Lose Weight 35

lolly101

Edwardia wrote: »

I just read this page and as someone who low carbs for health reasons I have to say that for example weetabix + nutrigrain bar + tomato soup + jacket spud + nutrigrain bar is a lot of carbohydrate.

Kellogg's website doesn't break down to carbs but each bar has 12g of sugar and is 14% of GDA. WeightWatchers soup has 2.8g sugar per 100g and is a 295g tin
Heinz cream of tomato soup is 5g of sugar per 100g in a 400g tin. Weetabix has 1.7g of sugar per 37g serving BUT total carbohydrate (which converts to glucose) is over 25.7g of the 37g.

I'm not intending to be mean here but that could be over 30g of sugar and that is only part of the total carbs because 100% of the potato is carbohydrate and gets turned into glucose.

Insulin is the fat control hormone. If you have a lot of it in your body you can't lose weight because insulin is part of the body's survival mechanism. If you lower your carb intake over time the insulin level will drop and then you have more chance of exercising weight off. Type 1 diabetics don't produce insulin and they can't keep weight on without it.

It probably is a lot of carbs, but unless you are aiming for a low carb diet, I would have thought that 30g of sugar a day is pretty good going? If I remember correctly, the GDA for a woman is about 90g.
I'm not trying to suggest that you are wrong in what you are saying, but it does come across like you are (apart from the sugar) suggesting that all carbs are equal, which they really aren't. I think that if you are having carbs for breakfast (which is usually the case), weetabix has got to be one of the better choices as it is slow release, and has a much lower impact on blood sugar levels than most other types of cereal - therefore the total carbs really aren't that relevant.

If you are insulin resistant, then that is a completely different matter - the total carbs are relevant and lowering them will help with weight loss, as will stabilising your blood sugars by opting for slow release carbs. But, if you have excellent control (as I do), then low carbing won't make much of a difference.

mandz1

To be honest, the things i ae yesterday were alot better that what i could have ate, i would never low carb as i know then it would cut out a huge amount of food i could eat, i couldnt live without eating potato,pasta, bread etc. A low carb diet really does limit alot of what you can eat.

It was better than eating pizza and garlic bread, as that was the only alternative for dinner, and i would hate to see how much of a telling off i would have got for eating that. The soup was a better choice than a sandwich at lunch, plus having a numb mouth from the dentist, soup was really the only option.

People that do the slimfast diet have 2 shakes a day which equal alot of sugar, but that is classed as a safe diet to reduce your weight.

Money is tight in my house and the day before payday is always hard, so its not like i could buy more food yesterday, but as i said i will be shopping for healthier food today

Lissarria

Hey all! Thanks for all the welcomes!

Well weigh in and group went really well last night. Really happy with my progress so far. :j

Was only expecting/hoping to have lost about 2lb at weigh in BUT........

I LOST 5lb

Really really pleased, since i joined Slimming World my total loss is now 1stone 4lb (or 18lb) And i got Slimmer of the week in group yesterday.

Really hope everyone else has a great week!

Edwardia

Carbs aren't all equal, some are a slower release version and some carb foods have more vitamins etc. Potatoes have Vitamin C for example. Having said that, reducing total carb intake so that your body doesn't need to produce as much insulin will help weight loss because as the amount of insulin reduces so the fat retaining effect reduces.

The human body doesn't need sugar at all. Even if you ate 0 carbs and 0 sugars your body can make glucose for energy from protein and use stored fat. Sugar contains 0 vitamins and 0 minerals and 0 protein. It's only used to make things taste sweeter.

Dr Robert H Lustig MD is a Professor of Clinical Pediatrics in the Endocrinology Division at the University of California San Francisco. He is Director of the WATCH (Weight Assessment for Teen and Child Health) programme. First thing they do when hugely obese kids go to the clinic is eradicate sugar from their diet.

Sugar: The Bitter Truth is a YouTube video of one of Dr Lustig's lectures to students and it explains why sugar and other variants of, are so bad. He's not a quack he's a proper doctor and university professor.

Low carbing is restrictive yes. I have to do it for health reasons. I'd never advocate it as a way of life for anyone who doesn't need to do it. BUT cutting down on carbs and sugar will help weight loss and health.

lolly101

I am all for low carbing as I feel a lot better for it and have much more energy. I've also seen the effect of carbs on the body first hand as my son is a Type 1 Diabetic. But, it is definitely hard work and time consuming, which is one of the reasons I don't do it myself. Another reason is that I only lose weight when low carbing is if I exercise regularly - it has nothing to do with insulin, it's that (as you have already mentioned) if there aren't any carbs to use for energy then the body will use stored fat instead. If I don't have time to exercise, I gain weight on it (because protein and fat are higher in cals than carbs).

My point is that reducing carbs will only help you lose weight if you have too much insulin in the body - if you don't, then it has no real effect, and is no better than reducing protein or fat. It may even have the opposite effect as carbs have 3.75 cals per gram, protein has 4 and fat has 9, therefore if you replace 200g of carbs with 100g of protein and 100g of fat then you are gaining 550 cals - which is not exactly helpful for weight loss.

