Why do people say if you go low carb to lose weight, you must eat that way forever?
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I lost my excess weight (35-40 lbs) eating low (-ish) carb. This obviously reduced my calories without me counting them because it's pretty easy to overeat foods like bread, especially when you live in France where it is on the table at every meal. However, when I stopped trying to lose, I couldn't go back to my old habits, because French bread is really quite a bulky food that makes you retain water as well, so my old habit of eating too much of it had also got me used to associating the bloated, full feeling with what it should feel like to be satisfied by a meal. When I was out of the habit of eating it, I found my appetite had become smaller and I could not eat such large amounts of bread as I would have just unthinkingly done before, without feeling uncomfortably full. Same goes for pasta: before, I thought the 'serving size' in my spaghetti measurer was insanely small and would routinely eat twice as much. After, it seemed a perfectly reasonable amount, because too much would lead to that bloated, water retention feeling I had trained myself out of finding normal.1
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I don't think you absolutely HAVE to eat low carb forever. But you should be aware of the way your body responds to foods. I initially started LCHF to lose weight and have since discovered that I am insulin resistant, and that I can very easily lose or maintain my weight on LCHF much better than with, say, flexible dieting. I also feel much better on low carb. That said, I still have my weak moments and eat a kit kat or 4 during that time of month.
. But quickly remember why I've cut out refined sugar when I wake up with a massive migraine the next day. I can't say that's ever happened when I've eaten too much butter. 
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I think it's more about learning new eating habits while you lose weight. So if you use a way of eating that you're not planning on using forever... you're really not learning how to eat properly in a sustainable manner.
Some people who go low carb do it because they don't know how to moderate carbs - so it's not a crazy guess that they will still have the issue when they reintroduce them... and gain weight back.
Also keep in mind that when going low carb and reintroducing carbs, you're pretty much guaranteed to gain water weight back, so that has a lot to do with the 'OMG I'M GAINING WEIGHT BACK' factor.
This^^^^^Exactly!!
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Oh yeah, re learning new habits, I would add that before I spent some time on a reduced carb diet, I would think of meals in terms of what starch-based side dish I would have with them. When I was looking at reducing carbs, I'd be thinking much more about what the main *point* of the meal was: if it was to eat a delicious steak, then it wasn't necessary to think 'what kind of potatoes shall I have with that': the steak was the focus of the meal, and I might instead choose to have some asparagus or a salad with it. If I wanted a big bowl of pasta just because it was pasta, then *that* was the main point of the meal. But I got out of the habit of just unreflectively adding a carb to each meal.3
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stevencloser wrote: »I have yet to see a single low carb person who did not cut out very specific food types because of their carb content.
So they don't consume foods that don't fit their macros? That concept sounds familiar...8 -
stevencloser wrote: »I have yet to see a single low carb person who did not cut out very specific food types because of their carb content.
So they don't consume foods that don't fit their macros? That concept sounds familiar...
So when they're at goal they either have to be able to "Do this for the rest of their life" (name of the thread), or they need to be able to do the thing they weren't able to do that made them go with the other approach to begin with.
Am I articulating myself that badly that you don't understand?3 -
stevencloser wrote: »I have yet to see a single low carb person who did not cut out very specific food types because of their carb content.
So they don't consume foods that don't fit their macros? That concept sounds familiar...
That seems like an odd way to twist someone else's words ...fitting macros doesn't mean eliminating one specific macro, it means hitting minimums of 2 and allowing the other to fall where it will out of taste or specific fuel for exercise need
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stevencloser wrote: »I have yet to see a single low carb person who did not cut out very specific food types because of their carb content.
So they don't consume foods that don't fit their macros? That concept sounds familiar...
That seems like an odd way to twist someone else's words ...fitting macros doesn't mean eliminating one specific macro, it means hitting minimums of 2 and allowing the other to fall where it will out of taste or specific fuel for exercise need
Low carb doesn't eliminate any macro - carbs, protein and fat are all consumed.
But beyond that, there are just as many ways to approach low carb as any other way of eating. Some people choose to restrict food types (grains and starches are common) or trigger foods or foods that "aren't worth it" or the frequency or quantity of these foods just like any diet - something has to give. And there's just as many people who take an IIFYM approach to low carb.4 -
ummijaaz560 wrote: »Thanks all who have added to the discussion.
Does anyone know how carbs affect stomach bloat? Or is there no connection?
Also why do I get really hungry after eating pasta, like spaghetti with meatballs, but if I eat just meatballs I'm fine?
