I don't think ANYTHING in this world works for 100% of people 100% of the time. Ever.



I know that the first few days I low carb I'm always ravenous.
I still get hungry, but I don't get the same kind of hungry. I'll get "I can't wait for dinner!" hungry, but I don't get "Get out of my way I have to eat everything in sight" hungry.

First, help your brother make sure he's actually eating low carb an that he isn't doing some kind of calorie restriction on top of that. Remind him to eat as much as he wants of very low carb food.

Then you might help him try to determine if he's sensitive to some food he's eating that's triggering false hunger. That's a little tougher and requires a lot of hit and miss trials, but might be worth doing.

Make sure he's getting plenty of fiberous veggies to fill up the belly while waiting for ketosis to kick in and kill the hunger. I've found that my belly needs to reach a certain volume of 'full' or the 'hungry' switch never flips off. The concept of 6 small meals doesn't work for me yet, I'm just hungry all the time, so I go for 3 regular sized meals, then snacks if I need them.



I believe this all comes down to a lousy food supply messing with normal chemistry. A person who tends to be thin will stay thin. A person who tends to be medium eats tons of refined grain and processed sugar and pushes their insulin system to the edge day after day. Eventually the system breaks down and they get to be 20-30lbs over weight with high blood pressure.

Those of us who would tend to be rounder anyway eat processed grains and refined sugar and wind up as fat kids. Who then get put on low fat diets, oscillating our already disfunctional metabolisms completely out of control. So we get fatter. So we clam down and eat less fat and more refined grain...in an endless cycle until us supersized people have no idea what else to do and give up, or we might get really lucky and find low carb and slowwwwwwwwly get our metabolisms off the evil roller coaster.

This past week we were on vacation and I took my first real time off low carb in 2.5 years. I think this was a good thing for me emotionally, but also because I learned that my metabolism seems to be healing. I never ate anything completely carby, but the fruit at breakfast, or the full sugar desserts after a mostly low carb meal now don't cause a blood sugar crash or raving starvation in an hour the way they used to. Will I ever heal enough to have a 'normal' metabolism? I have no idea and it doesn't matter since in my real life I'm completely committed to low carb, but its nice to know the healing is taking place and my normal blood sugars aren't *only* because of my normal food choices.

Exercise, along with its many great cardiovascular benefits is also excellent for increasing insulin sensitivity in the cells, so it helps obesity in 2 ways. One of course is a combination of increased muscle mass and calorie burning.

The other is to decrease insulin resistance, reducing the amount of insulin your body pumps out in reaction to anything with carbs (or in some of us, anything sweet tasting). Less insulin means less fat storage capability and more opportunities for glucagon to go around stealing fat energy.

Citruskiss, I may be brash and in your face at times, but I'm far from a meanie and do want to help people. I know that my style and approach won't appeal to everyone, and I'm OK with that. If everybody like me, and no one thought I was an a$$ at times, I'd think somethings wrong because we aren't all alike, and I'm far from the only success story out there (low carb or not). Nevertheless, I can't begin to tell you how much I enjoyed and learned from PJ's last two posts!

Bat Spit, or anyone else, when you have something sweet after being in ketosis for a while, do you get the cramps and stomach rumbling of your body asking you, "what did you just put in me?" Also, a serious bloated feeling hits me too.

PJ, great post and thanks for sharing your experience with us. Man, you guys are really making me look at this calorie thang again. OK, so can we say that for folks in the middle, which I don't know what % we can say that is, the energy balance equation works; however, when your body's set point is too high (hi body fat) or you are trying to force your body to an even lower set point (low body fat), this is when all bets are off and the metabolic adaptations are at their greatest. Again, this is what I got from Ellis's, and it seems that you are saying the same thing PJ. Is this right?

Thanks . . .

I don't really have an answer. I only know that my BMR is like 4000 calories a day and I can eat an average of 1000 and not lose weight. But, I can eat 2500 in small meals every few hours and lose weight. Go figure. It seems to totally relate to how many carbs/cals I eat at one sitting and how often I eat and how much water I drink.

I don't eat sugary/carby things really so I can't tell you how I feel when I do it. I have had a couple days deliberately high carb (planned in advance). Although I did feel utterly lousy shortly after eating, that is likely as much because I ate a lot and gluten, as because of the carbs themselves.

PJ, please keep track of what's been working for you because I think that your weight loss journey, and when you reach your goal, will answer a lot of questions that I still have about the whole notion that calories rule supreme. Nevertheless, I'm glad that I've met folks who can clearly show how the textbook formulas doesn't apply to everyone. I'm just still trying to figure out does the textbook formulas still apply for the majority of folks who want to lose weight? And for those it doesn't apply to, like PJ, 2bthinner, and others, are they just exceptions to the rule?

I've been on Atkins for over 2 months, and I haven't cut my calories at all yet still manage to lose weight.

I eat about 2000-2200 calories per day, on average, and lose at a rate of 2.7 lbs per week.

If I quit low carbing and tried to cut calories to lose weight, I know I'd fail miserably because I'd be hungry all the time and likely to binge.

Doobie, I had the exat same experience when I did Atkins too. KUTGW.

Maybe this is the right place for me to ask a question that's been on my mind a lot lately.

I've recently given up dairy and 'cleaned up' my low-carb eating plan, and as a result, my calories are dropping. I don't think they're 'too low' - but then again, I don't really know.

I've finally started tracking my food in the My PLAN thingie here, and for the couple of days I've done it so far - I'm between 900 and 1100 calories per day, so far. That said, I know there's going to be days that the calories are lower, because I've ditched things like mayonnaise and creamy salad dressings and have backed off on the red meat (I still eat red meat, just not as often). The backing off on the red meat isn't because I think it's bad for you, but because I had a 'high iron' situation a few months back, and although my iron level is all back to normal, I'm still kind of 'watching it' in terms of iron intake.

