I'm becoming increasingly disturbed by the obsession with macro counting. The nourishment of our bodies should be simple and enjoyable and, in the words of another, shouldn't require a degree.
I understand that this is a new way of eating for many and that most of us arrived at it, as a means to an end, ie with pre-diabetes, full blown type 2 diabetes, obesity, or some other medical condition, but if you treat it as a bitter pill that you have to swallow, with a rigid, structured eating regime, you'll never learn to love it, whilst it's healing your bodies.
Relax people, it will work if you let it and it won't require a calculator. Eat when you're hungry, stop when you're full, then you won't be dreaming of the day you can stop this 'diet' and get back to eating 'normally'!
I've posted some pictures of my own meals - none of which have been counted. They're not restaurant standard, but they were delicious and satisfying. Left to right and top to bottom: 1. Fish pie with spinach, 2. lamb curry over cabbage, 3. roast pork with leek and mushroom sauce and roasted veg, 4. haggis with carrot and neep mash, green beans and sprouts, 5. meatballs with roasted aubergine, 6. boiled ham with broccoli, roasted butternut squash, broccoli and cauli bake, sprouts and courgette fried in garlic butter, 7. bacon veg and cheese omelette, with homemade coleslaw, 8. scotch broth and 9. pea and ham soup.
It worked for me!
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moreless
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Plead guilty but have to point out that when starting out we (OK I don't think it was just me) had no idea what amount of carbs etc was in stuff. When advised to try to get to below e.g. 30 to kick start the body change it was vital to have an idea of macros!
I was already recording what I ate & counting calories, but now LCHF is becoming better known we have a lot of newbies who have never weighed stuff or thought about what's in it.
I entirely agree with what you say but have lots of sympathy with Redspot 's comment .... it's such a turn-around I think we need to reassure ourselves til get used to it - I was more worried about not enough fat than too many carbs!
When I started out, this forum was virtually defunct and there was a general anti LCHF feeling around, The two people that helped me the most, got themselves banned because they advocated it and others found themselves treading a very fine line.
I, too, found it difficult, but, after the initial panic, decided that life was too short to spend it obsessing about macros. My intention has always been to encourage others to research for themselves and to give themselves a break from a lifetime of calorie/point/syn counting.
I'm not blaming anyone for their difficulty in making the change, I direct that at the people that have been feeding us incorrect information for years, I just want to ease their transition and give them the necessary tools to do so
No, the forum was here, but they took the message to other forums and it wasn't appreciated. People are more tolerant of differing ideas and opinions now.
I couldn't agree more, Hedgehog! However, the Eatwell guide is 'designed' by Public Health England and NHS staff have no choice but to adhere to it, as that is how they're trained and those that speak out against it, are vilified.
Making it so important that people like us ( I lost 5 stone lchf in 2012 and recently I’m up to nearly 7 stone ) speak out. I am almost evangelical about it !! Though I have to say I have always used low carb to reduce hunger and also counted calories to lose the weight in addition to daily cardio to burn the additional carbs I’ve had as a vegetarian ( I’m down to about 50g a day max )
LCHF can be used in combination with Intermittent Fasting, as advocated on this forum by Praveen55 , but, I think, has not yet been the subject of many scientific studies.
Thanks for this post moreless ! I definitely need to stop stressing about trying to get it right! I have lost nearly 2 stone doing LCHF so I must have been doing something right! I have gone in to panic mode now though as the last few pounds won't come off and this is a 'danger zone' for me as historically I would get frustrated and start going back to my old ways. I really don't want that to happen!
My body seems to have decided where it wants to be +/- a couple of lb and I'm eating more carbs than before - but not drastically. I've stopped stressing about remains of beer barrel as it's nearly all gone and what remains is probably loose skin. At 64 don't expect to get back to when I was 20 ... 30 ... 40...
A sensible approach, I think people's expectations are one of the problems as well? We are so bombarded in the media by the 'perfect' body and what we should look like, so we become disallusioned when even when we diet, we fail to reach that idea of 'perfection'. We have to remember that age, childbirth etc all take their toll, what we should aim for in my opinion, is good health,
If we look around at ordinary everyday people, they are just like us we are all different shapes and sizes. It’s only the media that pushes the so called perfect body at us.
Yes totally agree, media gives us a false idea of what we should look like, buy this product and you will look like a super model, use this face cream and it will take 20 years off you!! We need to be realistic about our expectations
I know this feeling exactly! I'm endeavouring to tweak and adjust and make it work. It's hard to do without counting and getting panicky but I'm going to focus on consistent portion sizes as moreless suggests 👍
I’ve got this book a while ago & put it to one side as wondered if 800 cals a day is the way forward? I’m going to consider this as could give me the kick start I need - just worried about putting weight back on. Is it all sustainable? Any thoughts? moreless
I wouldn't want to do it, it was designed for people that had been diagnosed pre-diabetic/diabetic, to quickly reverse the condition. As with all very low calorie diets, the concern is what happens after. Will you be stuck having to maintain on very few calories?