The only connection would be if you are issues with wheat. Carbs don't cause bloat. The latter is more about personal satiety. Are they equal size meatballs? If you eat just meatballs, is there a side?0 -
ummijaaz560 wrote: »Thanks all who have added to the discussion.
Does anyone know how carbs affect stomach bloat? Or is there no connection?
Also why do I get really hungry after eating pasta, like spaghetti with meatballs, but if I eat just meatballs I'm fine?
The only connection would be if you are issues with wheat. Carbs don't cause bloat. The latter is more about personal satiety. Are they equal size meatballs? If you eat just meatballs, is there a side?
If I eat the meatballs with marinara sauce and vegatables I'm satisfied. When I eat the spaghetti and meatballs I'm hungry an hour later? Oh and I weigh my meatballs to get them even, lol!
This always happens with pasta and I cant understand why.
So Ive stopped having pasta for now.1 -
ummijaaz560 wrote: »ummijaaz560 wrote: »Thanks all who have added to the discussion.
Does anyone know how carbs affect stomach bloat? Or is there no connection?
Also why do I get really hungry after eating pasta, like spaghetti with meatballs, but if I eat just meatballs I'm fine?
The only connection would be if you are issues with wheat. Carbs don't cause bloat. The latter is more about personal satiety. Are they equal size meatballs? If you eat just meatballs, is there a side?
If I eat the meatballs with marinara sauce and vegatables I'm satisfied. When I eat the spaghetti and meatballs I'm hungry an hour later? Oh and I weigh my meatballs to get them even, lol!
This always happens with pasta and I cant understand why.
So Ive stopped having pasta for now.
Dunno why that would be, pasta is one of my go-to meals for most filling foods.
Anyhow on the original question, I think it's been covered, but if you go back to the way you used to eat, you'll go back to the way you used to weigh. With an IIFYM-style approach, weight loss is great practice for weight maintenance - exactly the same strategies and habits are in play, just with adjusting your targets. With other methods you don't intend to keep up, you need to learn yet another new way of eating, and you need to do it at the time when it's hardest to do so, the beginning of maintenance. You also make the hardest time even harder by disrupting your habits, which in general is the thing most likely to trigger a relapse into old habits that you don't want to resume.
There's no reason you can't lose weight on one strategy and maintain on another, but it stacks the deck in your favor if you choose a weight loss strategy that is as close as possible to your long-term weight maintenance strategy, and build the habits/practice while you're on the easier phase of things. Success is possible in either case, but why not make it easier?6 -
ummijaaz560 wrote: »ummijaaz560 wrote: »Thanks all who have added to the discussion.
Does anyone know how carbs affect stomach bloat? Or is there no connection?
Also why do I get really hungry after eating pasta, like spaghetti with meatballs, but if I eat just meatballs I'm fine?
The only connection would be if you are issues with wheat. Carbs don't cause bloat. The latter is more about personal satiety. Are they equal size meatballs? If you eat just meatballs, is there a side?
If I eat the meatballs with marinara sauce and vegatables I'm satisfied. When I eat the spaghetti and meatballs I'm hungry an hour later? Oh and I weigh my meatballs to get them even, lol!
This always happens with pasta and I cant understand why.
So Ive stopped having pasta for now.
Several reasons for that. It has to do with personal satiety signals and personality. Maybe your satiety signals are triggered by fiber, maybe you have insulin issues where your blood sugar does rapid climbs and falls instead of a smooth moderate curve or are not secreting/absorbing enough insulin to trigger satiety, maybe you are too quick to digest high GI carbs, maybe you expect to be hungry after pasta creating a self fulfilling prophecy... it could be any number of reasons.
None of it matters though. Hunger is hunger and regardless of the reason behind it, it needs to be managed. You could just eat meatballs and vegetables, mix high fiber vegetables into your pasta, eat a huge leafy green salad with your pasta, only have pasta occasionally or any other strategy to manage hunger. Personally, starchy carbs are very filling to me and I need them to control my calories.
As for the gas, you could be intolerant to something or imperceptibly eating carbs faster than usual swallowing air since many foods high in carbs taste really good and some of them could be porous like bread.2 -
rankinsect wrote: »ummijaaz560 wrote: »ummijaaz560 wrote: »Thanks all who have added to the discussion.
Does anyone know how carbs affect stomach bloat? Or is there no connection?
Also why do I get really hungry after eating pasta, like spaghetti with meatballs, but if I eat just meatballs I'm fine?