You do make some very good points, and I agree with a lot of them, but reducing carbs alone will not benefit everyone, and it's such a 'difficult' diet that it's not really worth doing for weight loss unless you have a degree of insulin resistance, or are can exercise regularly while on it.

world_of_tights

I really don't think that anyone should have to be defending their diet here - we all make our own choices, and that's how it should be.

The fact of the matter is that we've heard it all before, and we all make choices based on or despite of that knowledge. Personally, for me, low carb didn't work - calories in vs calories out, with an emphasis on clean eating is what works for me. Everyone is different.

Weight loss is a personal thing, and if you feel like you're being attacked then it can make it all the more difficult. It can also make you not want to post on this thread for support, which is a position I've found myself in a couple of times and it definitely isn't helpful.

Discussion is a great thing, sharing of ideas is wonderful. But coming in and telling someone that what they are doing is wrong is not constructive, particularly if they had been feeling good about their choices.

margaretclare

Matryoshka wrote: »

Perhaps, just perhaps, you are not eating enough :think:

I eat until I'm full, Matryoshka. I can't force food into myself if I've had enough!

Weight back down today, back into the 66s. 66.9 kg this morning. Probably worrying about OH has something to do with it. He phoned me yesterday from the hospital after seeing the consultant with 'It's more serious than we thought'. As of this moment he's awaiting a call to go in for urgent spinal surgery, this will happen within the next few days.

Just been to aqua-aerobics, 45 minutes. Couldn't go on Monday because DH had to go for repeat MRI scan. Wednesday, just other things happening.

While he was at the hospital this morning awaiting phlebotomy, I had instant coffee and a fried egg on wholemeal seeded bread. That has kept me going so far. We'll have the remains of the carrot and lentil soup from yesterday soon. I also have ironing to do this afternoon, and that counts as exercise!!

margaretclare

We do low carbs. I don't find it hard work - why is that?

We don't eat many potatoes any more, in fact, we only eat them if we happen to be having a meal out. We haven't had a potato in the house since the end of July. DH doesn't miss them, but he does have chips if we're having a meal out! The problem with potatoes is that you have to do something with them. Jacket potatoes are one thing, but once you've peeled a potato you're basically left with starch, and then what do you do with it? Answers on a postcard pleeeeeease...

Bread is a different matter. We can't live without bread, but we buy the low GI wholemeal-with-seeds that our local baker makes, that's if you can get there early enough before he's sold out. Hovis make a similar one.

We use the carby veg to make soup. Onion, carrots, lentils, you have a good soup that fills you up, is warm and satisfying.

Sugar is a different matter again. I've taken to reading the product labels much more closely. Many of the yogurts have far too much sugar in them. Most breakfast cereals, and also the 'healthy' cereal bars. We've been misled by those in the past and we don't buy them now.

Well, whatever we're doing is working for DH, who is an insulin-using diabetic. He has very good control and finds that since we started low-carbing he's now using about half the amount of insulin that he was using at one time. Result: his weight is coming down. He's now down to approx 15 1/2 stone, too much still, but better than he was. I'm now down to 10 1/2, again, too much, because I was warned last summer of being at risk of developing Type 2. But we're getting there!

Lois_Lane

Hi all :wave:

I stand by the 'everything in moderation' school of thought where nutrition and losing weight are concerned. Low carb diets are fine if that's what you want to do, or if you have a health problem that requires it.

The Slimming World plan used to be based on 2 different plans - red days when you could eat large amounts of meat and fish and carbs were limited, and green days when you could eat lots of healthy* carbs and meat and fish were limited.

I've seen some amazing results from people following that plan - Lissarria is doing really well on it, and the biggest loss I read about in the paper was a woman who lost 19st.

My point is, if eating carbs is so bad, why does SW work so well?

* Healthy carbs that were classed as free food on SW included potatoes, pasta and rice, providing no fat was added. Foods such as breakfast cereal and bread are included in the plan but only in small, weighed amounts.

LL

p.s. well done Lissarria - what SW plan do you follow? I know there's more to it than red and green now.

margaretclare

I stand by the 'everything in moderation' school of thought where nutrition and losing weight are concerned. Low carb diets are fine if that's what you want to do, or if you have a health problem that requires it.

I think it's also a matter of 'what works'!

Over the past few years, since hitting my mid-70s, I have found that a lot of things which are supposed to work do not in fact work for me, or for DH. I've been to various 'experts' and not one of them could suggest WHY I wasn't losing weight even though doing 'all the right things' according to them. There is very little said about losing weight in later life, mainly the sites that I've looked at are concerned with preventing older people losing weight rather than helping them to do so. There was in fact some pathology going on - the dementias etc - which was responsible for weight loss.

DH and I eat pretty well, we eat healthily and we enjoy what we eat. Bread is our main staple, we don't need pasta and rice. We no longer eat breakfast cereal very often because most of them are so loaded with sugar, even the so-called 'healthy' ones. We don't need sugar added to/contained in everything.

the biggest loss I read about in the paper was a woman who lost 19st.

I'd need to know a lot more detail about the individual being described before I'd comment on that. All I know is, I do NOT want to get to be like that 80-year old woman on 'Big Body Squad' recently who weighed 20 stone and it took a team of people to get her out of her house and to a hospital appointment.

Am just off to make a ham-and-tomato sandwich.