I'll know how I'm doing on Thursday when I get weighed in a weight loss group I belong to. Well, I'll probably weigh myself tomorrow too just to see.

I've been experimenting with upping my protein - by a lot. I always saw such conflicting advice about protein, I pretty much threw up my hands and thought I'll just do the best I can. But then last year, I was fasting a lot (just part days, some 24 hrs but no more than that). I lost weight fine but a lot of my hair fell out. Never happened before and I've lost a lot of weight many times.

So, I've been reading up and it looks like I may need much more protein than I was in the habit of getting.




Ok, that was specific to a keto diet, but for me the range would be about 77 to 126 gm protein, assuming approx 7 grams per oz.

Then there's this:



150-pound person needs about 81 – 115 grams
160 lbs, is 72.5 kg = 87 - 123 gm protein
170 lbs is 77 kg = 92 - 131 gm protein

At my current weight, (103 kg) 124 would be the low rate. I'm not sure what they mean by "exercise for weight loss"; perhaps that is weight lifting, but even the RDA as above for me is 80some. I sure wasn't getting that last year eating one or two meals a day regularly.

A few more links: https://www.healthline.com/nutritio...you-lose-weight

https://www.healthline.com/nutritio...at-more-protein



So, I'm experimenting! A very protein rich smoothie in the morning, instead of fasting. (I have to admit, it feels pretty good.) Then another at noontime, or equivalent food. So far, I'm not really hungry then at dinner time, but might eat a little.

It feels really different to get all this protein. (I'm shooting for about 100 gm or more.)I feel like I'm not going to be losing weight, because I associated my weight loss times with times when I feel especially tired and/or hungry or empty and I don't feel that - I feel full. It's weird. Well, I'm also increasing fiber too, so that's part of it.

Fingers crossed for Thursday!

JLx, It is great to see people posting in this thread. I still keep a close eye on it. I have been experimenting my self. I think if your feeling good then stick with it. It's about feeling good and being healthy and the weight will go away slowly. come on fast, goes off slow.

Hello back,

and the weight will go away slowly. come on fast, goes off slow.

Isn't that the truth? Once I get into it, my body generally cooperates in losing weight. When I was diagnosed diabetic, I was eating terrible back then, (my sugar was 405!), so I followed Dr. Bernstein's guidelines for about 6 weeks. My sugar dropped like a rock, and I've followed varying higher levels of lower carbs since then and still lost weight. But never kept it off in the face of some giant stressor, unfortunately.

JL- thanks for the reminder on protein. When I'm being good and following a medium-low carb regimen I get sufficient protein as I keep better track and aim for 75-90 grams a day. But when I'm slacking off, I tend to get much lower protein. I hope your weigh-in goes well.

I'm holding at 155, but durn it, I want to lose! I did find out I can not do the potato hack. One 5.3 oz potato eaten with just salt and pepper raised my bs almost 100 points at the 1 hour mark and I was still up 54 at 2 hours. It took 4 hours for my bs to come back down completely.

So... I made up a batch of cabbage veggie soup and starting today will eat nothing but soup and protein until I can't stand the soup any longer. I know - a fad diet. But in looking back over 15 years of weight loss records, my pattern is to lose on a strict diet and then maintain most of the weight loss for a time. The downfall is, like you, I stress eat and I gain half the weight back around every 2 years or so. But I'm determined this time to lose down to goal and stay there. I'm bumping up on 70 years old and don't want to be a fatty in my waning years. Plus I know I'll feel better overall at the lower weight.

It sounds like the potato hack diet isn't for you. But if you have good success keeping weight off that you've lost on a "fad" diet, good for you! Why not do it however it takes?

No matter how I've lost weight and I once lost weight very slowly, about 70 lbs over 3 years, I've always gained it back. That really is the problem. At least these days, I don't gain back more than I lost. In fact, I used to weigh about 40-50 lbs more than I go up to now. So that's something, at least. Permanently cutting out sugar means I won't weight that much, it seems.

I'm planning on making Martha's soup today. I have zucchini and yellow beans from the garden to put in there.

Ran across this recently:



100 gm is a half cup. Black rice isn't exactly black. It's more purple; it's got the same good-for-you-stuff-that-makes-it-purple as blueberries.

I always take some vinegar before a meal with starchy rice or potato.

Hi everyone! I'm so glad to see this thread becoming active again. To tell the truth, I so want to be VLC or Keto but I don't seem to have what it takes to stick to it beyond a few days, so the days in-between make me SemiLowCarb.

I also have diabetes so LC is important to me for that reason. When I see my blood sugar start to creep up, like it has been lately, I know it's time to knuckle down.

I love potatoes and could probably do the potato hack a day here and there, but I think 3 days of it would spike my blood sugar. DH loves potatoes, but not plain like you're supposed to do on the potato hack.