The only connection would be if you are issues with wheat. Carbs don't cause bloat. The latter is more about personal satiety. Are they equal size meatballs? If you eat just meatballs, is there a side?
If I eat the meatballs with marinara sauce and vegatables I'm satisfied. When I eat the spaghetti and meatballs I'm hungry an hour later? Oh and I weigh my meatballs to get them even, lol!
This always happens with pasta and I cant understand why.
So Ive stopped having pasta for now.
Dunno why that would be, pasta is one of my go-to meals for most filling foods.
Anyhow on the original question, I think it's been covered, but if you go back to the way you used to eat, you'll go back to the way you used to weigh. With an IIFYM-style approach, weight loss is great practice for weight maintenance - exactly the same strategies and habits are in play, just with adjusting your targets. With other methods you don't intend to keep up, you need to learn yet another new way of eating, and you need to do it at the time when it's hardest to do so, the beginning of maintenance. You also make the hardest time even harder by disrupting your habits, which in general is the thing most likely to trigger a relapse into old habits that you don't want to resume.
There's no reason you can't lose weight on one strategy and maintain on another, but it stacks the deck in your favor if you choose a weight loss strategy that is as close as possible to your long-term weight maintenance strategy, and build the habits/practice while you're on the easier phase of things. Success is possible in either case, but why not make it easier?
Just goes to show everyone is different. I could eat 2-4 servings of pasta in one shot (and did, back in the day, I'm sure) and still be hungry an hour later (stomach growling and everything!). Replace the pasta with spiralized zucchini, though, and I'm good until breakfast the next morning. So--better calorie control both because the zucchini is less calorie dense (though I toss it in a hot pan with oil before I add the meat sauce & cheese) and because I'm not stuffing my face afterwards.
I think there are certain types of carbs I avoid that I would be able to re-introduce later (could probably introduce now if I felt like it), but I'm always going to need to avoid or at least minimize hyper-palatable foods. There just aren't as many of them when you cut out carbs. There are still a few that can trigger me to mindlessly eat them, but the list seems to be shrinking.2 -
No joke, last week I went very low carb about 30ish a day and dropped 4lbs that week. Well, I'm back on my regular diet and now have that weight back lol...I thought maybe I lost fat, made me happy.0
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rankinsect wrote: »ummijaaz560 wrote: »ummijaaz560 wrote: »Thanks all who have added to the discussion.
Does anyone know how carbs affect stomach bloat? Or is there no connection?
Also why do I get really hungry after eating pasta, like spaghetti with meatballs, but if I eat just meatballs I'm fine?
The only connection would be if you are issues with wheat. Carbs don't cause bloat. The latter is more about personal satiety. Are they equal size meatballs? If you eat just meatballs, is there a side?
If I eat the meatballs with marinara sauce and vegatables I'm satisfied. When I eat the spaghetti and meatballs I'm hungry an hour later? Oh and I weigh my meatballs to get them even, lol!
This always happens with pasta and I cant understand why.
So Ive stopped having pasta for now.
Dunno why that would be, pasta is one of my go-to meals for most filling foods.
Mine too. Of course, I'm also not sure why someone would leave out the vegetables if one has pasta. Maybe that's why? I always have protein and vegetables with my pasta. Lots of vegetables, normally. The main change I've made since focusing on calories is cutting down on the oil/cheese, but that's easy to do without sacrificing taste and satisfaction and for me makes no difference to how filling it is, since fat does nothing to fill me up. I also am more careful with pasta amount, as I used to eyeball it and I don't eyeball well with pasta (years of restaurant serving distortion plus underestimating how much it will expand). Now I find a perfectly reasonable calorie pasta dish can be incredibly satisfying and filling (and is fast and easy and filled with nutrients).
Meat, veg, and winter squash instead of pasta can be delicious and satisfying too, for fewer calories, but I'm happier and have a more sustainable diet -- for me -- knowing how easy it is to include pasta when I want it. And making pasta is typically faster than roasting winter squash and something I more reliably have on hand, so it helps on the get home late, need to cook fast kind of evening.
This is kind of an aside, but I think pasta is treated as some kind of black sheep of the food world far too often! ;-)1 -
ummijaaz560 wrote: »ummijaaz560 wrote: »Thanks all who have added to the discussion.
Does anyone know how carbs affect stomach bloat? Or is there no connection?
Also why do I get really hungry after eating pasta, like spaghetti with meatballs, but if I eat just meatballs I'm fine?
