Keto Lifestyle

AnnPT77 wrote: »

Kelly040404 wrote: »

dbroda073075 wrote: »

Please forgive me for the very long post, but I'm trying to make a point. I am trying Keto once again, and I have to say I am more successful this time around. I started at 165 lbs, and am down to 138 lbs. The first time I quit because I was always hungry. I didn't understand the whole net carb thing. I also started to lower my carb intake gradually, and did this for 2 weeks. I paid for MFP that includes counting your net carbs for you. It is worth the extra money because it figures it out for you. I do eat what people call "good food". I ate baby back ribs, but instead of the high sugar bbq sauce, I use a low sugar. It was delicious, and I was able to eat a half slab. I make pizza with no carb tortillas, and although I love pizza crust, I don't miss it. I make french toast with no carb bread, make my own no sugar maple syrup, and am able to eat fruit with it too. I have burgers with cheese, but again stick with low to no carb bread. I eat the Atkins snack bars that are also low carb, and when you find the one you love, you won't want the sugar filled stuff. This isn't a diet, to me, but is a lifestyle change instead. Yes, you can gain all your weight back if you go back to eating 200-400 grams of carbs a day. I don't miss all of those carbs though because I have found ways to still eat the same or similar foods, just without all those carbs. I have made homemade meatballs with 3 of them as the serving size, and they have < 1carb for all of them. You just have to use no carb bread to make bread crumbs. You have to be creative, and yes spend a little more money but it works. Yes, I pay $4.50 for the low to no carb breads but they last over 1-2 weeks in the fridge. I also buy a sweetener that is plant based, so nothing is synthetic that can harm you. I use monk fruit sweetener with allulose. I love my coffee and creamer but there is a lot of sugar in those flavors creamers. I use half and half and the sweetener now.
I feel as though I can maintain my weight where I am at now because of understanding this new lifestyle of eating for me. Also, I have been on a cancer medicine that the doctor says is virtually impossible to lose weight on but I have managed to lose just over 25 lbs since May 2023. I also walk everyday as long as weather permits. I have to keep active because of the side effects of this cancer med. I hope someone has gained some insight about the Keto way of eating from this post because it has changed my life for the better. I want to add one more thing, and that is my age. I just turned 48 years young, I am a woman, and I had a Hysterectomy last year so a lot was against me to lose weight. Good luck!

What kind of cancer did you have? I am a breast cancer survivor, and so I'm on maintenance drugs for that, and I swear - it is the reason I packed on 70 lbs after chemo! It seems so much harder to lose weight now.

I'm not the OP, but for the sake of dialog about experiences: I took Tamoxifen for 2.5 years, and Arimidex (Anastrozole) for 5 years after that, both drugs with a reputation for weight gain as a side effect. That was a long time ago, now - I'm about 23 years out from a stage III breast cancer diagnosis, so far NED.

Generically, if a medication leads to weight gain, the mechanism is one or a combination of these:

* Water retention increase, or perhaps unpredictable fluctuation. It may or may not feel "bloated", it depends on whether the retention is general (over the whole body) or localized (maybe in an internal/non-obvious place).

* Fatigue (perhaps subtle), so moving less (daily life and/or exercise intensity) therefore burning fewer calories. (This effect can be surprisingly large. Fidgeting alone can burn in the low hundreds of calories daily, and noticing reduced fidgeting in oneself is pretty hard.)

* Appetite increase, so maybe portion creep (if a person is calorie counting/logging carefully, they'd likely know if this is happening; if just "watching what one eats" or logging with some estimating and approximating in the mix, this also can be a pretty subtle effect).

Bottom line: CICO - the calorie balance formula - still applies. Get calories below calories burned, fat loss happens. With medication, calorie counting may experience some bumps in the road, if calories burned drop due to fatigue, or calories eaten increase due to portion creep. (A few meds could even cause peaks and valleys in fatigue or eating, make counting even more confusing, even those CICO still applies! But that's rare, and not usually the case IMU with the gynecological cancer (anti-)hormone treatments.)

If the issue is water retention, fat loss is still happening, just being masked on the scale by the extra water weight. Some (unusual) things can cause creeping increases in water retention, up to a surprising total amount. It's more common for water retention just to move a person from X pounds of water, to X plus a couple or so pounds of water, then stop increasing. In that common case, fat loss will eventually outpace that couple of pounds or so, and show up on the body weight scale. In rare cases, it can be more than a couple of pounds, but water retention would still not keep increasing and increasing forever. The water retention increase will eventually plateau, and fat loss should show up on the scale if it's been happening behind the scenes.

Clearly, one may want to talk with the doctor doctor who prescribed the meds, to ask about alternatives with fewer or different side effects (or treatments for them), though I think there aren't many others for breast cancer survivors who had ER+ tumors; or to ask for referrals to a registered dietitian for help with eating in one's individual health context and maybe even a physical therapist for appropriate activity adjustments if there physical limitations from some other aspect of treatment. Bodies are pretty subtle, complicated things - the pros can help us improve things, usually.

I hope you (@dbroda073075 and @Kelly040404) are able to find solutions. I'd observe that weight management isn't easy for anyone every second; what differs is the particular things that make it hard for any given individual. Certainly side effects of drugs can be among those things.

Best wishes!