Thank you Sarah...for giving me the credit on this.

I did use a cycling method to keep my weight loss moving and sometimes it was with a grain...sometimes starchy veggies.....always ate my fruits each day. But if I saw the scale not budge for a few days, I'd back away from grain and starchy veggies for a few days and keep the fruit.
I sometimes feel like freak around here, being one of the few who made it to my goal...and stayed there for the past 4 yrs now after losing 120 lbs.
Why me? What did I do different?
I followed my plan of choice and did not get stuck doing Induction/phase I levels of carbs....I moved on.

Another successful moderate carber here!

I managed to lose weight following the Barry Groves' recommendations, although to be honest, I even went a bit higher than he would recommend. He recommends about 60g of carbs a day; I managed to lose on an average of 70g a day. However, I must add that I do have a fast metabolism and burn carbs up as if they were kindling: on their own, they keep me going for max one to two hours. What worked for me wouldn't necessarily work for others. I only add my own personal story to this thread because I want to add more munition to the argument that weight can be lost on moderate carb diets. Just recently, I shed 3.3lbs - to my great surprise - eating an average of around 120g of carbs a day.

Over the last three months or so I have been having regular episodes of dizziness and light-headedness in the mornings, which are very bothersome as this has meant that my most "active" time of the day (I'm a mostly stay-at-home mum) then becomes one of enforced sedentariness. As a result, I have been tinkering about with my diet and supplements to try and find out what could help with this.

One of the books I have read in the meantime is Dr Diana Schwarzbein's book, "The Schwarzbein Principle II: The Transition", which was a real eye-opener. She also advocates a low-carb diet, but not ketosis, saying that this puts a huge stress on the body, in particular the adrenal glands, which then crank out adrenaline to raise blood sugar. She recommends that each meal contain a small amount of carbs (from 15-25g per main meal depending on your type) and that for your daily two snacks, you never eat a carb alone!!! This goes along with the traditional wisdom that you will slow down the insulin release caused by the carbs by adding fat or protein into the mix. I have been trying this out and have found one surprising thing: after happily eating bacon and eggs in the morning with no added carbs at all for the last couple of years and finding that this meal kept me going for a good few hours, I discovered that if I added one potato - 15g of carbs - into the fry-up mix, this meal would keep me going even longer!!!

This still didn't take care of the dizziness problem entirely, but in the meantime, I am pretty sure that it was partly caused by zinc deficiency and definitely caused by magnesium deficiency, low adrenal gland function and too much (self-imposed) stress. I have been supplementing with chelated magnesiuma and feel much more mellow and the dizziness seems to have gone (knock on wood!).

The other point I would go along with is to be careful what kind of carbs you add into the mix when you put them back on the menu. Fruit juice is absolutely not food, just pure sugar water. I only eat fruit in large quantities in summer when all the berries are in season, but during the winter I shall only eat a few. Fructose has definitely contributed to the obesity epidemic.

The other discovery I made whilst tinkering was that I once experienced a quite dramatic drop in weight when I did a no-bread experiment. I am now working on easing bread and other wheat products out of my diet and using beans, rice and maybe oats for starch instead. Wheat definitely has a more-ish property to it, and I personally am going to stay away from it as much as I can. I also want to experiment to see if wheat elimination alleviates some mild arthritis symptoms I have.

And I would also chime in with the point about not obsessing over your food. I am now doing this low-carb thing for my general health and well-being, not purely and only to lose weight. For the rest of the winter I will be happy if I stay at more or less my current weight - maybe a couple of pounds less - and as from spring I will try to lose a few more to feel better in my summer gear. But for the minute, keeping my stress levels low is one of my main priorities and therefore obsessing over the scale numbers or the carb numbers is not somewhere I want to go right now. Admittedly, I don't have a lot to lose in the first place, so I can afford to be complacent about my particular numbers, but sometimes I wonder whether we shouldn't all lighten up a bit and focus on our general health and not just the numbers?

amanda

It's interesting to hear about people who lost on higher carb or low fat, of course. But whose to say it was that difference that caused their weight loss? Perhaps they would've lost weight anyway if they'd eaten more fat or lower carb.

I'm really interested in hearing is about people who totally stalled on low carb for many, many months if not years and found something that kicked the weight loss into gear again. Especially women over 45!

Nancy, while I am not what you are looking for, I'm 34, twice did I try to eat at higher fat, lower carbs and my weight loss slowed down drastically and I felt like crap. I quickly got out of that funk and upped my carbs and stopped eating all that extra fat.

I stalled at about 140 lbs for a little over a year - tried many change-ups with no results. Then one series of blood work showed my fasting BG at diabetes levels, the doc sent me back for a confirming test but before I went I thought I'd try cutting out all artificial sweeteners. My A1c came back at 4.6, so I stuck to almost no sweeteners of any sort (although I have to confess that I still have a square or two of Lindt 85% once a week). Anyhow, it was shortly after that I noticed my weight had started to creep down again.

I think the only reason I stuck to plan was because I feel so well eating this way but, like Judy, I've followed the plan as written and added back a few carbs all along, following the carb ladder. I honestly don't know how many carbs I'm eating now but I'll have some potatoes 2 or 3 times a week as well as 1/2 an orange a day, plus other higher carb and/or starchy veggies as well.

