45+ Ladies - Has it been harder for you to lose on PB? page 12

[gopintos]

but the problem is they think it's the only right way ...

This is true, and then when someone starts a new thread, because a certain way just wasn't working for them so they ask for help, and people are trying to be helpful and offer advice on a possible "nother" way, someone jumps all over it like it was spoken direct from Satan.

[cori93437]

I know you don't, but lots of people believe as long as they keep carbs low, they can take spoons to jars of almond butter, coconut oil, chomp chocolate as long as it's 85+% and drink buttered coffee with no repercussions. The HFLC movement promotes the belief that weight gain is "all about insulin" and calories only count if carbs are over a certain threshold. It's frustrating. I will never change my stance from "just eat real food." I live by that quote, and I believe in it deeply. It really is that easy.

I know that you think that those amounts are nothing re the carbs... but to a person who is triggered to binge by those things, that is enormous. Allow them to choose the path that is safer for them without telling them that you don't believe it even exists simply because you haven't had to have that experience.



I agree... eat real food. It's what I do.

And I also know that not every HFLC'er does exactly that. But those are personal choices.
Not every person eating middle of the road carb/fat/protein is eating all "real food" either, lots of them whip up nut-meal baked faileo goodies and the like all the time.
Not every person doing it your way is finding easy success and always avoiding stalls and plateaus either.


You should not take any of these decisions so personally that you become frustrated.

I can tell you, however, that every single person I know of that is doing HFLC does know that calories matter, and takes calories into account as well as carbs for their daily intake. So no... the old magical thinking of "carbs only" is out the door AFAIK in this forum.

[Ayla2010]

I know you don't, but lots of people believe as long as they keep carbs low, they can take spoons to jars of almond butter, coconut oil, chomp chocolate as long as it's 85+% and drink buttered coffee with no repercussions. The HFLC movement promotes the belief that weight gain is "all about insulin" and calories only count if carbs are over a certain threshold. It's frustrating. I will never change my stance from "just eat real food." I live by that quote, and I believe in it deeply. It really is that easy.

I don't think many people are doing what you say.
I have a BP coffee yes, but I also have real food, I don't eat any of that other stuff you mentioned though.

Can you please explain about insulin that you kept mentioning? I asked earlier but you must have missed my quote.

[namelesswonder]

You should not take any of these decisions so personally that you become frustrated.

I can tell you, however, that every single person I know of that is doing HFLC does know that calories matter, and takes calories into account as well as carbs for their daily intake. So no... the old magical thinking of "carbs only" is out the door AFAIK in this forum.

yes yes yes yes yes yes

Yes.

YES.

Uh....sorry, that just got a little inappropriate. I agree, VEHEMENTLY.

[lonefrontranger]

hi I am 44, still regular periods. I have to agree with everything ChocoTaco has posted although I haven't read thru the entire thread. There's a lot of good knowledge in his posts. Also, while everyone can make anecdotal suggestions based on their personal successes and failures, only YOU know what works best for YOU. I think looking for suggestions is fine, but it's probably not the best to go looking for some magic bullet or insta-solution in someone else's experience. There is no magic bullet for weight loss as a vintage female, just a lot of hard daggoned work. Sucks, but there it is.

The human body is really really super complex. And I've found that just as CT indicated, as I got over 40 I had more struggles with weight loss and my metabolism really started to slow down.

What works for me is a combo of what CT alluded to (so, basically really watching my fat and calorie intake) as well as adding more lifting (which is super super crucial anyhow as we enter menopause and start losing bone mass) and also I've integrated a couple of IF days per week now.