My advice will always be to eat as much as you can, whilst still losing weight and be patient.
Hi, Realthing...the only diet I tried in recent years ( about 3 years ago) was the Fast diet, I lost about 2 stone over a period of 9 months. I found the hunger very difficult to handle at times, plus it’s 500 calories for a woman not 800. After stopping it, which happened over summer I started to regain weight. And have put on 3 stone since. Whilst I like the idea of fasting and can see health benefits, looking back I can see that it was difficult to sustain because of what my general diet was like. With LCHF eating I can see how a ‘fast diet’ would be much easier, as hunger is much less of a problem. 👍
As I understand it the point of eating more fat (apart from enjoying it) is to compensate for cutting the carbs - the body / insulin copes better with the former than the latter. Cutting both to get to such a low calorie intake does not sound healthy and certainly isn't helping to get into good habits
Great Post moreless, and so true, its just trying to get your thinking around to eating that way?? When on it properly I much prefer this way of eating, and feel so much better on it,
I agree, but seeing things spiralling into virtual eating disorders on the Weight Loss forum, I wanted to put some semblance of normality on proceedings and get people to calm down.
You, more than anyone, know how much the tide is changing, I just don't want it to go completely in the opposite direction.
That all mirrors my beliefs and I hope that eventually the whole truth will have to be told and people will be able to get back to full health.
My concern now, is for the calorie counters, who then start to count protein, carbs and fats and end up at the lower end of everything, which I'm sure is to the detriment of their health. They become terrified to go over a particular number and end up barely eating. Most won't starve to death, but they will probably blame the inevitable failure on LCHF.
For years I have done low fat and low calories, which as everyone knows isn’t sustainable. I changed over to lchf probably 8 months ago. I no longer feel bloated or full of stodgy carbohydrates. I don’t even miss carbs, but instead enjoy cream in my coffee and nice cheeses. Before I was too afraid to have cheese and nuts in the house. But somehow the crisps and chocolate biscuits always crept back into my cupboard. Even my husband doesn’t eat them now, he still eats potatoes and bread, although he has reduced his quantity I might add he has never had to diet. He has never binged either, he’s too good. When I had blood tests done my doctor said whatever I was doing I was doing it right, my dentist has also said the same, I can see my nails and hair are much better although I didn’t think there was anything wrong, my nails no longer snap off so easily and my hair looks shinier. Occasionally I do get obsessed with numbers, why oh why. Is it a habit I have got into after over 40 years of obsessing about diet. If it’s not the scales it’s the calories and now I have discovered protein.
I'm sure it's a habit, that needs to be overcome, just as all of our bad eating habits have. I hope that this post will enable you to relax and trust your judgement, without the need for a calculator
Like the person recently, who'd just had their gallbladder removed and diagnosed with NAFLD, who was sent home being told, just eat your usual diet!?? The mind boggles!
Do you have a pdf, or something, for the ICS-NHS /diabetes Prevention Programme?
You'd think they'd want to get the word out to as many as possible! There's precious little else for people, that's guaranteed to steer them in the right direction.
Lovely food there moreless, I love to see that lchf has very easily and naturally become your lifestyle.. Because that is what I aspire to also. I don't see eating lc as a diet - I see it as my way of eating now; in my opinion you're correct that seeing this eating plan as a diet has trouble written all over it. I do, however, potentially disturb you on occasion with my macro preoccupation lol. In my defence, I have reasons! 1) I'm still new ish to the low carb world (relative to my high carb life) and honestly I find when I don't count and really focus on keeping them low I usually go well over accidentally. I find this from counting retrospectively when my weight losses slow. I know I'll get there but I'm not there now without counting. 2) I'm one of the unlucky few who don't get as full as I'm promised on the keto diet. Probably years of misusing food and throwing my ghrelin and leptin production and sensitivity out of whack. So that means when I don't count and plan carefully, I really can rack up a phenomenal number and continue to gain even eating very lchf foods. Tant pis for happy beee!
I look forward to a time when I can eat this way more naturally and feel so confident as you! You definitely inspire me!!!! And when I feel a bit stresso about it all I try to think of your advice to me to relax and it does calm me.
Maybe the thing for you to do, Beee, would be to have two meals a day, on a similar sized plate, like me and learn to work through hunger, as you'll know that you've fed yourself enough?
Yes for sure I need to override my own instinct to overeat and remind myself I've been fed and need no more food. I guess the counting of cals and macros is my way of doing that..but I definitely will consider the consistent portions and just ignoring false hunger cues..once I'm back in the swing! As always thanks for your good advice
I was relieved to be able to give up breakfast when I discovered intermittent fasting. Up until then, I only ate breakfast, when I was on a 'diet', as that's what we were told to do.
