Did the low-carb/grain thing (Sisson's Primal Blueprint) a few years ago and never felt better - way more energy and improved sleep, no hunger pangs, better mood, clearer thinking and memory, no afternoon slumps. After the initial carb hangover subsided, obviously :)
Body composition improved somewhat too, but at the time I was recovering from a PE occurrence and wasn't training a whole lot, so I can't really comment on how it impacted endurance.
Always liked vegetables like cauliflower, rutabaga etc so eating more of those wasn't a problem for me.

Shit, I need to get back on that regimen!

Not directly related, but I always find it interesting how complicated people want to make diet and eating. You can be healthy by following any number of diets (plant based, low carb, Mediterranean, etc.). The problem most people have isn’t the percentage of their macros. It’s that their diet contains a bunch of overly processed junk with fat and sugar combined with being lazy.

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Matt

my sense is that any voluntary diet is ultimately unsustainable (with some diehard exceptions).

It isn't just that people crave junk, it's that junk requires no brainpower/planning/calculating, or resistance to temptation.

If you could boost the mental space for it, you'd have much better success holding on to a diet.

trump is fat.

boom - done in one.

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https://lshtm.academia.edu/MikeCallaghan

http://howtobeswiss.blogspot.ch/

Thanks for getting it over with. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

I think in general we eat more carbs than we need. Carbs made sense for when people in a society would leave the established area without a food source for a long while and needed something easy to carry as an energy source.

While we're sedentary in our jobs we don't really need it as much.

It's a bit addicting, so people eat it a lot. But, we don't "need" nearly as much as any of us eat of it. I'm not a "no carb" person, but I've backed off the carbs in general diet choices a decent amount.

Yes, bike riding has made me trimmer, but I can't account for all 30 lbs. There's clubbies in our group rides who ride 2x as much as I do, maybe 3x as much per week that are easily 15 to 20 lbs heavier for the same height.

Wouldn't a fatty, salted meat be a much denser calorie source for travel? Like bacon.

Tomorrow is day 90 of my low carb challenge. Feeling good, the strictest I have ever been on eating. Down around 35lbs so far, official weigh in tomorrow though.

I don't know, maybe humans liked the carbos so much despite not being good. I assumed that's why they did that. You're right though, didn't cowboys take jerky with them?

The best I ever felt was when I was just lifting weights and doing the high carb, low fat diet of the day that body builders did. I felt like my muscles were just overflowing with energy when I lifted. Of course I was hungry all the time, I'd eat every 3 hours, and I couldn't keep weight on. One day a week I would cheat and eat anything I wanted and that allowed me to sustain my weight.

I've never been able to get over the hump when I've tried the low carb thing. I'm sure I'd lose a lot of weight because I'm not that big into fatty foods and somewhat of a vegetarian these days.

That's about 1300kCal/day deficit. Sounds like a calorie-restricted diet, not necessarily a carb-restricted diet (although the latter may help you achieve the former).

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Get out of here with this stuff. A cool laid back hippie on a documentary called "What the Health" told me a plant based VEGAN diet was the only way to go and carbs are not the boogeyman.

I think you're calling yourself deranged here.

I have stayed around 1500 cal/day around 20g carb/day give or take.

For the last year I've been pretty good about minimizing refined carbs. No sugar in coffee, no baked goods, no pop, breakfast is a scramble with egg, steak or bacon, whatever veggies are in the fridge and a handful of spinach. Lunches and dinner are pretty healthy. Doing this I've lost around 15 lbs (I'm 6'1", and went from 200 to 185 lbs.. so, didn't have much to lose anyways).

Yesterday, one of my employees brought me three banana chocolate chip muffins. I destroyed them in 5 minutes. Half an hour later, the designer came by with big cookies and coffee. I had two.

I felt like complete shit for the rest of the day, and my hunger was off the hook! I just craved more. It's amazing how, after you deprive yourself of something for a while, your body reacts so strongly when you re-introduce it.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

I dropped about 55lbs, though it wasn't just from cutting back on the carbs.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

I've done the same for the past 2 years (after hitting rock bottom by gorging myself on my son's Halloween candy).

For the first year, I allowed myself to have a cheat day after a big race and I found the exact same thing. This year, despite having more big races and thus more excuse to cheat, I found I wasn't interested for that exact same reason. It wasn't satisfying at all and I felt worse.

