maintaining is so much of a problem, it's the whole weightloss thing that makes it hard.
Plus there is no way my family could afford to keep me in meat for each meal which is sad. I would love to at least try it out.
I definitely lose more weight than I should on low carb, given my age gender weight and height.
That's one of my issues. I have 6 people in the house, and I consider myself richly blessed if we have enough for me to get 6oz of meat at supper. I'm lucky if I get 4oz at lunch. Which is usually a can of chicken or tuna or lunchmeat. Le sigh...
I'm about to wander way off into wacky-land, for some of you. I'll probably step on some keto-toes.
Always willing to listen to what the Goat has to say
If I shut off everything I heard/read that I didn't immediately agree with, I wouldn't have found keto in the first place and lost 94lb. I'm always willing to listen to a valid alternative viewpoint and consider it. I think we all should keep open. That's how you learn and expand your horizons. Otherwise you trap yourself in a cage of your own making. IMO, that's no way to live.
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I count my calories every day. I use a scale, measuring cups and tsp/tbsp. Why not? Can't hurt. It's better to know what you're taking in calorie wise, low carb or not.
Actually, it can hurt, especially if you're trying to lose weight and aren't finding success. I've been there, and hadn't even gone as far as a food scale. Drove me neurotic to the point that I had to stop tracking entirely for several months to keep from spiraling into suicidal depression. So...yeah... When the results aren't matching the calculations, counting can hurt.
I agree with the vast majority of what @FIT_Goat has said here. Calories do count, but counting calories is not necessarily required. Most people here do so largely because they haven't been able to shake the social programming (reinforced by poor nutrition) that we can't trust our hunger signals, that we can't trust our bodies, and that we must count calories in order to lose weight.
I can tell you first hand that if you have to count calories in order to maintain or lose, that you have to count to keep from overeating, and/or if you're constantly hungry on what should be adequate food, then something you're eating is negatively affecting you. Finding those things that are harming you will make your life infinitely easier, even if the act of finding those things is difficult.
Six months ago, my fasting insulin was 33 units/dL, my fasting glucose was 108mg/dL, and I couldn't lose weight if my life depended on it (I was, for all intents and purposes, prediabetic). I was already doing LCHF, and had been for a couple of years. Four months ago, I followed Goat's lead and went primarily carnivore. I'm not nearly as strict as he is -- I still consume dairy, I still indulge in sweet treats once in a while (I try not to, because I am a "recovering chocoholic," but I don't beat myself up over it, either), I still drink alcohol every so often (actually, I drink more now than I ever did in the past, thanks to a friend introducing me to his home-brewed mead).
As of a couple of weeks ago, my insulin is now down to 13 units/dL, glucose is 87mg/dL, and I've been averaging a 1lb/week rate of weight loss. Also, this change didn't require medications (in fact, Metformin Extended Release doesn't work on me). Oh, and I don't count calories anymore. I tracked for a while after first switching, but never needed to intentionally restrict. I was always within a couple hundred calories of what MFP and Fitbit said I should be, and even when I was over some days, there were as many days that I was equally under. I was able to trust the signals my body sent me, even when there was no way in hell that I'd have been able to do that in the past and get anywhere. Way back before I started LCHF, I could eat 2000 calories and still want to gnaw my arm off from hunger. When I went LCHF, I was still eating something that triggered that hunger, though not to the degree that SAD did, and as a result, I was still fighting that hunger and was unable to lose weight. I no longer fight that hunger.
I eat when I'm hungry and I eat until I'm full, but not stuffed. Eating until stuffed is actually really hard when you're eating almost nothing but meat. I usually get physically unable to take another bite before I get to that "stuffed" point.
What I find most interesting is that my intake hasn't gone down much, if at all. I average 1700-2300 calories or so per day (what I eat hasn't varied greatly since I stopped tracking), which is right about where Fitbit and MFP say I should be (starts at 1800, then swings up or down depending on activity level), and where I've been since about the beginning. I arguably even eat a little more (~200 calories more) than I used to, since my intake tends to lean more toward the 2000-2200 range most days. Yet I'm losing weight now, when I hadn't been losing anything before.
