gaining weight on low carb

by | Jan 16, 2013 | Low carb diet, Weight gain | 0 comments

Another copy of a post I have commented to at forums.about.com about low carb

 

From Brooke63:

Hi there – I’ve been following fairly strict low carb routine for about 2 weeks, and I’ve gained 3 pounds.  I didn’t have this issue when I low carbed about 6 months ago.  The weigh came off like normal.  I’ve been exercising about 3 times a week also.

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Brooke

 

My advice:

Hi Brooke63,

Well, if you have been following a fairly strict low carb routine for two weeks yet still gained weight, ‘nette’s comments are obviously very valid and some of the reasons she gives are to be taken notice of quite seriously.

However, I’m not a great advocate of measuring the change that a low carb diet does to our bodies just by looking at weight alone. Particularly, as like you, a reasonable amount of exercise is also included in the fitness scheme,

One thing that you really must do is take your body measurements which would typically be, starting from the top: your neck, your chest or bust, your waist and your thighs. Mark those down on a sheet of paper and then a week later do the same. That’s simply because while you might be losing fat, any increase in exercise will also mean that you’re building up muscle which of course, is slightly heavier than fat. So yes, you may have gained 3 lbs but without having your physical measurements to reference against, you don’t know if that’s really a net gain or a net loss in fat.

Quite simply, you might be putting on more muscle weight than you are losing in fat weight. So take those measurements and let us know how you get on in about a week’s time.

Hope that helps,

Mark

Does extra hunger mean something?

by | Jan 15, 2013 | Food Choices, How Your Body Works, Low carb diet, Metabolism, Sensible Eating | 0 comments

Here is another copy of the post at forum.lowcarber.org where I have responded to about eating and low carb

 

KristyRusi asked:

So i just got out of induction yesterday. I plan on keeping the 20nc induction rule of thumb for at least a few more weeks to keep that fat buring quicker, however today i was sooooo hungry (in the past 3-4 days i’ve not been hungry at all), i grazed like a dairy cow lol. Every few minutes i was wanting to nibble. I think it was because i was craving something sweet (which is rare) and nothing was sating the sweet taste i wanted.

I’ve limited myself to using artificial sweetner only in coffee and the occasional glass of tea. I fear using it in a “dessert” type meal will only make me binge for that flavor and make me want sweets even more. 

My real question is though, does this extra hunger mean i’m out of ketosis? I have not ate anything i didn’t eat in induction today and like i said don’t plan to, but i want to try and stay in ketosis as long as i can. I never used the ketostix but when i was in ketosis before my urine was darker (even with drinking 90% water) and my breath was awful to even taste in my own mouth, my urine was clear today and my mouth is extremely dry but doesn’t taste bad. If i am out of ketosis, what might have caused it and what can i do to kick it back in?

Thanks in advance for the insite!

 

I replied:

Hi KristyRusi,

Does extra hunger mean anything? Well, simply, yes it does. It means you need to eat something.

My food of choice when I’m facing something like that is to nibble on a lump of cheese, maybe dressing it up with some sort of mayonnaise, homemade of course. If cheese isn’t your thing, as DaddioM said, make sure you fill that hunger with protein and fat.

Obviously the warnings from others about being careful what you eat have great merit and should be taken note of. The thing to remember here is that when we start on a low carb diet, we’re not only retraining our bodies, we’re also retraining our minds and frankly, our bodies will retrain a lot quicker than our minds will.

One of the things I liked about the low carb diet was the fact that you could get excellent nutrition to eating smaller portions. This in turn, does mean of course, that our stomachs shrink, meaning we become satisfied with a lower quantity of food. However, if we pig out like we’re inclined to if we go out for a meal,  that can temporarily expand the stomach giving rise to those naughty little hunger signals being sent up to our brain.

Thus far as eating out is concerned, my advice is very simple, if you don’t know what’s in it, don’t eat it.

Hope that helps,

Mark

high blood pressure

by | Jan 15, 2013 | How Your Body Works, Low carb diet | 0 comments

This is a copy of the post at forums.about.com where I have commented on regarding high blood pressure

 

Post from Pennyhalfpenny:

I am on a low carb high fat diet to try and get my high blood pressure down.

Does anyone have a similar experience?  So far my blood pressure came down the first few weeks and went back up a little.?  I would appreciate any discussion on this subject.  Thanks.

 

My reply:

Hi Pennyhalfpenny,

Yes, in general, a low carb diet will help bring your blood pressure down, particularly, if you add into that some form of exercise, whether that’s a formal exercise or  social exercise like dancing or that sort of thing, even walking and as you got a lovely dog, I’m sure it must be a joy to take her for a walk. I noticed too that you have discovered that there seem to be a link between going on a low carb diet and your arthritis improving, now that’s due not so much because you’ve gone on a low carb diet more of the side effects that being on a low carb diet your cutting out carbohydrates including red potatoes and refined sugar obviously.