No weight loss on my end from doing it (~5 lbs at first but it really just got me to the same race weight quicker and after 2 years I'm back to the same weight)

Had my 3rd back surgery Sept 2017. The lack of physical activity and pain before the surgery followed by a rough recovery, just made me want to eat and watch tv. I am 6’0 and got up to about 245, that’s the heaviest I have ever been. I decided in August I had to make a change and get this shit back under control. I made a plan to stay right at 1500 calories a day and 20 carbs give or take per day. I got a calendar and hung it on my bathroom wall and market each day when I finished. I Finished day 90 today, down 35 lbs and I plan on keeping it going. I also had my wife take a photo every night to log my progress, pretty cool to see the changes. Working my way back to 180ish, hopefully be there by March/April.

I also go 14-16 hours between my last meal and my first, and get my calories in during the 8-10 hours available. It works well for me.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

That's great! I'm glad to know that it's working out for you. :-)

Once I retired from triathlon and became more of a writer than anything else (for a time), I found that the weight crept up on me (well, the weight and all those Oreos ;-) as a result. I'm only 5'10" but I hit 212lbs at my max, and it wasn't all muscle, that's for sure. Maybe "table muscle," LOL! Believe me, I was ecstatic to have gotten it all off, and it actually wasn't that painful after the first week.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

I also go 14-16 hours between my last meal and my first, and get my calories in during the 8-10 hours available. It works well for me.


That's probably the key for weight loss, combined with the reduction of carbs. One of the biggest causes of obesity and the related diseases (diabetes, heart disease etc.) is the number of times people eat in a day. For some reason, people believe that eating 6 times a day is good but that means you get an insulin spike 6 times and that is the root cause of all those diseases.


The food industries greatest fraud was convincing people to eat 6 times a day so "keep your blood sugar level." It's a joke because it the only thing that does is keep your blood sugar and insulin high.

For some reason, people believe that eating 6 times a day is good
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Experts have been selling the idea of eating 5-6 meals a day for quite some time. The problem comes in translation. They want you to take your allotted calorie intake, say 2000 kcal, and spread it out over 5-6 times, meaning that each of the feedings should be smaller. The most abundant recommendation is to eat 3 smaller meals, say 400-500 kcal, at normal meal times and an even smaller snack, maybe 200 kcal, in between. The common folk ignore the idea that they are supposed to have a calorie limit and eat basically 5-6 full meals and think that they are following recommendations. When done right, 5-6 smaller meals should reduce the insulin spikes. When done wrong, you get an obesity epidemic.

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Take a short break from ST and read my blog:
http://tri-banter.blogspot.com/

Robb Wolf, in Wired to Eat, talks about calories and insulin spikes. In particular, in his book he advocates a 7-day carb test or something similar. Even with your 200 kcal suggestion, you might have a pretty decent blood glucose spike depending on what you eat.

Really, unless you are doing pre- and post- eating blood glucose tests, you don't really have a good idea of how various snacks, etc. affect you. 'If' you are generally pretty active and eat prior to sessions, etc. you'll likely reduce the insulin spikes. But, having a 200kcal-ish snack isn't a guarantee depending on the person.

There's not good answer for the obesity epidemic. Yes, sugars, simple carbs, and simply more calories may contribute to it. There are also folks who have hypothesized that the increase in the use and prevalence of 'heart healthy vegetable oils' (aka industrial seed oils) in place of traditional fats have generally tracked with the obesity epidemic.

All of that to say, that in some respects, we're finding that a calorie isn't a calorie and calories out vs. calories in isn't as straight forward as thought.

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Brandon Marsh - Website | @BrandonMarshTX | RokaSports | 1stEndurance | ATC Bikeshop |

When done right, 5-6 smaller meals should reduce the insulin spikes.


The latest research shows that any food causes an insulin spike. If you eat sugar or refined carbs, the spike is higher but it does increase with all food. If you eat 5-6 times per day, even healthy food, you get 5-6 increases in insulin. The constant insulin spikes will slowly make your cells resistant and that is the main cause of diabetes. Insulin resistance is also the primary cause of heart disease, dementia, Alzheimers and most likely many cancers.


One diabetes researcher even said that for people with insulin resistance, it's better to eat a relatively poor 1-2 meals a day than 5-6 good meals because of the insulin spikes after each meal.

Is the problem really obese people have been following recommended eating guidelines?

That's what I believe was the greatest driver of me getting back into my comfortable 175-ish (6 foot) range. Played with keto for a few months and still restrict carbs pretty heavily but averaging 1.5 meals per day has me feeling like a rock star on most days.

What I appreciate about the approach of low carb/IF is it does not "feel" like a diet but more so just a healthy way to go about feeding your meat wagon.

Of course. Fat people are mindless drones who only do what other people tell them.

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Take a short break from ST and read my blog:
http://tri-banter.blogspot.com/