Hello from another noob

(Richard Brazier) #1

Howdy,

I kinda feel like a bit of a fraud at the mo as I’ve taken to keto like a man falling down a long flight of stairs, it’s a bumpy ride but I know I’ll eventually get to the bottom of them.

(Warning life story incoming!)

I’m a lifetime dieter thanks to being a hefty kid, lost a load of weight thanks to the low fat, low calorie diet, which worked great for a few years then it stopped working and I assumed it was my fault, I must have started doing something different. So after putting on about half the weight I’d lost in a quarter the time it had taken to loose I became a gym rat and jogging fanatic. That worked great, for a few years then the weight shot back up. So then I started excercising way more, taking classes like body combat, at my peak I did 7 hours a week of classes plus the gym 3 days a week and 30 min jogging twice a week, all while reducing my calories down to around 1200 net which worked for about a year.

Eventually something broke in my metabolism I guess I’d crossed some tipping point and my weight shot up. Being the habitual lifelong calorie counter and weight tracker that I was, you can see in my graphs my weight starting to climb like never before and climbed in almost a perfect straight line with barely a slowdown or speed up for about four years.

I did a year of fruitlessly trying all the old ways of losing weight, more excercise, less food, less calories more excercise and I’d didn’t touch my weight gain and left me totally exhausted and depressed. So I stopped doing all of it, which weirdly didn’t speed up my rate of gain, and started trying to learn what the hell was going on.

I was lucky in that I found Dr Robert Lustigs YouTube Video (fructose 2.0) pretty early on as well as Gary Taubes’ Why we get Fat and so after a few years worth of reading, learning, trying and eventually accepting. i find myself here. I hope I can finally succeed in undoing the damage I have done over the years trying to follow the establiment’s fundermentally broken approach to weight loss.

(Life story over)

TLDR:Tried (if you can call 20+ years trying) low fat, low calorie, high excercise diets. They made me fatter and sick and depressed. Looking forwards to keto.

So I just want to say hi everyone, can’t wait to get properly started!

Rich

#2

Hi Rich, another newbie here- Welcome!

I know what its like to work hard on the low fat, low cal, plus exercising routine and fail: though maybe not as extreme as you. I’ve been on Keto for about 10 weeks and am loving it. For me the best part about eating Keto in the beginning was not worrying about food and hunger. Then with weight loss, you get some positive reinforcement; which helps a lot. I think I’m fat adapted now; and feel like my energy is so much better. This site is awesome for hearing other peoples stories, a lot of which may be similar to our own; and getting good information. For what it’s worth- I started with “The New Atkins for a new you” It’s very easy to read and follow. It helped me get the mechanics down. I also read “The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living” and listened to everything on You Tube that I could find by Volek and Phinney. Their content is amazing! Once I got going on Keto and found this forum, I decided not to add carbs back- which The New Atkins may suggest. I noticed I was feeling better, the fewer carbs I had.

Anyway, Good Luck!! I hope it works for you!!

(Sophie) #3

Welcome to the Forum (both of you!) Lots of great info and helpful folks here. Now take all that shit you’ve known about diet and exercise, turn it on it’s head, and you will see Keto! It’s incredibly easy and enjoyable and you don’t Have to exercise if you don’t want to. That’s the part I like the most ('cause I’m lazy that way) and I’ve lost 65lbs to date. :smile: KCKO

(Mike Glasbrener) #4

Welcome to the forum and thanks for sharing! I too did low simple carb, low fat. I had a ton of veggies and some fruit. I lost a lot of weight while taking up cycling to an extreme. While it was way better than the SAD diet I was always eating and planning on eating. I learned hunger was a healthy friend and lived with him! I mostly kept it off for a few years but I was effectively intermittent fasting several times a week due to morning rides. Life intervened and it all came back. I injured myself and recommitted the beginning of January this year. I subsequently learned about keto and rolled into it around the mid-end of February this year and the journey has been outstanding! Once through PISS (the first few weeks) hunger became manageable to easy. Snackiness went away. Skipping breakfast became easy, fasting, something completely unimaginable, has become easy and part of my dietary routine. Oh! By the way I’ve dropped >70lbs and am no longer Prediabetic. It’s all been remarkably easier than before and without a ton on exercise due to injury that I’m mostly recovered from.