Oh, and I'm certainly well over 45!!

She was doing ok until "4. Calories Do Count."

No, calories do not count in any meaningful way. But I'm getting out of breath on this one. I think I'll just let it go and let people figure things out on their own. It's the best way to learn anyway.

Patrick

Reincarnate yourself as a middle-aged woman and lets have this discussion.

I stand by what I said for all human beings on this earth.

Like on this post here http://forum.lowcarber.org/showpost...1&postcount=109 I'm getting out of breath.

But, I'm not going through this again. If people like to think calories matters for them, then who am I to disagree?

I just don't want to end up sounding like Martin Levac. (Please, don't hurt me Martin )

Patrick

Itsthewoo commented at the linked post with a discussion of leptin levels that may touch on the middle-aged woman issue. I didn't follow all of what she had to say but did note that testosterone levels in men compensate for the extremely low leptin levels that result from substantial weight loss. Women do not have that hormonal "option" available to them. I think men and younger women really don't understand that what works for them could really be ineffective for others.

I had an acquaintance from my old low carb days who had started out at 330 pounds (she was 5'5"). I guess she was in her early 40s or so at the time. She went on the CAD diet. This was before the CAD folks started saying your carb meal had to balanced, and it was pretty much "anything goes". I'm trying to dredge up dozen year old memories here so my details may not be exact, but it's the general gist.

Her initial goal was to get to 130 pounds for a 200-pound loss. Pretty significant but I'd love (and need) to lose that myself. She stuck to LC during the day but for her carby meal she pretty much went hogwild and ate anything she wanted! Amazingly enough she managed to lose 100 pounds this way pretty effortlessly, and got down to 230. But then she stalled, and was stuck at 230 for nearly a year - doing the same thing, low carb during the day and eating whatever she wanted at dinner.

After a year she decided she needed to shake things up again, and went on strict Atkins, and began losing again. She actually got below 200 but got stuc again. For a while she had found a doctor she liked to work with. He put her on a much lower fat version of a low carb diet. She did lose some more weight but found the diet unsustainable and when she stopped his plan the weight quickly came back. She said the diet really messed with her metabolism.

She tried various things. At one point she had another long stall although she was still keeping carbs low and eating about 1300-1400 calories daily. She she bumped *up* her calories to 1700-1800 daily and began losing again. Another time she cut down on the amount of exercise she was doing to break another stall, and when she cut back on her exercise the weight began dropping again.

Eventually she got down to about 165. But then she came to a screeching halt. After that she could not lose another ounce no matter what. She tried all kinds of things and nothing worked. So eventually she just decided to declare herself "done" and accept that 165 was her goal weight - far better than 330, and she would just try to live with it. At the time I met her she had maintained her 165 weight (though never able to drop any lower) for six years. Though we have long since lost touch so I don't know her status now.

But while she did break through several very long stalls along the way she never did achieve her original goal, though clearly she had an impressive loss to reach a basically normal size, even if not the one she originally dreamed of.

Me, I would just love to get under 200 pounds. I don't have to get to 130 or whatever, but under 200 would be nice. Heck right now I'd be thrilled to think I could get under 250.

Indeed. But again there is a causal agent here. An hormonal imbalance or missing feedback loop. It's still not about calories. As long as people believe it is about calories, they won't even look for what causes them to gain weight.

Patrick

If she's correct the solution is simple then: do 800 cal for 3 days then 1800 for 6 days then 800 for 3 ...

Ill give up my saturated fats when they pull the bacon from my cold dead insulin resistant hand

I saw that too, and saw also that it's impossible to get leptin to try to supplement with so if that is really our problem we're all screwed.

I loved Jenny's article. It was one of the best things I've read about low-carb and dieting in a long time.

I'm confused--isn't that why Dr. A has the carb ladder and Dr. Eades has Phases 1,2,3 and South Beach has it's phases? Scratching my head.

But of course no one ever follows the carb ladder or transitions to the next level. It's the mentality if I lose on 20 so well then I'll stick to 20 and of course after awhile they stall out but instead of going to the next phase/level they begin to tweak and fat fast and this and that. And when people do add carbs, it's very rare that it's more veg first--it's always nuts, cheese, frankenfoods (ok, ok, not everybody but you guys get my drift) I just shake my head--why is it that no one wants to do the plan as written. Hmmmmm....I think Dr. Atkins developed the carb ladder for a reason, as well as Eades and Angoston. Ok, now that I've butchered everybodies plan.....I'm slinking away

and what about all the other variables--such as thyroid, peri and menopause, sleep disorders, stress, cortisol levels.....the list goes on and on.

Does this gal low carb?? I don't know about her, but even though calories do count for me, it certainly isn't 1000 a day. I average 1600 daily since May for losing--It's plenty of food, plus alcohol, plus an off plan meal 2-3 times per month, so for maintenance maybe add in a couple a hundred more--we're up to 1800 now for me to maintain--that doesn't sound like such a bad gig to me. Gak! If I only ate 800 a day I'd be more of a bitch than I already am. I eat that for my first meal, coffee, and protein shake and I still get dinner a glass of wine and maybe a bedtime snack.


Now that I see who it is (I went over to her blog), she is a low carber. I read her posts which are well thought out on the other forum.


But still 800 calories--no wonder the thyroid is shot and the body stalling.