New to LCHF and needing advice

(Ray) #1

Hi everyone. I have just joined this forum as I have developed an interest in becoming healthy.
At 40 years old I have been gradually putting on weight over the years which has been unsuitable for my frame. I was diagnosed by my gp as having fatty liver due to diet 1 year ago. My blood pressure is generally high 140/90. Its time for a change.

Whether strictly keto or not I have drastically reduced my carb intake over the past 6 weeks and am eating much more fat, bacon eggs with olive oil and butter, green veg, coffee with cream instead of milk. I do still have a couple glasses of full fat milk each day usually before bed. My weight has dropped from 14 stone 5 to 13 stone 3 but seems to have slowed a little. My bloating has eased a bit but not perfect. I still have a bit of belly at different points in the day.

I have been doing a form of fasting, however still drinking coffee and cream and butter but no food.

Any idea why the weight loss is slowing down would be great or even any advice at all in ways I can improve?

Many thanks in advance

(Susan) #2

Welcome to the forum, Ray =).

Congrats on your progress so far.

As long as you keep your carbs at 20 grams or less, eat enough proteins, healthy fats, drink water and electrolytes, then you should be able to lose again and start to feel all the awesome benefits of Keto very soon =).

I would not eat anything past supper time, start out with breakfast, lunch and supper, and if you eat enough at all, you should not need to snack at all. The time restricted eating helps your body to burn its own fat, so not eating from supper until breakfast will give you a fasting period of at least 12 hours or more, and your body will be burning your own body’s fat during that time. I would get rid of that milk you are drinking =). I like to have a plain herbal tea in the evenings, no calories, no carbs =). Take care and good luck!

(back and doublin' down) #3

Welcome Ray!

Weight loss will slow, slower for women than men apparently. That doesn’t mean nothing’s happening. I went almost a year at basically the same weight but still lost several clothes sizes. Body recompositioning!

I’d check the carbs in that nightly milk habit. Maybe wean yourself off of it, substitute some herbal tea or other low/no carb thing if a bit of something before bed is part of your nightly “this is me going to sleep” routine.

Lots of great information around here, and people willing to support and people willing to help brainstorm a hurdle.

Keep Calm, Keto On! (KCKO)

(Ray) #4

Thank you both for your guidance. I have never really measured my carb intake properly so I will try to do so more rigorously.
The milk thing will be something i definately struggle with ruducing.
Have you any thoughts on the intermittent fasting but still consuming cream in my coffee during the almost fast?

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #5

Hello, and welcome to the Ketogenic Forums!

Weight loss always slows the closer your body is to a healthy weight. And remember, it’s fat loss you want, not lean tissue loss, so if your body decides to put on a bit of lean mass while at the same time shedding excess fat, that’s not a bad thing.

The key to reversing fatty liver disease is to avoid sugar and ethyl alcohol. Table sugar, sucrose, is composed of a glucose molecule bonded to a fructose molecule. The glucose from sucrose is handled in the body the same way as glucose from any other carbohydrate, but fructose and ethanol can be metabolised only in the liver, and by the same metabolic pathway, at that. This pathway can handle only so much of a load at any given time, so if it gets overloaded, fat builds up in the liver, with potentially serious consequences. But this excess liver fat is practically the first to be metabolised once we change our diet to stop overloading the liver with fructose and ethanol. One small study on obese children with fatty liver disease showed a marked improvement in their livers in just ten days of a low-fructose diet, so you can do yourself a lot of good in a very short period of time.

You don’t say how tall you are, so it’s not easy to say whether 13 st 3 is a good or bad weight for you. If you are over six feet tall, you may have a difficult time persuading your body to shed more fat. If you are only five feet tall, that would be a different story.

The key is to keep your total carbohydrate intake as low as you can, in addition to cutting out sugar entirely (and the alcohol as well, for the moment). That alters your hormonal response to the food you eat in a very healthy way. The principal hormone that stimulates fat storage is insulin, and a well-formulated ketogenic diet will lower your insulin levels considerably, whether you wish to fast or not. (Remember as well that fasting is much easier once your body has become reaccustomed to metabolising fatty acids in place of glucose.) But losing excess fat will not occur, even on a low-carbohydrate diet, if you skimp on the calories, which is why we strongly advise eating to satiety. If you keep your carbohydrate intake as low as possible (we recommend an upper limit of 20 g/day), eat a moderate amount of protein, and fill in calories with fat (which has almost no effect whatsoever on your insulin secretion), you will be able to trust your appetite as a guide to how much to eat.

#6

It takes time to lose (or gain) a pound of fat (or muscle). Most short-term weight fluctuation is a simple change in water retention and digestive tract contents.

When you start keto, your glycogen stores dwindle. Glycogen binds with water, so that water is released when the glycogen goes away. That’s why many people starting keto initially lose weight quickly. But it’s mostly water weight.

(Marianne) #7

I would suggest lowering your carbs, if you can. Eating too many carbs on keto just turns into a high fat diet. Your body will burn the carbs you ingest first, before burning the fat on your body or from what you eat. The thing that makes keto work is high(er) fat/low carb.

If you enjoy a couple glasses of full fat milk every night, how about pouring a half a glass of heavy cream and shake it up with a half glass (or more) of ice water? Delicious. I bet you find you may like it better.

#8

I drank milk today as we bought some great one, I almost never drink milk since… 12-15 years?
Now it always surprised me how very sugary it is and it’s not like I would go near a whole glass, that would be bad.
It’s dairy anyway, it can mess things up for people. But just carbs easily have that effect, even in ketosis. Maybe it’s fine for you, maybe not. I would try to lower my carbs if possible. Smaller glass of milk, some heavy cream if that works (I usually put such things into my coffee or hot chocolate and a very little amount of heavy cream is enough. it’s different for you as you can’t replace a glass of milk with a little amount of heavy cream, I imagine. but who knows?), tea, egg milk, whatever works.

I don’t know how much excess fat you have but it’s often harder to lose if it’s little. Age, gender, personal factors… I am sure many people around 13 stone has a harder time with losing fat. And it matters how much you eat, of course. Some of us too easily overeat fat (I tend to do it when I eat more carbs or less protein as both make me hungrier - or when I snack on delicious fat - but fat satiates me unwell. some people thinks they need to eat tons of fat and it may be a problem).

BUT I wouldn’t do big changes if fat-loss just “slowed down a little”. If you stall for 2 months, you probably should change something then.

(Ray) #9

I should have said I am 5 feet 8