And here's a fun one for you -- I went camping last weekend with a bunch of friends. I drank a fair bit of mead (in fact, it was my dinner Friday night, due to some misunderstanding on my part), and ate things I don't normally eat (a couple single serving bags of chips, more brownies than I should have, some grapes). I may or may not have overeaten, who knows, but I wasn't particularly hungry most of the time, either, so I didn't worry about it. Yet, a few days later, I weighed myself and was down over a pound from my previous low. A day after that, the scale had me down an additional three pounds, for a total of a little over 4 pounds lost for the month, despite probably a good 1000 calories or more of sugar and alcohol. In the past, I would have gained upwards of 10lbs on the scale from a weekend like that, and it would have taken a couple of weeks to drop it, then I would have been back at square one and lost any little progress I would have made had I not done that. I also would have been struggling with cravings for the next week or two (which I didn't struggle with this time, despite some major stress in my life following that trip; in fact, sugar/chocolate was the last thing I wanted and I just wanted to get back to my usual food).
Talk about freedom, let me tell you.
The weight loss is significant, because it means that such an event wasn't detrimental to my insulin level, which, for me, is the key to my success or failure in my efforts to lose weight. For me, the amount of calories doesn't actually matter all that much. What my body burns vs stores depends far more on my hormones than anything else, and my hormones depend a lot more on what I eat than how much.
The fallacy I see the most whenever the calorie thing comes up (and it comes up often), is that you can't eat 3000 calories over your TDEE and not expect to gain weight. These kinds of statements aren't wrong, and that's what makes them so dangerous. No one who says that calories don't really matter, or don't matter as much as the emphasis that CICO/calories-only approaches think they do, is saying that you could eat 3000 calories over TDEE and not gain weight. What they're actually saying is that you'd have to force yourself to eat that much, because the body will regulate itself once you remove the foods that are causing it harm. Even a couple hundred calories over your TDEE for more than a few days is very difficult unless sugar or sweeteners are involved (because of the hormonal changes that sugar and sweeteners prompt).
They're also saying that the intake vs burn can't be so fine-tuned that you can lose/gain exactly what the calculations say you should. It's always an about number. There's actually quite a huge margin of error. This is harder to see even at the month level, when you're talking a 20% margin of error on 4 pounds or so (which amounts to less than a pound one way or another), but you start seeing it on the longer time frames in plateaus/stalls, slower rates of loss in some spans of time, faster rates in others. Suddenly, you find you've lost 25 pounds, when the calculations say you should only have lost 20 pounds, or you've only lost 20 pounds when calculations say it should be 25. This is especially the case for people with dysfunctional endocrine systems, for which all bets are off.
I've been there, pretty much to the extreme -- if calories were all that mattered, I should be at my goal weight by now. I've been eating 2000 calories for something like 5 years. All the calculators say that that is a 1lb/week loss for me. Five years, times 52 weeks a year is 260. At 1lb per week, I should have lost 260lbs in that time. I don't have that much to lose. Never did. In fact, I had about half that at my highest weight to get to squarely in the middle of "healthy" on the BMI scale. That means if calories were all that mattered, I should have been at maintenance for the past two and a half years. But I'm not, because my endocrine system was screwed up, and I needed to fix it, first. I couldn't do that with medicine. I couldn't do it with sheer exercise volume. I had to do it with food. I had to find the foods that did me more good than harm. I had to cut out the foods that were keeping me from absorbing the nutrients I've needed. I had to cut out the foods that were causing my immune system to run in overdrive. I had to cut out the foods that were elevating my insulin levels and sending my body the signal that there was food to burn (and so, don't burn body fat), even as it was simultaneously telling my body it was starving.0 -
I think part of my difference in perspective is that I've moved beyond considering "weight loss" as my goal. I would rather be 10 pounds into the "over-weight" BMI range, while able to eat to satiety and enjoy good health, than be a perfect BMI with imperfect health and needing to monitor every bite that goes into my mouth. Sure, it would be great to be a 23 BMI and/or rock some serious abs. With the removal of weight loss as a concrete goal, the actual rate of weight loss moves down in importance. I probably could have lost two pounds a week instead of the one-ish that I did. But, that would have compromised other goals.
I've been in the other place though. I remember being 230 pounds in college (a BMI of nearly 40 for my height) and thinking I would do anything to lose even 50 pounds. I would be willing to starve myself to make it happen. I didn't "want" it to be muscle, but I wouldn't have worried about muscle loss as long as the scale kept going down. I've tried to starve myself thin before, it was miserable and left me unable to eat even close to satisfying amounts without gaining weight. And, it was all for naught because the weight came back on anyway. Even when I was at my thinnest, I felt horrible the whole time. I looked better, but I wasn't happy with my body or how I felt.