Various studies throughout the world have seen a link between people who suffer from arthritis and other inflammatory type disorders and high consumption of carbohydrates. Of following that chain through they have discovered that many of those carbohydrates are commonly contaminated with fungal toxins. They can read more about that in a brilliant book by Dr. Dave Holland and Doug Kaufmann called the Fungus Link. They also got another one out called the Fungus Link Volume 2 and I think it’s in chapter 8 of that book that they go through the direct link between a fungal infection of the digestive system and arthritis.

Now, of course, we can’t forget that high blood pressure can be due to the fact that we are suffering stress in one form or another. Then the fact that our bodies aren’t working 100% some of the time is one of those clear causes of stress. So maybe, there is a link even between a fungal infection and high blood pressure.

Hope that helps,

Mark

 

 

 

ME and low carb, high fat

by | Jan 15, 2013 | Carbs, Fat Loss, How Your Body Works, Low carb diet | 0 comments

Here is a copy of the  post I have commented on over at forums.about.com about chronic fatigue syndrome

 

Olive24 Posted:

Hello, I have been on the low carb high fat diet for two months now. I have ME and was hoping the diet would help the condition. I read that you are supposed to have more energy . My symptoms have improved alot but i still have the fatigue.

Does anyone have any experience with having ME and going low carb? I would be grateful to hear your experiences, if you recovered or about any improvements in health, thankyou.

 

My Comment:

Hi Olive24,

ME can also be called CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) but it’s also known as CFIDS or Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome that showed quite a wide spread problem.  There are upwards of about a million people in North America who suffer from it, but probably more that that one now. There is quite a lot of research gone on for this which may be of interest to you. One of the conclusions that many of these researches have come to is that there is quite a connection to diet as a cause, or a certainly an aggravator of CFS. One of those is a yeast sensitivity that can also be a linked to wheat sensitivity as well as sensitivity to milk. There are a number of things you can do to help with CFS. You’ve already discovered one of the biggest things and that’s “start eating a proper diet” but it doesn’t actually end there as far as diet goes. There were some excellent studies done back in 2007 and again in 2010 which you can get the abstract for on PubMed. Basically they showed there is definitely a link between acute infection of the gastrointestinal tract that can lead to a manifestation at the time or even years later of chronic fatigue syndrome.

From my own experience  of having a number of, I used the term digestive problems, I found that one of the things that totally alleviated a lot of the problems I had and as a side effect gave me more energy, was sorting out, firstly, my stomach bacteria, which I did through the use of probiotics. Then also sorting out my intestinal enzymes which I did very simply by using enzyme supplements. The advantage of doing that, of course, is that it more or less resets your digestive tract and helps it to work at full efficiency, firstly by building up the level of good bacteria in your stomach and the level of enzymes in the rest of your digestive tract. At the same time, because of the good bacteria will then outnumber the bad bacteria; the bad bacterial will get pushed out.

Going back to the reports I mentioned earlier, as I have said, they are quite worthy and technical; fortunately, Dr. Mercola has produced a much more readable article.

So if you are looking for ways to improve not just your energy levels but your health in general, firstly, do consider, neatly taking probiotics and again I would encourage you to use good quality ones not just the generic types you can find in the drugstore and enzymes, again, quality is the name of the game there. They are a little bit expensive but think of the benefits you’re going to get from them and do please, take time to read those articles from Dr. Mercola and the reports on PubMed.

Hope that helps,

Mark

Why 20 grams of sugar daily?

by | Jan 14, 2013 | Fat Loss | 0 comments

This is a copy of the post over at fattoskinny.net about sugar where I have commented on

Siltz:

Is 20 grams of sugar/day the generally accepted amount where ketosis begins or is most efficient?  Does the amount of sugar/day needed to lose weight vary per person?

Me:

I can only back up what Doug is saying as I had a very similar experience to him. My carb limit for weight loss was, when I first started, exactly around 20 grams per day. You’ve probably already heard this before but it’s worth saying again, is that, carbs can enter our diet in the most insidious of ways and as a general rule of thumb, I think you can assume that the more processed the food is, the higher will be its carbohydrate content, usually in the form of added sugars and fillers in order to make the processed food taste okay which is obviously a clear call to eat as naturally as possible. If you know where your food is coming form and you can verify that the sources or producers of that food do little or low processing then on the haul, you don’t have too much of a problem meeting that all important 20 grams of carbohydrates a day. Simply, the more we educate ourselves on what’s good to eat and what’s not good to eat, the greater our level of success will be.

Hope that helps,

Mark