This isn't really about weight loss

I, and anyone who's read my posts, have lost the point of why I went low carb/high fat.

Before discovering low carb, high fat diets (LCHF), I already was eating as little processed food as is practical - almost none in fact.  I already wasn't eating any "low fat" products (oddly apart from 0% fat greek yogurt, which has changed now).  I was already only rarely eating rice (always brown), almost never pasta (and then if I did it was wholewheat), small portions of couscous (50g dry weight and whole grain), bread only once or twice times a week (a wholewheat bagel with poached eggs and/or bacon at the weekend).  I was, however, eating carb bars, drinks and gels in races and a bit in training to get used to them; once a week for about 16 weeks of 2012.  And I didn't like doing it.

This was my original point:-

I want to be able to get through an endurance event by using my natural energy stores in as high a proportion as I can, so I need to take on as little fuel during the event as possible.

Why?  Two reasons. One - I am criminally useless at taking on fuel on the bike leg of a longer distance triathlon (half ironman and up, I wouldn't bother on anything shorter).  I procrastinate about doing it, end up sitting up for ages while I procrastinate, slow down, and generally faff.  I never seem to find the right time, there's always a bend, a bump, a climb, a descent, an overtake... it just plain slows me down.  Two - taking on all that sugar makes me feel really bloody awful.  Sick as a dog, confused towards the end, sleepy, and just plain horrible all over.

To that end, I wanted to encourage my body to burn fat preferentially as a fuel.

It just so happens, that there are many diets and lots of publicity around the fact that eating a low carbohydrate diet tends to result in weight (body fat) loss.  Which will be handy to get me down to my racing weight, but it's not the primary goal.

It also just so happens that there are a number of people who think low carb living is the healthiest way to be for various reasons.

Somewhere along the way, everyone (including me) got caught up with the weight loss bit.  Yes, it'll be nice to drop a few pounds to easily hit racing weight, I really can't deny that.  But the main point is the preferential fuel piece.  And initial results from the steady state gas analysis and RMR gas analysis tests I had done, seem to indicate that that's going reasonably well.

Envigorated - and an incredible milestone

Today marks 4 years since I took the decision to lose weight and turn my health around.  4 years on and I'm still maintaining a 30kg weight loss (which took 6 months to effect purely through diet change and calorie deficit), having had a little hiccup part way through when my scales stopped working properly and I put on a good half stone.  That was worked off again and I've been working on lowering my body fat %, taken up running and got back into swimming.  I've done my first 10km running race (2 minutes faster than I wanted to do it), my first sprint triathlon (10 minutes faster than I wanted to do it; and 2 more tris to come through the year), done a 5km swim for charity (in less than 2 hours despite no training) and signed up for a 2 mile swim down the Thames later in the summer.  I've come a long way and am still moving forward.  I may well be very hard on myself most of the time, but I have done well and continue to do so.  So it calls for a little celebration.  Dinner out tonight!

Despite still aching quite a bit, I went to the gym with Mr TOTKat this morning.  And I really went for it.  Full body weights session with a good 15 minutes cardio at the end.  I feel great!   Mr TOTKat's trainer even commented on my walking lunges with kettlebells, which was pleasing!  My thighs ought to calm down a bit by the morning too. :o)

B - greek yogurt with 1 scoop, maca root and some Dorset Cereals fruity muesli
*gym*
S - 1 scoop in semi-skimmed milk with water (we ran out of milk!)
L - sandwich; Sainsburys wholemeal crusty roll with ham, Philadelphia and lettuce
S - cottage cheese with pineapple and maca root
D - hot smoked salmon with beetroot and watercress, duck breast with pureed cauliflower and spinach and a portobello mushroom, chocolate brownie with vanilla ice-cream and chocolate sauce, champagne, dessert wine and coffee with Amaretto

Exercise - 65 minutes gym

Calories (kcal) [kcals to maintain weight (inc. exercise)	2570 2303]
Protein (g)	159.2 (25.9%)
Carbohydrate (g)	234.4 (35.8%)
Fat (g)	67.5 (24.7%)
Alcohol (g)	47.6 (13.6%)
Fruit & Veg	6.6

Losing weight: complete deprivation is rarely the answer

One of the main reasons many people "fall off the wagon" is because they have placed extreme restrictions upon themselves in their quest to lose weight. How many times have you heard "I'll never eat cake again" or similar?

But diets usually dictate denial of some form or another. I don't mean just cutting down on the overall calorie intake, because that really is necessary to lose weight I'm afraid, but cutting out specific foods completely; diets that tell you to cut out all carbs, all fats and sometimes (but vanishingly rarely) almost all protein. These are just crazy and pretty bad for you if you follow them for any long period of time. But there are the ones that -seem- sensible, like not eating any chocolate, cake, biscuits, chips, red meat, bread, potatoes...

