to carb or not to carb...and more

rockinright

I'm male, I turn 35 in August.

I'm on Round 2 here at MFP, in 2010 I lost almost 40 lbs then fell off the wagon in a spectacular way, haha. I gained 30 of it back.

So here I am again. Anyway, I seem to be losing 2-3 lbs/week on the "1 lb/week" calorie level as calculated by MFP. I realize that at the start (I'm in week 4) I'll lose faster, then slow down. My activity level is only moderate with some light to moderate exercise about 3 times per week. I am looking to step that up.

I'm more interested in overall health, feeling good, and losing weight. Muscle mass would be nice but not as important at the moment.

What about the food? I've found that simply reducing portions and cutting calories I lose, but I still feel lethargic, and sore after even moderate activity. I don't eat a lot of "junk" most days, except on splurge days which I limit to about once a week max. However, I seem high on carbs.

There is SO much conflicting info on carbs. High carb/low fat, low carb/high fat, and all the other stuff....

And is there any truth to bad breath resulting from too few carbs?

Are there ways to tell how my body is most likely to respond?

I NEVER have energy, but I usually am lucky to get 6 hours of sleep -- we have two small kids, my wife and I both work, and by the time the kids are in bed and the daily chores are done, it's close to 11...then at 5:30, my wife's alarm goes off and the kids are usually up. However, even when I do get more sleep, I rarely feel "rested".

I weigh 229 at the moment, I'm 5'7, so that puts my BMI at 35.9.

So any ideas about all this?

sarahrbraun

first of all....You say that you never feel rested. Has your wife ever said that you snore? My husband would sleep a full night of sleep, but still spend the evening asleep on the couch....and weekends he would sleep 2-3 hours later than me, then get up and move to the couch where he would sleep the day away. Finally, when I took him to the doctor for the flu, I mentioned his horrible snoring--it turns out that he has sleep apnea, and he stopped breathing 6+ times an hour. He was tired because he never got more than about 10 minutes sleep before waking part way up!

I have had success with cutting my carbs down to about 30-35% of my diet. My body has a tendency towards insulin resistance, and carbs just make me gain weight. I worked out at the Y for 3 months and only lost 7.4 pounds...in the first week of cutting my carbs down to under 100 net per day, I lost 4.8 pounds!! Once I remembered how to spread my carbs out during the day, I was almost never hungry.

*** net carbs is total carbs minus fiber and sugar alcohols***