Wanting to eat healthily

[Tulip1977]

Hi I’m new to this forum. I need to lose a fair bit of weight and have got into some bad habits. I’m considering a low carb/high fat way of eating. Would you say it’s healthy? X

[Activity2004 Administrator]

Have you talked to the doctor about wanting to change your diet? If not, please call your doctor for an appointment and let them know that you are thinking of going on a LCHF diet.

[Tulip1977 in reply to Activity2004]

Oh ok, I’ll do that. I suffer with IBS, and take medication for anxiety and depression. I have been binging on unhealthy food in the evenings so I thought this way of eating might help. Thanks for your advice x

[Activity2004 Administrator in reply to Tulip1977]

You’re welcome!😀

How’s your day going today so far?

[Tulip1977 in reply to Activity2004]

My days been ok, I’m on holiday with my two youngest kids. It’s just me with them and they’ve been arguing and quite ungrateful which has annoyed me. I’ve stuck to my recommended calories today so I just hope I don’t eat now until the morning x

[Activity2004 Administrator in reply to Tulip1977]

Do you eat snack after dinner usually?

[Tulip1977 in reply to Activity2004]

I do snack on different things after my dinner. I know this has done me no good. I’ve known for years I have to stop it just haven’t conquered it unfortunately. Plus I wake up in the night and eat xxx

[Activity2004 Administrator in reply to Tulip1977]

I will send you a message later. Are you okay with that? I may have an idea.

[Tulip1977 in reply to Activity2004]

Yes that’s fine to send me a message , thanks x

[Activity2004 Administrator in reply to Tulip1977]

Okay. Give me some time. Will let you know when I sent it.

[Activity2004 Administrator in reply to Tulip1977]

I have sent you the message now.

[grace111]

Try to stop binging on unhealthy food and that will help a great deal while you seek advice from your doctor especially if you have ibs. its great that you want to do something about it and good luck. wishing you well. love grace xoxo

[Tulip1977 in reply to grace111]

Thanks grace111. I’ve wanted to lose weight for years but just seem to eat for comfort, Bordem etc. I’m glad I found this online forum as I’ve learnt a lot and it’s motivating me to change xxx

[grace111 in reply to Tulip1977]

it is best to see your doctor first as Activity2004 suggests as there are different kinds of fats and carbs and you dont want to be eating the wrong ones. there are many fats that are very good for us and that we need. you will learn a lot here. not only that but how much to eat for instance nuts have good fats but not to eat a whole bag of them every night. its also better to have ones that are not full of salt. i dont eat roasted nuts. we are all different and your doctor knows you better. nice to see you on the forum. love grace xoxo

[TheAwfulToad]

I'm always a bit baffled by this question ("is LCHF healthy?"), which comes up often. I think it says an awful lot about the zeitgeist that we're now terrified of the foods our grandparents ate and enjoyed: vegetables, meat, eggs, and dairy.

People have eaten those things for millennia. As far as we know, our ancestors weren't all obese, diabetic, and keeling over with heart attacks (except for the idle rich, I suppose). Yet today, we're told that the only foods that are good for us would have not been technologically possible for most of human history (such as polyunsaturated vegetable oils), aren't economically viable without massive government subsidy and genetic manipulation (wheat and soy), or are just downright tasteless (low-fat foods). It's a little weird, to say the least.

There's a whole bunch of discussion about the practicalities and implications of LCHF on the LCHF forum; it's always nice to see new members there!

Anyway, to answer your question: people who eat this way have no reason to believe it's "dangerous". It's enjoyable, it'll help you lose weight (if that's your goal), and there's strong evidence that it can reduce the risk of chronic diseases.

[Hidden in reply to TheAwfulToad]

It all seems so very logical. Love your line- "...we're now terrified of the foods our grandparents ate and enjoyed: vegetables, meat, eggs, and dairy." Truly amazing if you stop and think about it!

[andyswarbs]

Meat & dairy, eggs etc consumption is linked in the majority of peer-reviewed research to almost all chronic illnesses. This is because the fat in these animals is full of saturated fat, trans-fats and cholesterol which are strongly linked, for example, to heart disease modern societies number one killer. In fact if you consume meat & dairy then your likelihood of death from heart disease is increased by 20%. Even worse if you follow a LCHF [oops quick edit after prompting by Zest, originally HCLF , how could I do that!] diet for five years your likelihood is further increased by over 50%. To put it another way 1 in 100 people will develop heart disease and risk their life simply because they consumed meat & dairy. Unfortunately on the outside these people can look & feel very healthy. The signs of heart disease are hidden from view. So I would argue that any diet that includes meat & dairy is inherently unhealthy.

On the other hand there is no research whatsoever showing that societies have ever become ill from eating plants. Therefore I conclude that if you want to become healthy then a whole food plant based diet is the only logical solution.

As to your weight issues, losing weight is totally natural and easy on that same whole food plant based approach. Unless you have a specific eating disorder, the only guideline you need is to eat sufficient calories daily for your body. This will result in you feeling increasingly healthier & happier as each day rolls by.

