7 Days into L.Mcdonalds Rapid Fat Loss

So, you may or may not have heard of Lyle Mcdonald's Rapid Fat Loss Program.

Either way, it's meant to go for 11-12 days for category 1. I'm currently at around 11:30pm on my 7th day.

Guess what? I'm hating it.
Sure, the results are good. Hell, they're great. I'm visibly leaner already. But I feel absolutely terrible, and the side effects are many.

Here's a little recap of my side effects. Maybe if you've tried it, or do try it, they'll be different, but this is my experience so far, anyway.

1. Small headache at around 4-5pm each day building slowly into a splitting headache at around 10-11pm each night, even though I'm drinking over 5 litres of water every day.
2. Struggle to actually get to sleep even though I'm exhausted.
3. Waking up almost every single hour, 6-8 times during the night.
4. COMPLETE lack of energy. Getting up off the couch is a serious effort, let alone the few weights sessions I've attempted. A half hour walk had me completely drained and exhausted.
5. During weights sessions, even lifting at 60-70% of what weight I normally do, doing 2 sets instead of 3, I felt nauseous, struggled to lift it, and almost passed out at one stage.
6. Bowel movements from one extreme to the other. Yeah folks, that's from constipation in the beginning right through to diarrhea.
7. I'm a complete grumpy bum. My family is suffering due to me being so grumpy and short with them all the time.
8. Concentrating is hard and I've been slightly worried while driving, especially coming home from work one night.
9. And how could I forget; I'm normally hungry.

Basically this has been my food intake almost every day the past week:

Supplements:
12 Spirulina capsules
1 x Multivitamin
5g Creatine dose
Flaxseed oil

Breakfast:
5 egg white omelette with ham and mushroom

Lunch:
250-300g tinned tuna with green salad. Lemon juice as a dressing.

Dinner:
300-400g chicken with brocolli/beans or green salad.
Ocassionaly a no-fat cheese slice

Snack:
500g protein jelly
(6g protein, 0.2g sugar)

If I did a workout, I'd have my whey protein concentrate shake bearing 24g protein, 1g fat, 1g carbs

That's pretty much it. Maybe a bit more tuna, or a bit more chicken depending how hungry I was.

All in all, it worked out to around 250-300g protein, 20-25g fat, <10g carbs each day.

I'm currently 4kg less than when I started. I'm thinking around 75% of this is due to water-weight dissapearing, with hopefully 25% being all fat loss and no muscle loss.

So all in all, the past week has been a big, horrible mess for me. Call me a whinger, I don't care. It's been terrible in my opinion and I'm not sure I'll try it again.
However, the results have been good. Really good. So, is it worth it? I don't know. I could've done the same thing in 3-4 weeks and remained sane and happy eating at a slight deficit, while still eating normally.


/End

I did a 5 day run of sub 20g carbs, and sub 20g fat..............similar results. I am intolerable on no carbs, can't be near anyone........it does work though.

One thing to be taken into consideration............when i was 60lbs heavier, i wouldn't have wasted my time with this, but as you get lighter and lighter, chasing lower and lower body fats, short term extremes work. That goes along with the maintaining the whole "lifestyle change."

When you have a large amount of body fat to lose, slow and steady is the way to go............but when you have smaller amounts, there is nothing wrong with chasing extremes. Extreme diets and workouts for extreme results. They can't be maintained long-term, but they can smash plateau's and get you re-motivated bigtime.

Ah, there's nothing here I can deny. Spot on. When you're getting down toward single digit bodyfat% territory, perhaps it is indeed one of the better ways to do it.

A large part is in the mind, though. Not saying I'm mentally the strongest person out there; but I know it's been a challenge and I know there's lots of people who simply couldn't do it.
Then again, most of those people shouldn't even be trying to do it, because they're most likely not in need of the crash diets and need the long term, sustainable weight loss.

I just want to point out as well, because I've been noticing quite a few people my age now are having to have their gall bladders removed..(the organ that helps digest fat, etc) which is due to crash dieting, because it confuses your gall bladder and makes it work harder than it should...so it causes gall stones....

"Are you thinking of ketoacidosis?"

A good point -- I think it's almost impossible in a "sound bite" environment like a posting board, to get in to any very close to real science.

It tends to be more yelling about opinions gleaned from talk-shows, etc :-)

Lyle McDonald's diets are incredible, if, you are a body builder or just want to lose FAT quickly.

Regarding all the complaints in the world about low carb intake:

something to consider:

90% of the time this is just because people are wildly addicted to carbs.

I spent a year rebuilding the health of my pancreas, and now, very luckily for me, I am not in the slightest addicted to carbohydrates.

I can easily go at any time for a few days with ZERO carbohydrates, and have no ill effects, no anger, mood changes or anything else whatsoever.

(There's no particular reason to "go for days without carbs" but if I do it as a test there's no problem - whatsoever.)

Similarly and just as importantly, if one or two days I happen to eat a huge amount of carbs .. no ill effects at all. no sudden fat increase or the like, no headaches or any other problems - at all.

So for everyone who has "carb anger" and hates to hear about moderate-carb eating or the like .. all I would say is, clearly, I was EXACTLY LIKE THAT merely a year ago. Whenever anyone mentioned anything to do with carbs, I'd just get really angry and yell talk-show opinions about how your head is going to explode if you "ketosis" etc etc.

The fact is, anthropological studies show humans ate about 70 grams a day of carbs. And anyone can easily verify that if you just do this for a few weeks, you feel incredible all the time. (And as a minor side issue, all the fat just falls off your body.)

The idea that protein or fat is bad for you in any way is just nutty. Your body runs on fat, just as motor cars run on petrol/oil. And protein "is your body".

So while (some of) Lyle McDonald's plans are seemingly extreme, it's worth bearing in perspective.

Don't forget, it's normal these days in western countries for people to eat "utterly insane' levels of carbohydrates per day ... 200, 300, 400, 500, 600 grams is totally everyday. These figures are completely insane for CHO intake. We live in a historic era of insanely high CHO intake. So when writers like McDonald start mentioning figures closer to the normal (ie, "normal for 100,000s of years") human intake of 70 or so grams a day, it can sound whacky. but it's hardly whacky.