So anyway - why is it that there's such a wide variety of opinions on the whole question of what is considered 'too low' - and furthermore, when people talk about 'starvation mode' (which I'm not sure I fully believe in) - aren't they talking about extreme situations? I've heard that if you stay on a diet that is low in calories and low in carbs for too long, it'll mess up your metabolism a bit and maybe even your thyroid (this is what I read in Lyle McDonald's "Rapid Fat Loss Handbook"). Well - how low is too low, and how long is too long?

Colour me confused!

Sara

Well, a low calorie diet is generally considered to be 1200 calories (for women) and it is really hard to get all your nutrients in under that. So I'd go by that but I have done stints of lower calorie while I was on Lyle's PSMF diet.

So Nancy - given that I'm not even close to Lyle's PSMF in terms of calories, do you think it's still important for me to vary things a bit? ie - should I occasionally up the carbs and calories so as to avoid a big metabolism slowdown?

I am actually finding it *difficult* to get more than 1200 calories these days. I'm not hungry, and I'm eating lots of food. Am I going to wreck my metabolism if I keep this up for a long time?

What do people think about this? Is my calorie intake low enough that I need to build in some variation (a la Lyle's plan, or a la some of the cycling type plans) ? Or is it fine for now, and don't worry about it?

I'm hearing "your calories are too low". I feel fine and am not sure if this is any big deal or not. I mean, if I were eating 500 cals, then yeah - that'd be way too low...but is 900-1100 something to worry about?

You could eat more calories just by eating a little more of whatever meat you eat, and more of stuff like peanut butter and avocados. And the cocoa coconut-oil bites/bark. ;-)

Aside from that, wish I had a solution for you. Getting more than 1200 calories is hard as hell for me and that's when I eat more than usual. My goal is usually 2500 but I'm lucky to make that twice a month, and it's usually the days with a meal that has bacon, sausage or pepperoni (nitrates R us!) that finally makes it happen, or when PMS is actually making me more inclined to eat.

I think I am finally starting to adapt an eating plan but getting the calories I need means taking my ECC carbs closer to 30-40 than 15-25 -- which given my weight ought to be fine I guess, it's just that in a perfect world I'd like 'em low.

I suppose my biggest bitch is that eating properly requires eating often, which requires a helluva lot more prep and cooking than I like to do (I'm going to quit ever saying 'have time to do' since I believe if I wanted to I would make time), so maybe sheer laziness is my biggest problem.

I've said this soooo many times... My doctors laugh at the starvation thing. You have vitamins, you have meals... what's the problem? Drink enough water. They say.

My metabolism is as low as it gets from meds. I HAVE to keep cals at 900 to 1000 and I'm feeling AWESOME. I've been taken off my asthma medicine already. My blood work is all perfect and my blood pressure is 110/70. I haven't had a chest pain since I started lower calories.

YMMV, of course.

And what if you can't take vitamins? Long story short, but I was told (by my doctor) to quit taking vitamin supplements that have vitamin C in them - so that cancels out multi-vitamins.

Hmm..I feel like I've sidetracked the whole thread. Sorry about that.

Never mind the vitamin thing - I'm very interested in this whole "your calories are too low" vs. "there's no such thing as starvation mode" debate. And I hope it's ok to be asking these things in this thread - even though the thread was mainly about whether or not the calorie is 'king'. Or at least, that's the impression I got - that the question started out as being one of whether calories are more important than diet composition, which is *still* an interesting topic too.

Any comments on the question of 'how long' its ok to have lower than 1200 calories before it could potentially stall out your metabolism or have some effect on the thyroid? Is there a good argument for varying things from time to time?

I think the problem is that bodies are so individual in how they respond to stuff that there isn't really a chart we can refer to about it. And maybe it (super lowcal) only has that effect (starvation/reduced metabolic rate, reduced T3, etc.) if there are other conditions (say, high stress or something) involved, so compounding factors could really complicate it.

Well, like I said before, you probably are going to be deficient in nutrients at that calorie level at some part. For short term it probably isn't a problem but I don't think it's good for long term. Vitamin deficiency is an issue.

There just isn't a lot of cold hard facts about long term calorie deprivation other than stuff from places like concentration camps other than things like people who have been starved tend to get fat later when they can eat again. *shrug* There's lots of "lore" about starvation mode, etc. We do know T3 production goes down. But it is temporary.

I don't know. If you're looking to get permission to go ultra-low calorie from me, you won't get it. It's your decision and you have to make up your own mind. Personally, I think it is unwise for the reason of vitamin deficiency and I know our bodies fight us hard at slightly reduced calorie levels, they're probably gonna fight harder at even more severe levels. You mentioned you can't take supplements so I think it is even more seriously a bad idea to go super low calorie.


Who says you have to eat often? The IFers are eating once a day and loving it.

Nancy - that was an excellent reply - thank you!

I wasn't looking to go even lower in calories, just asking questions about whether my 900-1100 cals lately was something to be worrying about - whether I needed to implement some of those 'cycling' strategies and so on. Also curious about how long was too long at that kind of calorie intake.

Truth be told - this is more about health than 'thin' for me. Yes, I do want to lose the body fat, but I want to be healthy even more. Which is perhaps why I ask these annoying questions. I want it all....

Thanks again. I'll keep doing what I'm doing, and somehow - because I'm finally tracking some things here and there - perhaps I'll get better at this whole deal.