(Richard Brazier) #5

Yeah, that last book, the art and science of low carb living definitely tied together all the loose threads. Lots of the other books, great as they are seem to overly focus on a sub factor. Understandable I guess as the guy writing them is usually an expert in that field most affected by whatever they are focusing on, Fructose, salt, junk, fasting. This book seems to tie it all together in a way that makes complete sense. So far I’ve only read it once but I definitely plan to give it at least a second read through.

Glad to hear your journey is going well from this side of just starting 10 weeks seems like a mountain to climb and an achievement to be proud of, though I bet for you it seems now like its zoomed by? :slight_smile:

I think I’ll try and follow Tim Noakes book. I’ve been watching his deposition and if you liked the art and science of low carb living you’ll love his massive YouTube playlist. Its like a well read summary all the low carb related books you’ve read and all the science you heard about and all the politics crammed into about 6 hours of video.

Thanks for the reply and the luck. I’ll do my best and let you know :slight_smile:

(Richard Brazier) #6

Wow, that’s an awesome achievement. Honestly I almost wouldn’t care so much about the weight if I didn’t feel so crappy most of the time along with it and the fact it makes snowboarding WAY harder!

Throwing away all the old crap is the biggest hurdle I think. That and getting enough friends to buy into it or at least accept it so that you don’t have to become a total recluse! Saying you want to stop eating carbs, bread pasta and mashed potatoes is like the food equivalent of coming out to some people. They look at you like you’ve done a big pooh on all their hopes and dreams :stuck_out_tongue:

Still, I’m kinda hoping that if I can make some visible progress it will both shut them up and maybe, just maybe, convince them to give it a try too.

Thanks for the encouragement! I’ll do my best to catch you up :slight_smile:

(Richard Brazier) #7

That’s awesome work, 70lbs is amazing. I noticed some benefits every time I try it. Swollen ankles vanish within a day or two, I feel a loads less bloated, more flexible in my core and joint aches and pains seem really reduced. Also the more I try it the less I like the stuff I used to. I find a lot of the sugary foods I used to eat quite happily don’t seem to taste of anything but sugar anymore.

I’m not in keto yet by any stretch of the imagination but I am slowly getting less and less interested in sweet or bready foods. I like the idea of grand gestures and suddenly stopping and have tried that a load of times but in the end it seems I’m phasing into it, one failure at a a time :slight_smile:

Good luck in your journey and thanks for the encouragement!

(Sophie) #8

No, No! You’re looking at it from the wrong angle. Don’t make it about what you Can’t Eat, instead tell them what you Can. I’ve been telling my friends for years…I can eat meat and veggies. I eat meat and veggies. I eat meat and veggies and some cheese. No, blah, blah is not a veggie! Only meat and veggies. Hell, who is gonna argue with you about meat and veggies or shun you for that matter? Uh, nobody. It’s a great way to defuse all the naysayers without coming across as a diet ass, 'cause everybody knows meat and veggies are good for you! :slightly_smiling_face:

(Sophie) #10

You’re right, it does take some knowledge of cooking too. My friends where going to a place that served an “Italian Buffet” and most of the stuff was pasta related (loaded)… one friend asked me…“Oh you can have the meat balls, right?” …uhhhh No, because most places add at minimum bread crumbs to bulk out the meat, so that’s a no-go, but the salad with oil/vinegar is a great option.

#11

Hey Rich- thanks for the suggestion! I’ve heard of Tim Noakes, but I can’t recall listening to him or reading anything by him. I will definitely give him a listen on my commute to work.

Your right- I really can’t believe I’ve been doing it that long. For me it sure was a lot easier than the old calorie restricting and intense exercising that you alluded to. I thought like- instead of exercising 90 minutes a day; I’ll just focus on my eating habits/patterns- and see if this works. Then, all of the sudden your losing real weight. Better yet for me it was all that pesky central abdominal fat that is insanely hard to get rid of. If you could do those programs in the past- this is gonna amaze you!

