"Low Carbs, Eat Fat & Fast"

AnnPT77

oldmanbythegulf wrote: »

(To ANNpt77) Thanks for your knowledge and time in the above response. My daily calories are all over the place, 500 to 2000, most are 800 to 1500, 1000 to 1200 I guess. My Keto diet really controls my apatite to 2 meals per day or one meal per day. I plan on staying with it 6 to 12 more months then re-evaluating it. No real exercise to mention. I'm 5' 9". Perhaps my stage 3b CKD dictates about 50 g of protein per day, I many days do 50 to 90g. Of course on Keto I mostly hit about 20g of carbs but also 50g or so. You mention body stress, if you meant cortisol, which increases insulin, extending my possible IR, that's bad. Doctors (not interested in preventative health) and their schools, drugs, food industries being in bed together for the last 50 years, sometimes that begins to make sense. Thanks for the comment, "although it may seem slow, any progress is a good thing".

Cortisol is part of it, and a meaningful part, but I meant stress in a more general sense as well. Certainly other hormones are affected by stress, some triggered to increase, others decrease.

Stress also can have practical consequences, like triggering fatigue (which will reduce calorie expenditure among other side effects), increasing risk of negative health consequences, potentially weakening the immune system, slowing recovery/healing from illness or injury, etc.

Managing stress is important, and stresses from all sources - physical and psychological - can be cumulative. Calorie deficit is a stress we can manage, and other factors in our control matter for stress management, too (nutrition, exercise, sleep, etc.).

To put a sharper point on it, are you managing your total stress load effectively? That's a thing we do for ourselves, IMO, as a matter of preventative/remediative health.

MacLowCarbing

oldmanbythegulf wrote: »

I'm focusing in on "low carbs, eat fat & fast". My Doctors & my 110 lb, 20 yr old Nutritionist does not seem to be interested??? Is it all You Tube hype just to get clicks???

Well, it's not actually a fad (as in something new that is popular but unsubstantiated and will fade)... it's actually the way many human cultures have eaten throughout history.

My doctor & nurse practitioner were very happy when I suggested I try high fat/low carb... and they are very happy with the results (85 lbs down, on the verge of reversing my diabetes-- off insulin & almost all other meds).

My previous dr. & the office nutritionist wanted me on the American Diabetes Association balanced diet-- half my intake healthy carbs & low fat, plus I was supposed to eat 6 small meals per day.

I was barely able to keep my diabetes controlled on it. I was also very unhappy with it, felt very deprived, was constantly obsessing over prepping my next meal or what I was eating next, it was difficult to sustain.

It may work for some people-- it don't work for all of us. There is no one-size-fits-all.

I eat 70% fat, 25% protein, 5% carbs. I also do intermittent fasting (I have a 6-8 hr. eating window per day, and don't eat for the other 16-18 hours).

Aside from my health issues, I am a food addict, mainly a huge carb addict, and I realized for me that there is no way to do certain types of carbs (namely added sugars and grains and starchy fruits & veggies) in moderation. They make me hungry, I cannot stop eating them, and when I do eat them I have frequent cravings/desires to binge.

When off those kinds of carbs and keeping carbs low, it flips a switch in the brain and I no longer get hunger and cravings. Now, I am satisfied with one meal and a snack, or two meals per day. I'm supposed to eat around 1500 calories but most days I fall under that because I'm not hungry or thinking about food all the time.

We don't actually need carbs. (Please note, carb lovers, don't get your knickers in a twist-- I'm not saying YOU can't eat carbs, or that YOU shouldn't have carbs if you want them, or that YOU can't be perfectly healthy eating as may carbs as you want-- I'm saying it is a biological fact that the human species does not require carbohydrates and can live without them).

They are the one macro not necessary. There are necessary proteins, and necessary fats, but there is no such thing as necessary carbs. The body is well equipped to burn fat as fuel, and by going low carb we become fat-adapted.

If you do eat carbs, as most of us prefer to do to some extent, you can get all the nutrition you need from fruits & veggies-- grains, sugars, etc. are not necessary and for some people who have issues that make them sensitive to carbs (addictions, metabolic syndrome, certain diseases, etc.), avoiding them altogether is a reasonable and sustainable option.

Fact is, there is tons of data from reputable sources that has come out to suggest that low carb/high fat diets are working for a lot of people. There has also been brought to light that a lot of the mainstream dietary advice that is still popular today, even by medical professionals, was based on some pretty shaky science.

A lot of health professionals are torn and have their biases... they follow the data they think is right, but as we know by all the conflicting studies (as well as all the conflicting results from different people who have tried different diets) no one really fully understands what is 'the right diet'-- if indeed there is such a thing as "the right diet" for every person.

If you like youtube, this is a good channel for low-carb research: https://www.youtube.com/@lowcarbdownunder/videos

They are medical and scientific professionals presenting to other medical and scientific professionals studies and data that you can look up and research further for yourself.

Dr. Ken Berry, Dr. Cywes the #CarbAddictionDoc, Dr. Eric Westman are also good sources who have long histories of treating patients with low-carb diets. They go over a lot of studies and talk with a lot of different medical specialists, you can get some good info to ponder from them.


Is low carb/high fat & fasting good for you personally? Hell, I don't know. Maybe it's not; maybe you'll hate it. Maybe your doctor/nutritionist is right. Or maybe it'll be the best thing to happen to your life, maybe your doctor/nutritionist are wrong about what is best for you.

Ultimately it is your body and you have to find out what works for you. You must have some reason to think it might benefit you. Unless you have some serious immediate medical concern, you could always try it for a couple of months and see how it makes you feel, see how your labs come back, etc. And if it's not working you can tweak it, or trash it. It's not like you have to make a lifetime commitment, or that a few weeks of eating differently is going to do serious damage to most people.


Oh, one other thing-- a lot of people talk about how 'restrictive' it is. And maybe some people will feel that way-- but others who assumed they would feel that way sometimes turn around and discover they don't feel restricted at all.

I never, ever in a million years, thought I could live without my favorite carbs. No one was more shocked than I was that I'm actually happier without them. As someone who spent a lifetime fighting hunger cravings and desires to binge and food obsessions, NOTHING-- but NOTHING-- has been so liberating as being freed from the grip of addictive impulses. It's nice to finally eat to live, rather than feeling like I live to eat.

Again, it's not one-size-fits-all, and no one knows what'll work for them till they try different things. As long as you're eating real foods that nourish you and not a lot of processed crap, there's no point in not trying different ones till you find your sweet spot.