No, I ran them for a 132 kg, normal-framed person.

Lisa

haha, sorry for the misunderstanding. I haven't started this yet, I've been doing Atkins the past years. For Atkins my carbs are in the correct range is what I meant.




oh wow, 30-48 carbns after fiber. This freaks me out too, since I've been eating mostly induction level carbs for ages :X

Thank you for explaining, I appreciate it! I have more reading to do so I know what carbs are OK. Keeping my fingers crossed for almonds

Debbie, is that the homodiet website? As per my informational post (new thread) this afternoon, that's not Dr. K's site - it's the site of a fan in South Africa. Also, how did you calculate 'due' weight? Did you put in large frame or normal?


Not necessarily. I suggest you go read the information thread if you haven't already. It will explain why my suggestion made in my previous post to you stated that you could go to the second month fat level now.


You could do that - I save most of mine for evening - or you could order yogurt and fruit, or two poached eggs (add butter!) and actually enjoy either a slice of whole wheat toast piled with butter or the hash browns. If lunch, you could order a ginormous salad with a ton of blue cheese dressing and a small piece of chicken scattered on top. It's just a question of thinking about food differently.


Yep. I was the same way. But as Kris and I have discovered, this WOE is not only easier than I thought it would be, I am feeling incredibly more happy and energetic eating this way. I've clearly needed the extra fat, and my body has clearly been struggling to deal with all that protein. I know it's not true for everyone, but for those of us who have done every damn thing in the book honestly and still screeched to a halt, this is not only the answer - it really is the explanation.


No. You'll weigh less, so you'll need less protein, not more. You'll never be able to eat sugar-filled cake and cookies and hundreds of carbs once you reach your goal either. This, like all LC variations, is a way of life, not a diet. But honestly - I could never go back.


Can you provide a link to this page, and say exactly where on it you figure our your due weight?

Lisa

Almonds are good. If you haven't already read my other post on this topic (in a new thread in this forum) this afternoon, you should. It will explain a LOT.

Lisa

Lisa, how many years have you been successfully following the Optimal Diet?

Lauren, I'm already in my second month (as of April 9) so my fat gram range is 139-197. That puts my 'middle' at 168 fat grams. The other day I ate 1709 calories. Fat: 141. Protein: 56.1 (my max this month is 58). Fiber: 15.2 Total Carbs: 52.4. Net Carbs: 37.2. My net carb range this month is 35-46.

On Friday, I ate a whopping 1972 calories, of which only 185 calories (46g) were from protein - so I did go a bit past my middle to 176, but still below my 197g max. It was the next day that I lost a whole pound.


This all looks very good. The only thing I'd advise is upping your net carbs a bit to make sure that, with the extra fat, you avoid ketosis. Like perhaps eating an entire avocado if you're only eating half. I eat a whole avocado almost every day, topped with olive oil. And maybe even upping your fat if you're hungry. If you're not, great.

But I will say again that counter-intuitive though it is, the more fat calories you eat, the more fat loss you will have. You want those stored spigots to open wide and burn away, and that will only happen if you're taking in so much fat the body feels perfectly safe in opening the fridge instead of guarding it zealously. And you actually burn more calories (and up your metabolism) when your body has to get rid of the excess. Clearly though, you need to do whatever feels GOOD to you. How does it feel, eating this way?

Lisa

Please read the information K thread I posted this afternoon in this forum. It's all there.

Lisa

Thanks Lisa. I appreciate you taking the time to keep up with everyone and share your experience.

I really like eating this way. When I started doing LC, I was so protein deficient (I lived on apples and bran muffins) that it felt great to eat a lot of meat. As time went on, it started to feel excessive. I like eating high fat dairy, berries, nuts and a bit of really dark chocolate. After going out for lunch, I only had enough protein left to eat 3 oz. of burger for dinner and I thought it would be a problem but I did not get hungry afterwards. This is very encouraging! I'm a little afraid to up the carbs but I will do it- I think I'll try a small potato and some more buttered vegetables tomorrow. It is so nice to have some variety back in my diet. Trying zero carb was great for me in that I really got my insulin under control but this WOE feels a lot more natural and enjoyable.

Lisa - One month? I've been following his advice, with tweaks to avoid gluten, casein & soy, for four years. I think you'll find that you may need to tweak it too, over time. The protein levels may be fine for sedentary people, but for those carrying around a lot of extra weight (not you), or doing a lot of exercise or manual labour, that a "normal"-framed person may need to use the larger frame size as a guide (when first starting out, since every step is like heavy weight lifting), and a bed-ridden normal-frame person may do better using the "small" frame size (since these are only variables that Calculus Victus lets you change easily). Tweaking carbs may also be necessary, depending on how carb-sensitive you are (more than 40g net sends me on a BG roller coaster, but then more than 20g net takes me out of ketosis). The very high fat levels have been the key to my success, after 35 years of HC & LC failures. Like you, I was shocked to find that eating more fat (& 1900-2000 calories), rather than cutting back (below my 1350-1450 cal "diet" levels), was what got my metabolism moving & normalizing, something I had never thought possible. I was planning to give up dieting entirely until I decided to try one last approach that I'd never tried - more food & more fat!

What works best for me in maintenance is P+10%/F/C-10%.

Dr. K's Polish website tells you to not to count vegetal protein toward P, and all his charts show total carbs (not net carbs), so I've always assumed that is part of why his (and Barry Groves') carb allotments are higher than the Eades' or Atkins' post-2001. Other than eating 300-500 more calories of fat per day, my net carbs and animal protein levels are very similar to what I was eating on PPLP, but being frugal, I never ate huge amounts of animal protein.

