Thanks kat!

1500-1600 calories doesnt seem overboard for your height/weight. are you active at all?

how many calories per day were you eating before you started lcing?

I am mildly active. I don't exercise at all. I am always on the run, though (if that even counts?).

I was eating about 1,000 when I monitored. My mom has always told me that was the amount you eat to lose weight, and no more than 20g fat.

My P.L.A.N. is visible for everyone to see my progress.

I don't know if this matters or not, but I am large-framed. NOTE..I don't look large, but when I took that wrist test (meausre your wrist) it was in the large-boned category. So, I have the body type that I can look skinnier than someone else, but actually weigh 20 lbs. more. Make sense? For example, my sister weighs about 120, and I weigh about 145...we wear about the same size clothes, 4 or 6. 28 or 27 in jeans.

I have never understood that.

woah...yikes.

I had qualms at first; as I told a friend, I was taking everything I had been told about "eating right" and turning it inside out and upside down. It "felt" wrong.

My calories went UP and I lost about 60 pounds. Why does that make sense?

Because while my calories were low, they are almost entirely designed to drive up my insulin. So I was gaining excess body fat AND I was hungry all the time. A nightmare I'm glad I'm out of.

I have never felt better.

We have to remember we know, historically, when humans started doing agriculture. What did they do before that? They sure weren't eating the way we are told to now. The fruit was small, sour, and only in season. There were no gardens; just greens gathered as they went. There were no grains.

There was lots of meat. They didn't paint big pictures of carrots on their cave walls!

So when I add up how I feel on low carb (great!) and how much sense it makes (we wouldn't be here now if low carb was bad for us) and it makes so much sense I can't think any other way.

And what my mom told me:

When she was growing up, "everyone knew" that the way to lose weight was to cut back on your "starches and sugars." That was when the diner diet plate was cottage cheese on a lettuce leaf and a bit of fruit. That's how Weight Watchers started!

So since everyone has been following what is actually new and radical "diet advice" they've been getting fatter.

What's wrong with this picture? Everything.

Love love love this! This is almost, exactly how I explain it to people who question how I am eating. There was no obesity epidemic back then

You're right and indeed the book is full of flaws, just like are all low fat books.
Since you're young and not totally convinced I wouldn't go the extreme route.
I mean you're not like someone who is obese and has diabetes and insulin resistance so you don't need nothing extreme and in fact you'll find lot of wrong assumptions and exaggerations and both extremes, because the truth is in the middle.

Just reduce your carbs to the point that eating them doesn't trigger an unbereable hunger. Just eat the fats and meat you like and don't deliberately add fats or choose the fattiest cut even if you can't stomach them. Eat veggies freely. Do cheat from time to time, a piece of cake from someone's birthday or a chocolate candy won't make you 20 pounds fatter overnight nor will destroy your health.

There are no books out there that promotes a middle ground approach although there are many blogs of people who are choosing such approach and they're the healthiest I have seen (lean saloon, fitnessblackbook, leangains, anthony colpo...) Since you're young and don't have life-threatening health problems and don't have lot of weight to lose I would forget about super-high-fat diets, atkins inductions, ketogenic nutrition, carphobic regimes and would just choose a more laxed approach.

The problem out there is not people who eat a banana or who don't add lard to their veggies or who don't have some tortilla chips with their avocado from time to time. The problem is that a lot of people want to lose weight and choose a stereotypical approach with starvation diets, lot of starches, sweet breakfasts, unnatural fear of fat including olive oil, overconsumption of low-cat or low-calories product, lot of cheating because of uncontrollable cravings.

The solution is not switch to the other extreme but just forget all these hard rules and eat in a more spontaneous way: have more proteins, use oil freely on your veggies, eat your meat with fat and your eggs with yolk, forget about low-carb and low-fat products, remove the carbs that trigger cravings for you and realize something need to be changed in your diet if you're always hungry and can't resist eating a whole cake, because you tried to resist eating half a slice, while indulging in a slice would have avoided the without-control cheat feast.

There was no obesity epidemic even 200 years ago when people would eat lot of bread and potatoes. In fact when the royal families had farmers working for them, getting a 20% of the food they grew as a payment, they would usually eat meat from hunting in their hunting parks (there are many popular ballads of those time about people being hanged for hunting in their park of the king without his permission) while the farmers would usually eat potatoes, bread, fruit and some cheese. But the kings were fat (the only people who are known to suffer from obesity 400 years ago) and the farmers were poor, although the king diet was high protein and the farmer diet was meat-less.

In my opinion it's still a matter of how much you eat, you can't create fat out of nothing only out of excess. I don't like a lower-carb diet because I think it has magical powers, but because it's the only way of eating that curbs my appetite. If I eat bread or pasta I get cravings for everything with sugar in it and I can't stop even when my stomach is full. But I know without a doubt that I gain weight when I eat more and I lose weight when I eat less. But lowering carb is the only way I know to eat less.

Right, but they were also eating less than 10 pounds of sugar a year. Nowadays people are ruining their metabolisms by eating on the average 180 pounds of sugar a year!

Great advice, everyone. I think that we can all agree to never stop researching, and doing what's best for ourselves. (That may not always be what's best for others.)

-Bear, you made some really convincing points that I have truly never heard before. Mine and my whole families outlook on food was mostly veggies, no bread, no cheese, and very little meat. It's hard to not feel "heavy" when I'm upping my protein.

Needless to say, on the end of my 3rd day I am feeling well. I have noticed my moods seem a LOT more happy (I guess less irriatable). Is this in my head or a side effect?

What country are we talking about 200, 400 years ago? Those are some pretty broad generalizations. Henry VIII's court had *plenty* of desserts, bread, and beer. He didn't get so famously obese eating nothing but roasted haunches of meat, trust me.

Life expectancy also completely sucked during that era, and most people lost all their teeth. Royalty included, often by adulthood.

True but he ate a lot more meat than non those starving farmers that couldn't afford any. I was talking mainly about europe: France, Austria and Germany because of what I read.



I was also commenting on the weight gain issue not on health. You can lose weight on a diet of oreo (a nutritionist lost 27 pounds on such a diet) but for sure it isn't healthy.

That's true and I think the first culprit is liquid calories from soft drinks and juices. We as humans are pretty ill suited at taking our calories in liquid form to begin with add the sugar excess you get from drinking them and there you have the recipe for a disaster.

For me, the side effect of a low carb diet is more energy *and* better mood...once I get through the induction 'flu'. Interestingly, in the past it would take me at least a full week of feeling miserable as I did carb withdrawal. Now, it's only a couple days when I do induction. Then I feel fabulous!

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