Very low carb intake, but not loosing weight

[Exflex]

Then the penny dropped. Perhaps I’m having too many calories.
Dietary intake yesterday:
Breakfast: blueberries with Greek Yoghurt, plus a mere sprinkling of porridge oats.
Lunch: Sardines with 4 Ryvita
Evening meal: 2 beef burgers, cauliflower rice and a beef tomato; 2 glasses of red wine.

Weight stubbornly at 13st 3ibs = 84kg, height ~ 5’ 11”
Walking for 40 minutes each day.

 

[Drummer]

Then the penny dropped. Perhaps I’m having too many calories.
Dietary intake yesterday:
Breakfast: blueberries with Greek Yoghurt, plus a mere sprinkling of porridge oats.
Lunch: Sardines with 4 Ryvita
Evening meal: 2 beef burgers, cauliflower rice and a beef tomato; 2 glasses of red wine.

Weight stubbornly at 13st 3ibs = 84kg, height ~ 5’ 11”
Walking for 40 minutes each day.

You could be reacting to the high carb foods you are including in your diet.
I don't eat anything with grains.

 

[Exflex]

I think I’m actually cutting carbs beyond low carb, when I said sprinkled porridge oats on my blueberry youghurt, it’s literally a few grains, to the point it’s virtually not existent. I’ll cut that out too.
Disappointingly I’ve still got the ‘spare tyre’ but losing weight elsewhere. Very disappointing. Maybe I’ll try fasting for a good 18 hrs as recommended; don’t think I could do it any longer.
Anyone else have a similar reaction?

 

[Martin.A]

Then the penny dropped. Perhaps I’m having too many calories.
Dietary intake yesterday:
Breakfast: blueberries with Greek Yoghurt, plus a mere sprinkling of porridge oats.
Lunch: Sardines with 4 Ryvita
Evening meal: 2 beef burgers, cauliflower rice and a beef tomato; 2 glasses of red wine.

A couple of burgers don't add up to very many carbs but could easily be between 250-300 calories apiece. I track calories as well as carbs to make sure I don't overdo either or both.

 

[Exflex]

God, this is looking like had work!

 

[Eddy Edson]

For me, this approach works really well:

- Estimate how many calories you should be eating/drinking to reach your goal in the context of what level of physical activity. IMO this is the best tool for that: https://www.niddk.nih.gov/bwp Recognise that as you lose weight your calorie requirements reduce.

- Be ruthless about estimating how many calories you are actually eating/drinking. Approximately everybody underestimates this. You need to include all drinks, sauces, dressings, snacks; you need to do something like keep a detailed food diary over some period of time; you need a reasonable data source for the calories in whatever you eat/drink. These data sources are always just approximations for the calories in actual foods but it's much better to use them as a starting point rather than just winging it. I use https://cronometer.com/ which leverages the US govt nutrition databases but you can find more UK-friendly equivalents.

- Weigh yourself a lot. Recognise that there will be a lot of day-to-day "noise" with fluctuations of maybe a kilo or more. What you are looking for is the trend. Use the trend to adjust intake as required.

 

[Eddy Edson]

God, this is looking like had work!

Yup, unfortunately. At least to start with.

 

[Deb_l]

Unfortunately rivetas are very high carb. About 70g per 100g, which is nearly double what bread is.

The burgers would be low carb but depending on which ones you buy, they are overly processed so quite high in calories.

I haven’t had to restrict calories since going low carb but I’ve also cut out all processed food and kept to very simple food.

 

[Drummer]

I think I’m actually cutting carbs beyond low carb, when I said sprinkled porridge oats on my blueberry youghurt, it’s literally a few grains, to the point it’s virtually not existent. I’ll cut that out too.
Disappointingly I’ve still got the ‘spare tyre’ but losing weight elsewhere. Very disappointing. Maybe I’ll try fasting for a good 18 hrs as recommended; don’t think I could do it any longer.
Anyone else have a similar reaction?

For me weightloss happened when I was having steak and mushrooms or salads with salmon or eggs and cheese, pork chops and stirfry - more food than when I was trying to lose weight eating cereal and bread, potatoes and everything low fat.

 

[Exflex]

Any idea how many calories I should be limiting my daily intake. I’m useless at nutrition and calories.