Of course if you are on the obese side then a doctor may wish more rapid weight loss. Though I have never been obese the first film which inspired me was Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead youtube.com/watch?v=V-WUP5p...(Not working as expected?)

[TheAwfulToad in reply to andyswarbs]

I certainly won't say it's unhealthy to eat plants, but I think andy's response needs some context.

The first question you should ask yourself is: do I want to spend the rest of my life as a herbivore? Some people do, of course. Some people just don't like meat. But if the answer is no, then all the statistics in the world are moot.

As regards the science, I'll note first of all that the association between saturated fat and heart disease is only that: an association, a correlation. Nobody has ever managed to show causation, and even the association is up for debate: some studies find a link and some don't; some studies find a negative correlation - ie., more fat = less heart disease. There is no real consistency in study outcomes, which is a huge red flag. A lot of the most publicized studies don't even involve heart disease: they are short-term experiments that look at blood cholesterol markers (ie., surrogate outcomes).

The effect, if it exists, is weak, and this is a lot more obvious if you consider absolute numbers instead of percentages. One study that was discussed previously on HU showed a reduction from 77 CVD 'events' per thousand down to ... 66 per thousand. Which leaves the question open: what's causing the other 66 cases, if it wasn't saturated fat? That's only a 15% reduction, which suggests saturated fat is not the prime cause of CVD, and perhaps not even a major factor.

Finally, almost all of the studies on saturated vs. unsaturated fat have been done on subjects who are consuming large amounts of carbohydrates, and are relatively inactive, ie., the average Joe (or Jane). The studies on LCHF simply aren't there. The question "does LCHF cause an increase in heart disease" is one that, astoundingly, nobody seems interested in answering. Instead, the experts speculate and pontificate, and nobody has ever stood up and said, "look guys, why don't we do a study on this?".

If anyone knows of some hard data on this subject (CVD among LCHF adherents) I'd be very interested.

[bobaxford]

Have a look at

xperthealth.org.uk

The have a handbook for £9.99 which will provide all you need to know to eat healthy and control your weight.

[Hidden]

Well, it looks like you have responses that are all over the map here. The general population has been trained to eat the way they do for generations. Change comes slowly and with much resistance. We thought that innovations in farming and food processing would only give us good things, but this is ever so slowly being proven wrong. As it is now, our stores are filled with genetically modified, processed, factory-produced "food" and that's all we've known. Most of us were raised on the stuff.

Your best bet is to look into all this on your own, and listen to your own body. It's only logical to ditch the junk; everyone should agree on that one. You'll find plenty of people on healthunlocked at various forums that have seen great results with various diet changes, like the gluten free forum and the LCHF forum. Just see what has worked for others; as they say, no one can argue with what happened to me! Personally, I had heard about people that got relief from arthritis by going gluten free. That worked for me. Gluten and dairy can both cause all kinds of trouble, but everyone is different.

LCHF has gotten loads of bad press, but at the same time, there's an overwhelming amount of so-called anecdotal evidence that indicates how well it works for so very many. And they have seen it work for primarily weight loss, but also all kinds of health issues. Try it, and see what happens. You won't keel over in the next couple months!! Real food is actually quite good for you, surprise, surprise. And you may be happy you tried it, like I was when I gave up gluten. Good luck!

[Tulip1977]

My bad habits are eating in the evening and at night. I sometimes wake up and eat or eat if I can’t sleep. X

[TheAwfulToad]

>> From what I have worked out on the LCHF diet, is it's not really a diet but what I consider as to be a normal way of eating..but you cut out the food that is very high in carbs...as they are sugars..and sugars turn into fat when you eat them.

Exactly. From the viewpoint of the LCHF adherent, the "low carb" content isn't particularly low. Some people get a bit obsessed about it and start posting videos on YouTube about how carbs are "poison", but they're not. Unless we're diabetic, we all have perfectly good cellular machinery for extracting energy from carbs. They're obviously a normal part of the diet. At least in the maintenance phase, it's normal to eat up to 100g of net carbs per day, which is quite a lot. If you ate it all at once, it would be a large (about 1lb) plate of rice.

Conversely, the "high fat" part only looks "high" in the context of the Establishment phobia about fat. According to self-proclaimed experts like the AHA, our diet should ideally contain almost 0% saturated fat. Which is just stupid. But that's taken as the yardstick, so the experts confidently proclaim that "all that fat" in a LCHF meal will kill you. And yet, in maintenance, the fat content is unremarkable in absolute terms. The French eat fat at roughly the level recommended for LCHF ... and they've had one of the world's lowest rates of heart disease for decades, despite being incorrigible smokers (this fact annoys the Establishment no end - they call it a 'paradox' so they don't have to take it seriously).

The LCHF position is fairly modest: we shouldn't be 100% carb-fuelled, 24-7, 365 days a year. The so-called "balanced" diet is only possible because the government manipulates agricultural markets so that carbs are abnormally cheap - historically, fat would have been much cheaper, and actually still is. And then it hectors us into eating a lot of them.

[Zest]

Hi Tulip1977

There is an article in the Lancet about this subject, and I've just done a post about it, so I'll link to it here:

healthunlocked.com/healthye...

I hope this is helpful.

Zest