Normally, when I cook, I cook a protein and veggie and then add a carb for DH. Sometimes I will eat a bit of the carb, and sometimes I will eat a lot of the carb. Before getting married I was pretty strict low carb. I just didn't buy the things that were not on plan so I was very seldom tempted, but DH has carbs here everywhere. It's up to me to take the responsibility to avoid them.

In spite of his carb diet, DH has been losing weight lately and his pants are falling down. He is just eating less in general. If he keeps this up, he will go to a smaller size. Right now he is down to 211. I am around 198, so I have to hustle if I don't want him to pass me up, and I don't!! He is quite a bit taller than I am.

I don't make cabbage soup, per se, but in the colder months I make a vegetarian vegetable soup and put a lot of cabbage in it. It also contains mixed vegetables so it has some corn and lima beans in it, but I consider it to be relatively low carb. I also put some barley in it, but barley is a healthy grain so I don't feel guilty. I know that some would consider the phrase "healthy grain" to be an oxymoron.....oh well, it's what I do, and why I post in Semi Low Carb.

The people who are 100% on plan with Keto are my heros, but I have never been able to do it long term.

I've read quite a bit of Tim Steel's blog and supposedly people experience better blood sugar responses as they go on. I'm sorry I didn't continue to check mine as I did the first day to see if that was true for me or not.

When I was first diagnosed, I read Dr. Berstein's book and felt like I wanted to put a gun to my head. I lasted six weeks, and even then I was cheating - I would buy the smallest, ripest-looking fresh apricot I could find and nibble on half of one as "dessert" after a meal. I remember him saying he hadn't eaten fruit in decades. Instead, he recommended sugar-free jello - full of questionable ingredients like Splenda and dyes, imo. We all make trade-offs, don't we?

I'm glad to see more folks on here. I've been doing a bit better these days. I'm not really following the cabbage soup diet but made a batch of the soup and am eating it twice a day with a protein. That hopefully will keep both carbs and calories down somewhat. But then evening hits, and I get the munchies. Last night I ate pork rinds and guacamole, which is a good low carb snack, but then got into the chocolate chips. <sigh> I'm such a chocoholic. I thought I'd gotten all the chocolate out of the house, but found a bag of chips in the freezer. I'm like a dog with a bone and can sniff the stuff out!

The black rice sounds interesting. I've learned that I can eat some carbs and not have a drastic rise in bs, then others that are considered healthy raise me too much. Dreamfield's pasta is one item I can eat without a big rise, especially if I mix it with spiralized zucchini or shiritake noodles. I don't like either of these by themselves as they don't have the mouth feel of real pasta, but combining them with Dreamfields is both satisfying and "legal".

Carol - I'm with you on the strict keto. I want to do and start, then fall off the wagon pretty easy. The same thing with strict Bernstein. My body just seems to do better with moderate carb -- around 60 - 75 grams a day. But lately I haven't been quite so moderate.

My goal is still to be below 150 by my birthday, 5 weeks from now. Yeah, an artificial goal, but still something to aim for.

JLx, if I never had a piece of fruit the rest of my life I would be fine with that. LOL I do eat 1/2 banana most days for my potassium and a 1/2 orange I split with DH for Vit C. I like apples and pears, but just don't eat them on a regular basis. We didn't eat a lot of fruit growing up because it was expensive and there wasn't much $$$. My mom had to buy the essentials that would fill us up.....starchy carbs. LOL

Abilene, when I make chocolate chip cookies I never use the whole bag of chips. I always keep a small amount out to I have them to snack on if I get a chocolate craving. It's funny, but they are in the back of the cupboard and I forget they are there....until now. LOL I do buy some Dark Chocolate bars from Aldi's because they are supposed to be healthy...just not as tasty as other chocolate, but when you're desperate, you eat what's there.

My biggest downfall is since DH is a big carb eater, I tend to nibble on some of his carbs now and then, then that gets me started. It wouldn't bother me if it wasn't in the house.

I suppose it's what you grow up with. My parents didn't have a lot of money either, but we had the economy-style bags of apples and oranges; bananas. My dad grew some strawberries, and one year, so many cantaloupes I could hardly look at another one for years. A summer treat would be a box of plums or a watermelon for a picnic or family gathering (seed spitting contests!). We had some ancient Transparent apple trees behind the house and we used to pick wild berries. In our Christmas stockings, we'd always have a huge Red Delicious apple and a huge orange. If we were hungry between meals, it was either "It's almost time to eat" or have a banana, have an apple, a glass of milk.

My brother remembers never having enough meat. I guess I didn't notice that as I was busy crunching down the apples.

I'm not really following the cabbage soup diet but made a batch of the soup and am eating it twice a day with a protein.