I like how you refer to it as a journey; because even though the weight loss was relatively easy for me- my main motivation was to lower my Hba1c. I have been running pre-diabetic for a couple years now and started keto after my last doctors appointment 3 months ago. I’ve been checking ketones and blood sugars, trying to do all the right things- went back for a 2 month lab draw and found out my Hba1c hadn’t changed at all! Major discouragement! To make matters worse I got a lipid panel the same day- and my total chol and ldl-c were way up. Doctor called me back with results the same day and wanted to start me on meds. I’m hoping- I’m just one of those funny responders they talk about (hyperresponder?) and I have a lot of large fluffy ldl. So I’m currently waiting on a more advanced lipid panel which is supposed to look at that and a repeat Hba1c; which will be further out from my diet change and hopefully start moving in the right direction. Despite the labwork discouragement- like many others have said- I feel so good, its hard to believe it couldn’t be working in my favor.

Good luck on your journey, I would like to know how you do. Wish you the best with it!:grinning:

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #12

Welcome, @Richie_B! I’m another newbie, sucked into keto by Robert Lustig, Peter Attia, Gary Taubes, Nina Teicholz, and three like. I started out by just cutting out sugar, but started feeling so much better that it became very easy to go low-carb.

I recently discovered this forum and the dudes’ podcasts. One of the things I really like about the keto world is how people are too busy talking about the science to badmouth anyone. And the folks on the forum are very kind and helpful. It’s not like that with the other ways of eating I have checked out.

(Linda Culbreth) #13

On a A1C, it’s an average over the last 3 months - which is how long it takes to replace the blood cells which attack (for lack of a better description of what happens) the “at the moment” sugar levels. It’s possible that you have to test 3 months after your numbers come down for you A1C to actually test better…

(Richard Brazier) #14

Oh. Yeah that is a really good point :slight_smile: Real food without the starchy bulking agents - bulking as in bulking the body and bulking out the amount of food on your plate :stuck_out_tongue: and without the industrial processes, preservatives and additives.

:slight_smile:

(Richard Brazier) #15

Ooo he’s doing a book. Though they have decided to appeal against the 10 vs 0 win in favor of Tim Noakes. I just don’t get the resistance to low carb from the current establishment.

Also here is the full play list. Its a few saturday afternoons watching but its worth the trouble.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #16

Follow the money!

(MooBoom) #17

Hey and welcome! Have you thought about easing into Keto by doing LCHF to begin with? That’s been my approach (I eat between 50-60g of carb a day and am in mild ketosis) and still seeing great results (10kg loss in 9 weeks plus all the other benefits like increased energy/immune health/better mental acuity etc). You may not have to go extreme with the whole 20g a day thing to start seeing results- and you can ramp it up from there.

Friends and family can really put a dampener on things so I agree with the suggestion to say you can eat meat and vegetables, but specifiy not starchy veg or you’ll get steak and chips shoved innocently under your hungry nose :roll_eyes:

I get around a lot of food issues by bringing my own meals to family events, or eating beforehand, or bringing a low carb option to share. Alternatively I cook a delicious low carb meal for everyone to enjoy- or I just order steak or fish with steamed veg when out. Get your control freak on :wink: Oh and I make room for one carbalicious meal out with friends once per week and it doesn’t de-rail my progress in the slightest, but that might just be lucky of me.

KCKO!

(Richard Brazier) #18

Hey MooBoom

Thanks for the advice. Yeah I think that’s a really good idea. Probably avoids a lot of the keto flu going that route too?

I’m slowly breaking a lot of the bad food habits and I’m cooking a lot more ingredient rather than ready made stuff so I’m getting there. It’s just that fight between desperately wanting to see results vs reality :stuck_out_tongue:

I think people that are my parents age really get that way of eating cos it’s what the grew up with so it makes it a lot easier to sell. Though they stil assume it’s a low fat, vegetable oil version of it cos they’ve had that drummed into there skulls since the 60s!

My grandson favourite food was steak and kidney pie and the crust was made with suet. I with she was still around I bet she had so many naturally keto friendly recipies:slight_smile:slight_smile:

I’ve got two months living out of a hotel on the other side of the world coming up so If I can’t break some more bad habits there then I’ll never get rid of em:p. Also I plan to find a nice steakhouse nearby and become a regular :stuck_out_tongue:

Thanks again for the advice

Rich