On low carb diets
I have written previously about my dietary changes in response to a borderline insulin resistance test result, so I thought I would post an update on where I am on this journey.
As you can see from that graph, my weight kept dropping until I hit 52.5kg, at which point I got scared. That put me in the underweight category in terms of my BMI; more importantly, my sleep became affected and I was definitely losing muscle mass in my quads.
The theory of low carb diets (by which I mean eradicating cereals, grains, sugars, and starches from your diet), is that by replacing them with nutritionally dense foods we will eat less. The reason being that we get more bang for our buck with every egg, steak, and chicken drumstick we eat. Our bodies need less food because everything we put in it has a lot of what it needs, nutritionally speaking. So we don’t get hungry as often as we’ve eaten nutrient dense foods.
This is all true in my experience. However, what did not seem to happen for me was an adequate hunger mechanism. By which I mean, my body seemed to be so satiated in terms of nutrient intake that it was not registering a calorie deficit.
When I got to the 52.5kg mark, I started using a food tracking app and discovered that whilst I was eating waaaaaaaaaay more than adequate amounts of protein, and a good healthy balance of fats and micronutrients, I was in calorie deficit every day. In theory, I should have become hungry as I needed more calories but I never once felt hungry. I guess I had more than enough muscle for my body to feast upon itself at night or something horrific like that.
This put me in a massive dilemma as I felt SO much better since cutting out cereals and grains (no more sinus stuffiness, IBS, and joint pain), but I knew I couldn’t stomach eating any more fucking broccoli, steak, or pork scratchings, etc.
In the end, I checked in with my Eat right for your blood type book and settled on eating a chicken drumstick, plus vast quantities of butter (?) on two slices of spelt sourdough toast right before bed. So far this seems to be doing the trick as I am now back up to 54.5kg and sleeping well again. I have a small amount of stuffiness in the mornings, but no IBS flare ups, so I’ll take that.
I have not yet done another insulin resistance test, but as someone very wise said, I probably need to chill on that since I basically got a low first but freaked out out like I got a third. I will do another test in about 6 months though, just to see where I am on that.
Anyway, there we have it. If you want to lose weight uncontrollably whilst eating crazy delicious food, now you know how to do it. All you need to do is eat a fuck ton of steaks, eggs, cheese, pork crackling, chicken drumsticks, blueberries, butter, and a bunch of veg and you will drop that spare tyre in no time at all.