 

[Leadinglights]

Then the penny dropped. Perhaps I’m having too many calories.
Dietary intake yesterday:
Breakfast: blueberries with Greek Yoghurt, plus a mere sprinkling of porridge oats.
Lunch: Sardines with 4 Ryvita
Evening meal: 2 beef burgers, cauliflower rice and a beef tomato; 2 glasses of red wine.

Weight stubbornly at 13st 3ibs = 84kg, height ~ 5’ 11”
Walking for 40 minutes each day.

If that is a typical day then it doesn't seem like many carbs or calories, though it depends on the burgers, I assume no bun.

 

[Exflex]

If that is a typical day then it doesn't seem like many carbs or calories, though it depends on the burgers, I assume no bun.

No bun, they’re banned along with bread.
Tonight I had salmon, cauliflower rice with a large tomato to give the cauliflower rice a nice bit of taste.

For other reasons I don’t eat red meat more than once a week.

 

[Eddy Edson]

Any idea how many calories I should be limiting my daily intake. I’m useless at nutrition and calories.

Plugging yr details into that body weight planning tool I linked to above gives an estimate of around 2,400 per day for weight maintenance.

 

[AndBreathe]

@Exflex , you mention losing weight, but not the spare tyre. I just wanted to comment that weight doesn’t always come off where we want it to, initially. It comes off “wherever”, but it can take our bodies a while to catch up, in terms of general body fat distribution.

I never had lots of weight to lose. I had luuuurve handles and my waist could have been trimmer. I thought I wa stuck with a thicker waist, until one day I noticed it was trimmer. By then my weight was stable, so it had just sorted itself out.

Others have mentioned similar things.

Stick with it.

 

[frenchie]

I'd aim for the standard 1200 calories a day if you want to lose weight. However, I've just tried to convert my tried and tested "always lose weight" diet and its a nightmare. All my go to snacks are seemingly high carb and being vegetarian, most of my meals involve carbs anyway

 

[Exflex]

As a mid range pre-diabetic with a HbA1c of 44 I suppose I have a degree of fatty liver and fatty pancreas, which leads to insulin resistance.
Based on reading Dr David Cavan’s book How to reverse Type 2 Diabetes and Prediabetes, I need to lose weight.
Q? Does the body fat have to come off first before the fat from the liver and pancreas?

(Thanks for the replies so far. )

 

[Eddy Edson]

Does the body fat have to come off first before the fat from the liver and pancreas?

No 🙂

 

[Dragonheart]

Over what period of time? Are you expecting to lose weight in 2 days or 2 months for example? I’ve seen over and over again patience can make a difference. If our body is severely insulin resistant it take a little time for us to respond. Some rebalancing of hormones and adjustments in the liver happen first for some of us. Do you have a lot to lose or just a little extra? That too can make a difference how quickly we see changes

Ryvita are high carb items.
And to be honest that days food likely isn’t massively high in calories either.

 

[Leadinglights]

I'd aim for the standard 1200 calories a day if you want to lose weight. However, I've just tried to convert my tried and tested "always lose weight" diet and its a nightmare. All my go to snacks are seemingly high carb and being vegetarian, most of my meals involve carbs anyway

This link has a vegetarian meal plan for a low carb approach so you may find some of the recipes suit you. https://lowcarbfreshwell.com/

 

[Exflex]

Over what period of time? Are you expecting to lose weight in 2 days or 2 months for example? I’ve seen over and over again patience can make a difference. If our body is severely insulin resistant it take a little time for us to respond. Some rebalancing of hormones and adjustments in the liver happen first for some of us. Do you have a lot to lose or just a little extra? That too can make a difference how quickly we see changes

Ryvita are high carb items.
And to be honest that days food likely isn’t massively high in calories either.

Perhaps I’m setting expectations a bit high and trying too hard.
When I look back at what is likely to have caused this, broadly speaking I ate my way into it, sort of sleep walked. I was having a pizza one day a week, a madras curry with pilau rice another day, and this was repeated on a weekly basis. I also developed a liking for tomato soup, from a can, and three or four slices of bread to help it down. And at least two or three days I’d have a toasted tea cake mid afternoon. All that junk has been removed, and I’m now leading a healthier diet. I have five months to by next blood test, but I’m having monthly appointments with diet/diabetic coach. I was advised to get down to 12st 10lbs but didn’t give me a time scale.