A couple of things. First off, I know a lot of women in my age range are really into this whole "wishful thinking" scenario that I'm not sure how to describe, but it translates as a real blindness to what we aspire towards versus our reality. Whether it's cheating way more than we admit to, or eating bigger portions than we think, or not doing near as much exercise as we intend, or just letting way more work stress pile into our lives without taking some kind of control of it, that's what I mean. I'm just as bad about this as anyone else. I'm the queen of good intentions that don't always work out as planned. What I've discovered is that I can't let this derail my progress. I didn't get fat and sedentary overnight, turns out I'm not going to get slim and ripped overnight either. When my weight stalled out and I started getting a muffin top for the first time in my adult life (I'm a competitive bicycle racer btw) I really freaked out about it, because I was worried this was my new, post-40 "normal". Turns out that I was dealing with some minor to moderate thyroid dysfunction. I cleaned up my diet and cut out grains/sugars (again... I've been moderately to strictly Paleo since the mid 90s off & on) and within 6 months my blood values normalized. My blood pressure dropped (it was moderate to high normal). My energy levels and, ahem, libido, came back.

I don't mean that people are engaging in "wishful thinking" in a bad way. We are just used to the old norms where we could eat a certain way or get by with a certain lifestyle. Age not only changes your metabolic and hormonal profiles, but you also have to really watch things like nutrients and supplements and endocrine weirdness accordingly.

Go play. Get some sunshine regardless of what time of year it is. Put down the books/screens/desk job for 20 or 30 minutes and go for a walk or do some gardening. Ride your bike if you haven't done it in awhile, even if it is just down to the post office.

Changes like these take time; I read somewhere that habits take 4-6 weeks of near daily repetition to enforce.

Another thing about weight loss I really had to internalize - MEASURE. Stop looking at the scale, and start taking measurements once a week. Clean up your diet (if you're over-cheating that is), get serious about lifting or moving more, figure out if there's something else stalling you (food journals FTW) and then don't get on the scale at all for at least a month. I bet if you're able to do that you'll lose at least a pants size, even if the scale doesn't move at all.

I'm the slowest loser on the planet - my fat profile gets stored straight away in my thighs/butt, the 2 hardest places to shift them off. And I'm not all that overweight to begin with; I'm trying to get rid of that elusive last 10-15 pounds, so yeah, it's going to be positively glacial progress for me I'm willing to bet. However, within 2 weeks of really cleaning up my diet, eliminating dairy, incorporating 2 days/week of IF, and really focusing on getting 3x/week (hard) bodyweight exercises done, I saw an immediate change in my body composition. Just riding my bike (a lot, and hard HIIT riding) wasn't getting the total job done for me anymore. And like ChocoTaco alluded to, it really is unfair as all hell. My 33 year old husband can ride 12 hours a week, eat basically whatever, lift sporadically, and look like a magazine model. I can't, and it's really unfair, but you know what? It's my "new normal". It'll probably change again, but you know, that's life.

Last but not least, if you can handle IF, it really does work to teach you what is appropriate hunger, and reduce your cravings and portion sizes. I'm not sure what is up with that, but man it really works.

[Neckhammer]

PHD is actually:
low to mod. Carbohydrate (20-35%)
High fat (50-65%)
Mod Protein (15%)

Except for weight loss. Then he recommends 40% fat.

Perfect Health Diet: Weight Loss Version | Perfect Health Diet


But the thing is, unless you eat ONLY that, the macros average themselves out. When I break fast, it looks HF, cuz it is eggs and salmon, but then as the day progresses, it evens out to about a 3 way split.

Actually one of the first places I read about keeping to bone in fatty cuts of animal was the original PHD book. They were huge proponents of it for various reasons. Not the least of which is that it is a high fat diet. Also when looking at HG tribes and such you will see that they do not tend to get huge percent of their energy substrate from protein. Reason being they do prize the animal fat. And end up eating to a ratio of approximately 2/1 fat to protein.... throw in the carb/starch component and your to the PHD guidelines. PHD promotes a low insulin diet for health and longevity, and make several good points for it.

[ChocoTaco369]

I know that you think that those amounts are nothing re the carbs... but to a person who is triggered to binge by those things, that is enormous. Allow them to choose the path that is safer for them without telling them that you don't believe it even exists simply because you haven't had to have that experience.