I made Martha Stewart's Big Batch Vegetable soup today and I forgot to put cabbage in it! The recipe calls for 8 cups of veggies (after the onions and celery) and I put zukes and yellow beans from the garden, red potatoes and carrots from the farm market. I was debating about what else and all I could think of was a little sweet potato and some spinach. I meant to put maybe two cups of cabbage in it. I added a can of black beans and 4 big cans of chicken from Costco some years back. (My brother always complains there's not enough meat in the vegetable soup). So this time, he loved it. Said it was the best soup he ever had! Way to butter up the cook.

I felt kind of sad making it, thinking of my mom. She liked actual vegetable soup.

The soup sounds delish. I'm tired of the cabbage soup, although it is very tasty. Maybe that's part of the reason the cabbage soup diet works - after 3 or 4 days folks can't eat it any longer.

I'm not a big fruit eater, but I do love a crisp apple, peaches, and berries (especially blackberries). So during peach season it becomes very difficult to stay on low carb.

I buy the large bags of Ghiradelli 60% cacao chips at Sam's club. I no longer live near an Aldi's store (love that place) so the chips take the place of their dark chocolate hazelnut bars. I can limit myself by counting out the chocolate chips but had quit doing that and was eating too many.

Today besides the soup I'm eating okra, lean ground beef, blueberries, and probably chicharrones with guacamole this evening. I'm slowly losing so at least I'm going in the right direction.

For years I made my vegetables soup and it was always no meat. I used a big soup bone and some bullion, so it was not vegetarian. After I married DH he complained that there was no meat in it because his mother put meat in it, so I started doing it, but I don't always do it. I love my vegetable soup without the meat! I could probably cook it with a piece of meat in it and not cut it up in the soup then he could just eat the meat himself.

We didn't get much meat growing up either. My mother would stretch a piece of meat for 5 of us, mostly casseroles that contained little pieces of meat. We ate a lot of pasta and potatoes. None of us got fat, though. I think that's because we only ate our meals.....nothing after dinner, and never any snacks. The only time we had sweets was if it was someone's birthday and my mother baked a cake. Also, everything we ate was home cooked from scratch....never any packaged processed foods. So in our case, the carbs did not cause us to gain, because in effect, we were intermittent fasting....no food from dinner to breakfast the next day.

I finally had some of my own soup today and DB was right! It was extra good, I think, because I used bone broth (storebought) for one quart. I would have used it for all 43 oz, but they only had one quart. Protein is 9 gm for a cup, versus 4 gm cup regular broth. It seemed to have a richer flavor.

We had a lot of carbs growing up too. Always potatoes with meat, homemade bread and homemade desserts. For my birthday I always requested a confetti cake mix cake as something special. But you're right, no eating in the evening except popcorn sometimes. No snacks like potato chips except picnics or something special.

I'm slowly losing so at least I'm going in the right direction.

Absolutely!

I'm losing too. Tomorrow I'm going to a state fair. I'm a little anxious about that in terms of food. I'm planning on fasting until around noon as I have been doing and then if I get enough protein for lunch, I should be ok. I'm going to take something extra to go back to the car to eat if necessary. I heard this in O.A. way back when and it's always been true for me: "A failure to plan is a plan to fail."

I have 2 bags of chicken bones in the freezer with the intention of making my first batch of bone broth. Every time DH sees those bags of bones he asks what they are and what they're for. LOL They are leftover from rotisserie chickens I buy at the supermarket. My SIL used to make broth from the turkey carcass after Thanksgiving Dinner was eaten. DH thinks you need the meat in the broth and thinks the bones are useless. So that's my problem, if I make the bone broth, he won't eat it, so I don't make it. "You can't make soup from a bunch of bones." One of these days.

JL, here's my take on fair food. If I'm going somewhere like that, I eat appropriately the day before and the morning of, and then don't make a big deal about what I eat at the fair. I rarely eat "sweets" or "junk food" so I just make the best choice I can of the fair food. I know people who take their own food to a gathering so they don't have to go off plan, and I think that's being obsessive. But that's just my opinion, and could very well be the reason why I'm still fat. LOL We haven't been to the county fair for a few years due to too much walking for our old legs. When I went, the only food that interested me was a Gyro from the Greek booth, because it was something I couldn't readily get in our area, so it was a once-a-year treat. Now they are more readily available so they've lost their appeal. DH was into eating the hot dogs and ice cream, and leaving with a dozen amish donuts. I can eat once-a-year treats without feeling the least bit guilty. That's how I classify the stuffing on Thanksgiving. I can get mashed potatoes any old day, but not stuffing. I would rather eat that and pass up the pumpkin pie.

But like I said before, I make allowances for these so called once in a while indulgences. I don't consider it a cheat....it's a choice. And I also remain fat. Guilty as charged.