Intolerance-finding diets aside; the problem with completely denying yourself something you really like is that the cravings get stronger and stronger and at some point it's very likely that you'll crack, give in, and binge. Because we are only human after all and there's only so much And then, because you've binged, the common thought is "well, I've ruined it all now so I might as well give up" or "I clearly can't do this diet thing, I'm so rubbish, I give up", maybe not right away, but certainly drifting that way and all of the hard slog to date is pretty much for naught; if not worse. Having a little bit of what you fancy every now and then, plan to have it and plan to have a small bit of the best kind of whatever you really really like maybe once a fortnight or once a week or, if you're one of the lucky people who really like something that's not all that calorific, plan it in as even a daily treat!

For me, I thought it was going to be cheese. I LOVE cheese. Really. Lo-o-o-o-ooooove it. But, I didn't get cravings for it at all during my weight loss phase. What I really REALLY wanted after some time of not having it was bread. Crusty, fluffy, white baguette, to be specific. Having stopped having sandwiches for lunch; as I just couldn't keep my daily kcals down low enough and still have sandwiches for lunch and a meal in the evening that meant my partner at the time didn't waste away totally as I liked to have the same meal together in the evening (though he always had twice the carb portion as I had and still lost weight!); I changed to salads for lunch. The salads were tomato based with some tangy bits added for flavour. But no bread or crutons with lunch salads and no bread or crutons with any soup, as bread is pretty calorific for the portion size. After 3-4 weeks of that all I wanted to do was buy a whole baguette, or even just a baton, and stuff the whole thing into my face. Thankfully, I nipped that in the bud by having a small piece of baguette with salad or a soup at the weekends for lunch. Yes, I still wanted bread with a vengeance, but I got a little top-up of bread every weekend which I'm pretty sure helped me not to go nuts with a baguette at any point.

So, if your thing is cake and you're trying to lose weight and stay on the wagon; have some cake! Really! Just make sure it's a small piece of really nice cake and only do it once a week, tops. And savour it; enjoy every tiny morsel and lick the plate at the end! Doing that isn't going to ruin your overall progress and it is very likely to stop you wanting to buy a whole Victoria sponge and scoffing the lot then hating yourself and potentially convincing yourself you can't do this weight loss thing. But be careful that your definition of a small piece doesn't drift bigger and bigger ;o) (And make sure you log it in your food diary and that it doesn't put you over maintenance calories for the day.)

Losing weight: why should I actually bother?

I have a theory. Losing weight is like stopping smoking. For some people it's easy; for some people it depends where they are with their life and whether they're "ready" to do it or not; and for some it's never going to happen no matter how much stress and pain they put themselves through.


For the last group, the answer to the question "why should I bother?" is probably "actually, you probably shouldn't". Even with the right support, education etc. for some people the stress and effort involved for them to lose weight and keep it off is probably more damaging to their quality and length of life than the excess weight could potentially be (excepting the obese to the point of needing a crane to get out of bed). The stress and frustration alone can be so psychologically and physiologically damaging that it's better to keep that little bit of excess. There have been recent studies that have correlation between slightly extended life expectancy in the elderly and being slightly overweight compared with the current recommended guidelines. Of course this could be related to having extra padding around joints, bones and organs so that bumps, knocks and falls have less serious consequences, but without having read the studies in any detail, I couldn't say.


There is a great importance, in Western Society mostly, placed on being slim; probably overly slim at that. Yes, there is a growing percentage of the population who are overweight and yes, there is fat discrimination (which I certainly experienced, first-hand, in the past). And yes, the pressure to be slimmer can be overwhelming and pretty much dangerous in some cases. But the dangers of being a bit overweight are surely outweighed by the long term misery, stress and daily difficulties around food and eating? I, for one, had it pretty easy losing weight (keeping it off is harder, yeah) but I'm sure that if it had been a lot harder, I'd've been psychologically better off staying quite fat and probably better off physiologically too. Stress does bad things to your body as well as your brain and, in fact, can contribute to higher fat gains for the same calorific intake and expenditure compared with an unstressed person. I was lucky. I was one one of those people who was "ready" to lose weight and in a position to spend the time and effort controlling intake and learning about food, nutrition and fuelling my body "properly".


For that last group of people... they're probably much better off staying as they are. Maybe not 100% happy, but happier than they would be struggling, succeeding, failing, getting even bigger, struggling and stressing again, succeeding, and being unhappy with the constant battle.