The only connection would be if you are issues with wheat. Carbs don't cause bloat. The latter is more about personal satiety. Are they equal size meatballs? If you eat just meatballs, is there a side?
If I eat the meatballs with marinara sauce and vegatables I'm satisfied. When I eat the spaghetti and meatballs I'm hungry an hour later? Oh and I weigh my meatballs to get them even, lol!
This always happens with pasta and I cant understand why.
So Ive stopped having pasta for now.
Have you tried whole grain pasta? Way more filling, and honestly I find regular pasta bland now.1 -
If you go low carb and actually calorie count, you don't have to do that forever.4
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No joke, last week I went very low carb about 30ish a day and dropped 4lbs that week. Well, I'm back on my regular diet and now have that weight back lol...I thought maybe I lost fat, made me happy.
It's water weight from glycogen. Glycogen, the body's storage form for carbohydrates, is dissolved in water, unlike fat which is hydrophobic and doesn't dissolve. Any dissolved substance requires your body to balance the osmotic pressure by pulling water to the area with "more stuff" (i.e. higher osmolarity). What that means in practical terms is that every gram of glycogen causes your liver or muscle to retain about four grams of water.
On low carb, your glycogen is unusually low, and you pee out the water. As you regain glycogen, you retain water as well to balance osmotic pressure.
The opposite happens if you carb load before an event - you pump your muscles and liver full of glycogen, and they pull in a lot of extra water too, which you excrete after returning to normal levels of glycogen. I can easily jump three or more pounds up if I deliberately try to maximize glycogen stored. It's not fat, it's lean mass.3 -
No that's not what people mean. What we mean is you can't go back to what you did before. Honestly there just isn't any reason to give up carbs, there is nothing wrong with carbs, it's all about keeping a calorie deficit. It's not the low carb that causes their weight loss. However if that's what works for you go for it. I think most people on here just want to educate people about why they are really losing weight.1
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lemurcat12 wrote: »rankinsect wrote: »ummijaaz560 wrote: »ummijaaz560 wrote: »Thanks all who have added to the discussion.
Does anyone know how carbs affect stomach bloat? Or is there no connection?
Also why do I get really hungry after eating pasta, like spaghetti with meatballs, but if I eat just meatballs I'm fine?
The only connection would be if you are issues with wheat. Carbs don't cause bloat. The latter is more about personal satiety. Are they equal size meatballs? If you eat just meatballs, is there a side?
If I eat the meatballs with marinara sauce and vegatables I'm satisfied. When I eat the spaghetti and meatballs I'm hungry an hour later? Oh and I weigh my meatballs to get them even, lol!
This always happens with pasta and I cant understand why.
So Ive stopped having pasta for now.
Dunno why that would be, pasta is one of my go-to meals for most filling foods.
Mine too. Of course, I'm also not sure why someone would leave out the vegetables if one has pasta. Maybe that's why? I always have protein and vegetables with my pasta. Lots of vegetables, normally. The main change I've made since focusing on calories is cutting down on the oil/cheese, but that's easy to do without sacrificing taste and satisfaction and for me makes no difference to how filling it is, since fat does nothing to fill me up. I also am more careful with pasta amount, as I used to eyeball it and I don't eyeball well with pasta (years of restaurant serving distortion plus underestimating how much it will expand). Now I find a perfectly reasonable calorie pasta dish can be incredibly satisfying and filling (and is fast and easy and filled with nutrients).
Meat, veg, and winter squash instead of pasta can be delicious and satisfying too, for fewer calories, but I'm happier and have a more sustainable diet -- for me -- knowing how easy it is to include pasta when I want it. And making pasta is typically faster than roasting winter squash and something I more reliably have on hand, so it helps on the get home late, need to cook fast kind of evening.
This is kind of an aside, but I think pasta is treated as some kind of black sheep of the food world far too often! ;-)
Yep, pasta is one of my most filling foods and I find reasonable portions of it satisfying. My only issue with pasta is that some variations tend to be pretty high in fat driving the calories way up when it uses white sauces or lots of cheese or other fat sources (had a heavenly carbonara the other day but a reasonable portion cost me 750 calories). Even simple pasta salads with lots of olive oil can be a bit on the high side. Tomato based sauces and vegetable variations are fine and I actually consider them a "diet catch" for how satisfying they are for the calories.
I think one of the reasons it's treated as a diet boogieman is that you can pretty much stuff it chock full of calories with fatty additions double or even tripling the calories per serving.2
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