It's hard to not care about weight when you're way up there in it. It wasn't even easy for me this time, until I passed a certain threshold where I felt better mentally about the number on the scale. Days where it goes up and/or stays up can be frustrating, even if you're using trends to minimize the fluctuations. I don't know that most people are willing to just let go and trust that things will end up alright. I had a history of failure when I didn't control what I ate. Letting go was extremely difficult. I had to take the batteries out of my kitchen scale and give them to my wife to hide, to stop myself from weighing everything. I never took the batteries out of the bathroom scale, that's the one thing I do think is useful. The change in average weekly weight on a month-to-month basis is useful for knowing that you're on the right track. I do stand by that.
Anyway, here's another goat picture.
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Do not think eating meat is key to losing fat and keeping it off. While I do some dairy that is very high in fat and eggs currently I am only eating meat in the form of 6 strips of bacon a day from the Huddle House restaurant chain. I do hit 70-100 grams of protein most days and keep the carbs under 50 grams. Fats run wild.
Meat is good but I have to limit it to do ketosis in my case plus it is very expensive like eating out is. 0 -
giftbouquets wrote: »Quite a newbie here but from my experience of losing weight on a lower (not keto) diet is that I do much better when not counting calories. Counting calories just makes me obsess about food, feel deprived and ultimately overeat. I do best when I just know what not to eat (bead, rice, potatoes, processed food, sugar) and then just listen to my body. I tried my first BPC the other day, it was horrible. After drinking I asked myself why I had done it? I would have preferred my usual 3 egg salami omelette cooked in coconut oil for breakfast, so why make myself feel deprived by just drinking coffee? As I say, I am a newbie to MFP and don't want to disagree with what works for other people, but for me keeping what I eat as 'normal' as possible and not thinking of it as a 'diet' works.
Totally agree about both counting calories and also weighing in too much! After 40# loss I've finally going to the point (I think!) that I can own a scale responsibly, lol. Low calories also means you limit fat as fat has 9 cals per gram more than protein and carbs, which is counter productive to me. I try to focus on getting enough fiber, and that's sbout it (and staying around ten carbs a meal).
Edit: have to also AMEN the BPCs. Yuck! I'd rather just have heavy cream and lots of it in mine. I don't do fat bombs either, tho. I do eat a square of dark chocolate every day tho. 0 -
I like the message in this thread: trust your body if your body can be trusted.
We're all here because we got fat. My experience was similar to @foamroller's -- for years I could get away with a LOT. I ate tons of sugary crap and I was pretty weight stable. It took over 30 years before that chronic level of excess carb intake started causing noticeable problems.
So that tells me that my body was pretty robust. It only took me a few months of moderate carb restriction to "heal" my metabolism, and now I can trust my body again.
I honestly have no idea how to measure how robust my healing was. Maybe I can tolerate another 30 years of chronic excess carb intake again. Who knows?
In my case, it had nothing to do with nuts, or cheese, or veggies, or even the level of carb intake. It took CHRONIC abuse to mess with my homeostasis, and I simply needed to give my body enough of a break to get out of the pathological range I had pushed it into.
So my only advice is to ignore everybody's advice, unless you can find your metabolic twin.
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giftbouquets wrote: »Quite a newbie here but from my experience of losing weight on a lower (not keto) diet is that I do much better when not counting calories. Counting calories just makes me obsess about food, feel deprived and ultimately overeat. I do best when I just know what not to eat (bead, rice, potatoes, processed food, sugar) and then just listen to my body. I tried my first BPC the other day, it was horrible. After drinking I asked myself why I had done it? I would have preferred my usual 3 egg salami omelette cooked in coconut oil for breakfast, so why make myself feel deprived by just drinking coffee? As I say, I am a newbie to MFP and don't want to disagree with what works for other people, but for me keeping what I eat as 'normal' as possible and not thinking of it as a 'diet' works.
