Low Carb Didn’t Work For Me
It’s been a bit of a roller coaster ride of emotions since my last real food weight loss journey update. (which was only a couple of weeks ago!)
A quick re-cap – I met with a Dietitian who I discussed my weight loss/gain history with. The dietitian suggested I significantly lower my carb intake to what I would term bordering on a “low carb” diet. Yes, this is contrary to what I shared in my previous weight loss post, but further research has revealed that the carb intake that was prescribed to me was that of a low carb diet.
My number one stipulation I mentioned to my Dietitian was that I wanted my diet to be maintainable over the long term (as I have a significant amount of weight to lose) and unfortunately after a couple of weeks I could NOT sustain a low carb diet.
Let me take you back a couple of weeks before I saw the Dietitian so you can understand the direction I’m taking with my diet.
In the first week of January I made the decision that enough was enough and I would be making a real effort to shift my ever increasing “baby weight”. (My “baby” is almost 5 so it’s been a while!!)
I made an appointment for a couple of weeks later with a Dietitian to help me on my way.
In the couple of weeks between making the appointment and seeing the dietitian I decided that I would eat what I deem to be a healthy diet and track my calories in an online calorie tracker. I felt it would be handy to share with the Dietitian and a good way to really understand what I’m eating when etc.
Well in the first week of tracking calories I lost 2.7 kilos/6 pounds. I was making a concerted effort to eat healthier, but I enjoyed real food that week, eating virtually anything I wanted but in moderation.
Of course losing weight in such a way excited me and I was keen to see how the Dietitian would fine tune my eating to be able to maintain a steady loss of weight, while being well aware that I wouldn’t lose such a large amount EACH week.
My Dietitian discouraged me counting calories as a whole but rather counting my carbs to ensure that I was eating under the figure set to me.
I decided that the easiest way to track carbs was to use the same calorie tracker, just ignore all the other stuff and only look at the carb totals.
So, I set about actively lowering my carbs which I quickly discovered was much harder than I anticipated. Each day I attempted to meet my carb intake goal and each day I failed miserably. I kept persevering and over the first week I lost a further 1.4 kgs/3 pounds. Despite eating above the carb goal, I still managed to lose weight but felt like a failure while doing so.
I continued following the lower carb diet for a further week, but my weight stalled and I felt completely, constantly exhausted and grumpy. Super grumpy. (Just ask my Husband who gently agreed that the low carb made me grumpy!)
I decided to actually pay attention to the calorie intake I’d been consuming through the low carb weeks and discovered that it was HALF the amount of calories from the week I’d lost 2.7kgs/6 pounds! I was astonished and confused that I could lose more weight while eating a higher calorie diet.
So, after much frustration I decided that Low carb just didn’t work for me. Rather than just doing nothing, I further analyzed the magical week in which I’d lost 2.7kgs/6pounds and felt that if I could replicate that week then maybe I’d feel better AND lose weight.
So, I grabbed all the information and popped it into a spreadsheet to work out the average number of calories,carbs,protein and fat intake over the 7 days to set some sort of loose goal figures to meet each day.
As an side: Just as I didn’t share carb numbers in the previous update, I’m not going to share my calorie intake in this update because I don’t want you to think you can replicate my calorie intake and lose weight or even be healthy. There is no one magic number for everyone. We all have different body shapes/sizes/level of activity. So, all I would encourage you to do is track your own calories and find a magic number that works for you. Just as I have discovered, you may learn that you lose MORE weight by eating a higher calorie diet.
That’s where I’m at. The past week I have been tracking my calories, enjoying real food and feeling my energy return. I’ve also lost 0.9 kilos/2 pounds since changing tact and I’m ecstatic with that!
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