I'm simply drawing the conclusion that this forum is primarily HFLC, and I'm drawing that conclusion based on your own admission that 1lb of starch is a lot of carbohydrate. In reality, it is borderline ketogenic, 25% of the recommendations of the Food Pyramid and <20% of what the typical American eats in a day. 1 lb of starch per day is a VLC diet by definition.

I also have never seen anyone binge on boiled potatoes. Maybe caramelized mashed sweet potatoes with butter and cinnamon, but let's face it, that's a dessert. The foods that people binge on - cookies, cakes, ice cream, etc - are often just as high in fat if not higher than carbohydrate. Why do we only demonize the carbs and not the fat? It's the hyperpalatability that's the issue. I challenge you to binge on plain mashed potatoes - no butter, salt, pepper, etc. Just white potatoes whipped with a whisk.

I don't think many people are doing what you say.
I have a BP coffee yes, but I also have real food, I don't eat any of that other stuff you mentioned though.

They absolutely are. I remember your bulletproof coffee - you said it is 400 calories. Your TDEE is probably around 1600 calories, meaning each day you consume 25% of your maintenance calories through relatively empty, nutritionless fat. That is huge in the context of your goals, and it is truly costing you around 3-4 lbs of weight lost a month, and a lot of nutrition you could be consuming by filling those 400 calories with real food - meat, eggs, vegetables, fruit, etc.

Can you please explain about insulin that you kept mentioning? I asked earlier but you must have missed my quote.

Do you mean the whole fat/insulin thing? I'm kinda guessing what you meant, but I'll take a stab at it.

The typical hypothesis of the low carbohydrate movement is: If you lose weight eating high carb it is due to calories, but if you gain weight, it's because of carbs.

Basically, the hypothesis is calories only count if your carbs are high because insulin is some demonic fat storage hormone, and if you can keep insulin low you can't store fat. This is, of course, completely ridiculous because dietary fat is stored directly and does not require insulin, and excess fat in your diet is the quickest way to put on adipose tissue. Richard Nikoley does a nice little rant here:

Synthesis: Low-Carb and Food Reward/Palatability, and Why Calories Count | Free The Animal

Here's how I think it works in general.

1. You're fat. You go low carb per se. You lose water weight because liver and muscle glycogen is being depleted. This is very motivational; or, rewarding, even "palatable." So you continue on. By virtue of blanket LC, you're excluding highly rewarding and palatable fast food, pizza, pasta, ice cream, sugar drinks, Hot Pockets, and all the other crap in favor of meat, veggies, nuts, cheese, and maybe some LC junk food if that's your thang. Yea, it's great to eat red meat again, and while some can pack away 16oz ribeye steaks one after the other, most can't. They're satisfied, and satisfied sooner, with less caloric intake, more often. It subtracts down. They lose weight. Was LC effective? Yes. Why? Food reward/palatability. And because calories count.

2. The problem is that while a few get all the way to ripped leanness this way, huge numbers don't (including me), and that's why LC and LC/Paleo have not only to recruit the new and uniformed (do keep it going, Jimmy & Co.), but have growing numbers amongst adherents who range from slightly disillusioned to royally pissed off...because they can't get rid of that last 10-20 pounds...or more, in some cases.

3. In various degrees of frustration and despair, you console yourself with the various cheats—from foods you love and have missed—that got you fat before. But you're smarter this time around, see? You don't toss the baby out with the bathwater. Rather, you "cover" or redeem your indiscretions at the drive through and freezer section with bouts of zero to very low carb over days, and manage to eek out some sort of a homeostasis—maintaining your moderately overweight composition. Or, in many cases, LC as you practice it ceases to be effective in shedding any more fat—even without drive through, freezer section, or Jamba Juice excursions.

4. This is not necessarily an altogether bad thing. Better than really fat or obese.

So how do we take the next step, beyond the huge value LC had been to get off that initial 40, 50, 60, 80, 160, 320 pounds (60 in my case)? We recognize that it wasn't really any magic about LC that got us there. LC simply, effectively, lowered our food reward/palatability and as a consequence, we spontaneously lowered our average daily intake of calories.

