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Low carb diet with intermittent fasting

mielo1986
mielo1986 Posts: 4 Member
in Introduce Yourself
Hi, I have struggled to lose weight over the years with poor motivation and slipping into bad habits, but recently I have been reading about intermittent fasting so tried it for 7 days. I maintained an 18/6 fast and absolutely loved it! Can anyone tell me if doing this alongside a low carb or even keto diet is healthy?

Replies

  • neanderthin
    neanderthin Posts: 10,423 Member
    edited June 2023
    I've been low carb for 12 years and at my highest weight was around 240lbs and got down to 180 within a year and during that time I've also been on a ketogenic diet and started with the SKD (standard keto diet) then went to TKD (targeted keto diet) after 6 months and found that easier and better for my particular lifestyle, which is fairly active with sports and weight training. Which was why I went back to just a low carb diet over the last 5 years and it's easier with less monitoring for ketones and always having to worry about the exactitude of my carb intake, that's tedious and personally, annoying.

    Anyway I've been involved with IF for quite a few years, around 8 years and mostly TRF (time restricted feeding) like the 18:6 and it has helped me lose weight while low carb when I was actually consuming in the higher spectrum of carbs for my lifestyle, which is the summer, so I do that when those occasions come up. My carb intake ranges from as high as about 125g's to a low of around 30g's again depending on how I feel and my main indicator is my clothes. Fitting tighter then it's lower carbs and back to IF for a couple of weeks and if my cloths are getting looser and I don't want that then I up my carbs and don't IF. This works for me but then again I don't like to count calories, which I find just as annoying as the ketogenic diet was.

    As far as health is concerned all my markers improved, except cholesterol, it went up slightly but that was mostly HDL. I took a CAC scan twice over the last 10 years and both are very low, so no heart disease. My A1C fell from 4.8 to 4.3 but the biggest changes were my HDL which went up and my trigs actually dropped like a stone and now I'm around the 45 to 50 range where I was 170 before.

    I think a decent diet that is mostly whole foods would be just as effective as a low carb but I had sugar craving issues that really effected me and that's one of the main reasons why I adopted low carb and I didn't struggle with the change, so it was pretty easy. Anyway, exercise is as important and actually paramount for longevity, so I would suggest adding some if your not doing much or any. Cheers.

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