You could be me! I'm the poster-child for How-Eating-The-Way-Conventional-Wisdom-Says-Makes-You-Fat-And-Tired! At my highest weight - 225 - I was subsisting (sure couldn't call it living) on 1200 calories a day, composed of 20% fat (7% sat, just like I was told), 70% 'complex' carbs, and 10% protein. That's 30 grams while eating low fat. No wonder my body fat was 53%!


Agreed. I'm looking forward to buying Yukon Gold potatoes again - my favs. I won't be able to eat much, or often (my carb levels even in the second month are low) but you're right how much more natural this WOE feels. It's still LC, which I'll never give up - but somehow it doesn't feel restricted. Or maybe I just love whipped cream. :->

Lisa

Hi Lisa, I really enjoy this thread. I am the one who posted the ratio Merpig was referring to because I got them from Hyperlipid (Peter) after reading his blog and emailing him. Could you possibly post the numbers for me. I am 5'2" 130lb and 40 years old - I would like to get back to 115lb if that's possible but might be happy at 120lb. not sure about the conversion to metric. I only knew about Atkins as far as LCing goes until recently and was thrown into a headspin when I read some chapters of GCBC on Jimmy Moore forum. I was always a believer in beans and greens and fiber, soo this has all been a new revelation for me. Thank you for all the information and to everyone else as well on this forum. You all are truly great people, may we all live long and healthy lives.

This is great - now you can be the Guru!


You may be right about the tweaking, but before I tweak I tend to try a recipe straight the first time. I needed to discover if after a two-year scale weight stall, this would really work for me. And I didn't want to have to wonder if it was the tweaking right off the bat that made it fail, if it failed. And believe me, I will be watching the protein levels carefully. I've worked too hard too long to build these biceps, so if I'm not eating enough protein for my activity level I'll know right away.

But there's another reason I decided to try this to begin with. Recent studies indicate that some folks who are insulin resistant, like me, simply cannot process protein in the face of high fat (and I think it's safe to call most LC diets that, even if they're not as high as K) the way normal people do. More of that protein than is proper gets turned to glucose, calls up an abnormal insulin response, and stores too much of it as body fat. And I believe those people (mostly women it seems), are the very ones who have good initial success with LC and then just . . . stop. No matter what they do.

I am definitely one of those people. I suspect Debbie is (from what she's shared about herself) is too. So even though we can tweak, and can do large frame and can do +10% -- I'm not sure that wouldn't ultimately cause us to either lose less weight than we would on K, or lose a tiny bit and then stall again. I believe really low protein for us is the way to go --- at least initially, so that we can become less insulin resistant over time. Keeping the fat and calories way up, with protein very low (and maybe lower than it strictly has to be) will keep me from being hungry, and may even finally heal my very abused metabolism.


Amen, Sister! How much scale weight and body fat (clothing sizes, I guess) have you lost in these 4 years? How many protein grams per day do you eat in maintenance? I do agree about watching the carbs, but my tendency is to eat low anyway. On nearly 1700 calories today my net carb count is 34.4 - but I can't eat much lower because I go into ketosis at the drop of a hat, or maybe I should say by ingesting that extra spoonful of whipped cream.


That's interesting. My cream, coconut cream, fish and meat protein grams today were only 39, but my veggie protein added another 11, for a total of 50. That feels quite comfortable, but it's nice to know I can eat as much veggie as I want (I do love them, but have been very parsimonious this last month because of the protein count!) and the occasional steak and still be okay. Can you post a link here to the actual site? I can run it through Google Translation and see what it says and how it differs from the English one run by his fan in S.A.


Ah . . . but in Europe all listed 'total' carbs ARE net carbs. That's how their food labeling differs from ours. They've already deducted the fiber. I lived in Europe for many years, and it took me a while to get used to it. So in this case the reason they're higher than Atkins or Eades is - they are actually higher.


Hmm. I did. Like many others I thought 'great, the one thing I can eat lots and lots of' -- maybe because you didn't you didn't develop the same problem accumulation of Branched Protein Amino Acids.

Thanks for sharing so much good info!

Lisa

Wow. That was amazing. Thanks for sharing it with us.

When you consume too much fructose you get all sort of problems and malasorption. The modern diet is loaded with fructose corn syrup and sucrose, hence there's an excess. As long as fructose is not excessive, it is simply converted to useful glycogen by the liver.
The body can't tolerate more than 60 grams of fructose. That's a ton of fruits and several tablespoon of fructose. But when you using like 3 grams to sweeten yogurt for example, there's no problem.
It's impossible to fructose to cause anything bad as long as it is metabolized. It's the excess that starts being converted to triglycerides and therefore promote insuline resistance.

The good thing about fructose is that on glucose intolerant people it doesn't affect neither insulin not blood sugars nor lipogenesis negatively (as long as you don't consume an excess that the liver can't handle)

Unfortunately many people with glucose intolerance, hypoglycemia, insulin resistance, syndrome X, sugar sensitivity are negatively affected by artificial sweetener, because the body seems to react to the sweet taste and release arbitrary amount or insulin without knowing how much would be needed to process that stuff.

I don't recommend low calorie diets, but of course I need to introduce less calories than I consume to lose weight. I can easily gain fat (measured as BF% dexa) by consuming an hypercaloric ketogenic diet. Fortunately on a low-carb diet weight control happens pretty easily, because hunger signals start working again and you eat the right amount for you.

Since heavier people burn more calories, my body is making me consume what will be the maintenance amount for when I will be lighter. What would be maintenance at a lower weight, means weight loss right now.