Calories count.

It's a good read and worth taking the 10 mins to go through.

[cori93437]

No, Choco... what I was saying was that for some eating those purely starchy carbs triggers binges, not that they binge on those foods. They do better getting what carbs they get from other veg, and staying lower carb because doing that decreases the urges. Lower carb/higher fat... staying away from the starchy carbs... less binge episodes.

You are absolutely right that those people do not binge on plain potatoes(although I am aware of one person bingeing on white beans... not a sweet binge but a savory one). But eating them, or other starches, can trigger some people to binge. I know you don't really understand bingeing but it's very out of control emotional behavior.
Just like HFLC is good for controlling some medical problems like seizures, it seems to have a very good effect among people with emotional eating issues and I'm not sure why you don't respect that.

[Ayla2010]

I'm simply drawing the conclusion that this forum is primarily HFLC, and I'm drawing that conclusion based on your own admission that 1lb of starch is a lot of carbohydrate. In reality, it is borderline ketogenic, 25% of the recommendations of the Food Pyramid and <20% of what the typical American eats in a day. 1 lb of starch per day is a VLC diet by definition.

I also have never seen anyone binge on boiled potatoes. Maybe caramelized mashed sweet potatoes with butter and cinnamon, but let's face it, that's a dessert. The foods that people binge on - cookies, cakes, ice cream, etc - are often just as high in fat if not higher than carbohydrate. Why do we only demonize the carbs and not the fat? It's the hyperpalatability that's the issue. I challenge you to binge on plain mashed potatoes - no butter, salt, pepper, etc. Just white potatoes whipped with a whisk.


They absolutely are. I remember your bulletproof coffee - you said it is 400 calories. Your TDEE is probably around 1600 calories, meaning each day you consume 25% of your maintenance calories through relatively empty, nutritionless fat. That is huge in the context of your goals, and it is truly costing you around 3-4 lbs of weight lost a month, and a lot of nutrition you could be consuming by filling those 400 calories with real food - meat, eggs, vegetables, fruit, etc.


Do you mean the whole fat/insulin thing? I'm kinda guessing what you meant, but I'll take a stab at it.

The typical hypothesis of the low carbohydrate movement is: If you lose weight eating high carb it is due to calories, but if you gain weight, it's because of carbs.

Basically, the hypothesis is calories only count if your carbs are high because insulin is some demonic fat storage hormone, and if you can keep insulin low you can't store fat. This is, of course, completely ridiculous because dietary fat is stored directly and does not require insulin, and excess fat in your diet is the quickest way to put on adipose tissue. Richard Nikoley does a nice little rant here:

Synthesis: Low-Carb and Food Reward/Palatability, and Why Calories Count | Free The Animal

It's a good read and worth taking the 10 mins to go through.

I don't quite understand, but ill have a read soon. Just having a quick read in between cleaning.
My TDEE according to a calculator yesterday is 2800, but dunno how that makes a difference. I did not have a BP coffee this morning. I was discussing all this in another thread.
So me just being diagnosed with diabetes, due to extremely high insulin is because?
In another thread I was told it was because of being LCHF, but that is really only a short time compared to years of crap eating etc.

[Ayla2010]

No, Choco... what I was saying was that for some eating those purely starchy carbs triggers binges, not that they binge on those foods. They do better getting what carbs they get from other veg, and staying lower carb because doing that decreases the urges. Lower carb/higher fat... staying away from the starchy carbs... less binge episodes.

You are absolutely right that those people do not binge on plain potatoes(although I am aware of one person bingeing on white beans... not a sweet binge but a savory one). But eating them, or other starches, can trigger some people to binge. I know you don't really understand bingeing but it's very out of control emotional behavior.
Just like HFLC is good for controlling some medical problems like seizures, it seems to have a very good effect among people with emotional eating issues and I'm not sure why you don't respect that.

Yes I believe it stopped my bingeing. I love it for that.