I was obsessing over food and weighing it awhile ago. It drove my mom nuts. But for me (and us), it's becoming a new normal. We've found ways to incorporate the scale into simple things like making BPC and now it's less of an obsessive need and more of a routine. I think your approach and mine work equally well, we all know that different things work best for different people. All dissenting opinions and different methods are welcome here.0 -
I have to agree with sweettea - the scale is a great learning instrument and I have found counting to be a great way to find out what sort of foods are fulfilling for me while still fitting into my calories for the day. BPC didn't work for me but loads of protein and fat and low carb veggies do.
I went through some very hungry stages at the start of LC but I learned (the hard way) what works for me - the answer was IF (I never eat before 1pm and rarely after 8pm - breakfast just starts my hunger cycle too early) and big meals padded out with veggies.
I now rarely feel hunger in an anxious way (weirdly Saturday was the first time in ages, at about 7pm after having had a tropical fruit salad for breakfast - WAY too many carbs in that I guess...) but it was the best I could do in the circumstances.
Also I have discovered that I can go up to 150g carbs in a day and get right back on track the next these days - which is something new for me.
Don't forget that when you eat protein it takes the body around 30% of the energy in the protein just to digest it. CI do not = CO in this case!
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@Dragonwolf How did you do this? ETA: how did you determine which foods were causing the issues? an elimination type approach w/ adding foods back in?
"But I'm not, because my endocrine system was screwed up, and I needed to fix it, first. I couldn't do that with medicine. I couldn't do it with sheer exercise volume. I had to do it with food. I had to find the foods that did me more good than harm. I had to cut out the foods that were keeping me from absorbing the nutrients I've needed. I had to cut out the foods that were causing my immune system to run in overdrive. I had to cut out the foods that were elevating my insulin levels and sending my body the signal that there was food to burn (and so, don't burn body fat), even as it was simultaneously telling my body it was starving."0 -
@Dragonwolf How did you do this? ETA: how did you determine which foods were causing the issues? an elimination type approach w/ adding foods back in?
"But I'm not, because my endocrine system was screwed up, and I needed to fix it, first. I couldn't do that with medicine. I couldn't do it with sheer exercise volume. I had to do it with food. I had to find the foods that did me more good than harm. I had to cut out the foods that were keeping me from absorbing the nutrients I've needed. I had to cut out the foods that were causing my immune system to run in overdrive. I had to cut out the foods that were elevating my insulin levels and sending my body the signal that there was food to burn (and so, don't burn body fat), even as it was simultaneously telling my body it was starving."
Years of trial and error, really. I finally got fed up with it all and just dropped down to just eating animal products (it was an easy transition for me, since I was already in a habit of not specifically seeking out plants).
I'm not currently intentionally adding anything back in on a regular basis, because that has a fairly high chance of backfiring, and my weight loss cycle is too long to feasibly do it (I don't see changes in the scale except for one week out of the month, then it "catches up" with losses). I'm content with what I have right now, anyway, because I know what works, I know I have leeway for what I consider treats without having to worry, and everything's simple -- it's either compliant with my primary way of eating or it isn't -- takes all the guesswork of mixed diet keto/LCHF out of the equation.0 -
I like the message in this thread: trust your body if your body can be trusted.
I'm so glad I know at this point that my body simply can't be trusted. It just cares about immediate gratification. Sigh...
I remember taking the Trust Your Body To Feed Itself Correctly advice from a Mademoiselle magazine article in the late 90s. It said: Don't worry dear. It's all this worry that causes you to overeat. Let your body eat whatever it wants and however much it wants. After two weeks it will correct itself and naturally start gravitating towards healthier foods which give your body the nourishment it needs. Like fruits, vegetables, lean proteins and plenty of water.
Yup.
So after two weeks of existing on nothing but Peppermint Patties, Pringles, Crunch 'n Munch, many loaves of Pepperidge Farm white bread, many cartons of ice cream, many liters of Pepsi, with an occasional bologna garnish - it became obvious there would be no natural correction. But I didn't care because I was loving the food and I was still hungry. 80 lbs. later I finally got it. My body can't be trusted with food. It needs a corrections officer. Me.
Sounds like a scene out of a frat house !!
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It was forty years of carb abuse that nailed me. In my case I plan to stay under 50 grams for the rest of my life. While I realize most of the arthritis damage is not reversible since last OCT eating and staying in ketosis clearly my body systems are in recovery mode. Staying full yet just dropping under 200 pounds for the first time in 22 years with less pain than in 30 years is enough for my brain to decide it likes very low carb high fat eating lifestyle.
I totally agree the body will tell me what it needs as long as I stay off the override button. 1 -
I think for those of us with disordered eating (I have binge eating disorder for which I have run out of funding for counseling) there won't ever be a totally normal relationship with food. When you have an eating disorder all logic goes right out the window.
It doesn't matter what your body 'says', there is a screaming urgency in your mind to do whatever it is that your disorder tells you to do, binge or purge or restrict. It's extraordinarily difficult to control that urge and it has no basis on appetite, logical thought or any of that stuff regular people seem to have.
Keto is definitely the biggest tool on my belt for dealing with it though. And on keto I can eat more than any of the calculators say I can and lose weight. Not sure if changing to an all-meat diet would further help or not.
I feel like food is an addictive drug that I have to make myself only take a recreational amount of.0 -
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I remember taking the Trust Your Body To Feed Itself Correctly advice from a Mademoiselle magazine article in the late 90s. It said: Don't worry dear. It's all this worry that causes you to overeat. Let your body eat whatever it wants and however much it wants. After two weeks it will correct itself and naturally start gravitating towards healthier foods which give your body the nourishment it needs. Like fruits, vegetables, lean proteins and plenty of water.
Yup.
So after two weeks of existing on nothing but Peppermint Patties, Pringles, Crunch 'n Munch, many loaves of Pepperidge Farm white bread, many cartons of ice cream, many liters of Pepsi, with an occasional bologna garnish - it became obvious there would be no natural correction. But I didn't care because I was loving the food and I was still hungry. 80 lbs. later I finally got it. My body can't be trusted with food. It needs a corrections officer. Me.
I had a similar experience with "non-dieting" in that I thought the idea was I could eat whatever I wanted, in any amount I wanted-- and I gained a LOT of weight. But what I failed to put into practice were the other aspects of non-dieting/intuitive eating. I was not asking myself if I was truly hungry. I was not exploring the possibility my "cravings" were emotionally driven. I did not avoid distractions while eating. I did not think about how I felt (physically) when I ate junk. I just kept shovelling it in. It is my understanding intuitive eating does teach us to trust our bodies- but it is an in-depth, detailed (and often,emotional) process. Far more than could be covered in a magazine article. Geneen Roth has written several books about non-dieting and she also offers a course of study online. I have read her books, but not tried the course. I enjoy her work very much and it has helped me tremendously to come to terms with food and my body. I have a long way to go yet, but her writings have definitely been beneficial for me.0 -
I like the message in this thread: trust your body if your body can be trusted.
I'm so glad I know at this point that my body simply can't be trusted. It just cares about immediate gratification. Sigh...
I remember taking the Trust Your Body To Feed Itself Correctly advice from a Mademoiselle magazine article in the late 90s. It said: Don't worry dear. It's all this worry that causes you to overeat. Let your body eat whatever it wants and however much it wants. After two weeks it will correct itself and naturally start gravitating towards healthier foods which give your body the nourishment it needs. Like fruits, vegetables, lean proteins and plenty of water.
Yup.
So after two weeks of existing on nothing but Peppermint Patties, Pringles, Crunch 'n Munch, many loaves of Pepperidge Farm white bread, many cartons of ice cream, many liters of Pepsi, with an occasional bologna garnish - it became obvious there would be no natural correction. But I didn't care because I was loving the food and I was still hungry. 80 lbs. later I finally got it. My body can't be trusted with food. It needs a corrections officer. Me.
The difference between that and what many here espouse is that you have to start with the nourishing food and start the feedback loop by cutting out the garbage that's keeping your body from healing. You were constantly hungry because you were feeding your body crap, nutrient-sparse food that was created for pretty much the sole purpose of getting you to eat more (eating more = buying more = more money for the company that makes it). When the nutrients aren't there, the body tells you to eat more in order to obtain those nutrients.
It also doesn't necessarily only take two weeks. In fact, it may take years to be able to get to a point -- physically, mentally, and emotionally -- where you can trust your body. If you're tossing in eating disorders, which are as much mental and emotional issues are they are physical, it may not come automatically, but you can obtain it (I know several who have). But, you have to start with the nourishing foods.
It works, but it's not magic and for a lot of people it also takes work.1 -
I cannot trust my body, nor my emotions, so I try to rely on intellect when it comes to food choices. Not always easy...2