Looks like I've been an intermittent faster for longer than three years
I probably eat around the same amount or less. I have only just started to eat roast veg, which I enjoy. I tend to stick to green vegetables, steamed with a little butter. Thank you for your input I do value what you and others say. And I think I will leave the counting alone.
Absolutely fantastic post moreless (and what a reaction you've got!). I couldn't agree more. There's nothing like a few pictures to bring home how easy this ought to be.
As a few of the regulars have mentioned, there's maybe nothing wrong with counting stuff while you get a handle on things, but this should be a matter of a few days at most.
I think the general obsession with counting macros arises from mainstream nutrition lore, which starts with the belief that there's an "ideal" combination of macros (or an ideal calorie count) that we can compute and meter into our bodies. Things like flavour and satiety are just thrown out the window in favour of dull numbers; the experts then argue endlessly over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
It doesn't help with all the latest wrist-mounted gizmos, which produce reams of meaningless charts and graphs from scanning food barcodes, counting your steps and your heartrate, etc etc. There's a pervasive trend in the fitness industry to get people logging their daily activity on these gadgets and then "analysing" it ... which overlooks the basic reality that getting fit and healthy involves turning up, working hard, and eating right. The computer cannot generate shortcuts for you.
Humans aren't machines. Food is there to be enjoyed. As long as you get a few basics right, everything just drops into place.
You and Toad are so right, I am definitely going to relax more around numbers and what I am eating. I know I am eating the right food don’t massively exercise but enjoy walking and doing a few core and stretch exercises. Love this forum and will spend my time supporting others.
This made me laugh, wouldn’t it be great if we could compute our bodies. No more obsessing and everyone would be perfect. Im guilty of obsessing with numbers, I write reams of the bloomin things down. Old habits die hard.
It's a very beguiling idea, isn't it? I was taken in by it, not so long ago. It's the basic reason Fitbit are selling millions of units. People genuinely believe that if they record enough data and let the computer do enough clever sums, everything will turn out all right. Finally. This time.
And it never does, because the fundamental assumptions about calories and fat and whatnot are just wrong. Garbage in, garbage out, as they say.
Also two people are not the same. I read on here how everyone has lost stones on lchf way of eating. It doesn’t work for everyone, however, by following lchf it has made me healthier. And made me aware of actually what is being put into that well designed healthy looking package of processed food. And because of this I won’t put the weight back on, because I know now what has caused me to gain weight. It wasn’t the chocolates and crisps, but the potatoes and bread which are supposedly our staple diet. And as I no longer need those I don’t want to eat chocolate or crisps.
We'll said and well demonstrated, we have to live a little and keep it real! 👍
Perhaps people post more when something is hard rather than when it is easy/going well? I think I would be less concerned with my macros if I was losing every week, but STS makes me think I might not be.
How much overweight do you think you are, Stoozie? What number are you aiming for and why? I stopped my weight loss journey when I was still classed overweight, when I realised I wanted to concentrate on my health, rather than a number on the scales. Stressing about a particular weight isn't good for mind and body, but getting as fit as you can be, is exactly the opposite
Yes.I'm not finding it stressful at the moment thankfully!
About another half stone to stone would do me fine, so not far to go. As to 'how much overweight' I have no idea really as I think that has so many variables which affect it, as you say. But half a stone/stone I'd be happy was healthy.
Thanks for this. I know I’ve been driving myself mad trying to count everything particularly macros which I never seem to get right. What is right for me anyway may be totally different for somebody else. For me the main benefit is now I’ve stopped eating processed food it all tastes so much nicer. I’m lucky that I have time to cook from scratch every day. Also I didn’t have cheese at all although I love it and now I am so enjoying a little now and again. I wonder though about calories as I’m short and older so it’s easy for me to go over and gain. All your food pics look great - will take note to try them.
I think when we start on the low fat, high carb diet, we lose our ability to judge when we're hungry and when we're full, so rely on counting calories to tell us.
I have suggested to others, that maybe portion size is the way to go, until you feel more confident. Have an idea of the average number of calories in your regular meals and try to have a similar amount at all your meals, until you are able to trust that your body is telling you the truth, now that you're following a low carb way of eating
Fantastic reading & very true but i am guilty of over stressing on counting & getting my head around lchf. I had good week when poorly & terrible week as soon back to work. 3lb on this week but back on it & just counting while i get back on it again . Yes its just a guidance but i know now by my meals ,& i will read all your lovely post & wonderful inspiring life journey. Well done ,& thank you so much x
I think sticking to some basic rules and portion sizing should help you to stop stressing too. A little counting is OK, but too much detracts from the simple principals of LCHF and spoils your enjoyment.
I wish I had seen this thread sooner! Even Dr Maggs says 'it's not a license to just over eat fat' and one of the most common mistakes is eating too much protein or eating not enough of that! It does do your head in!!! It's an anxious time when you start out on LCHF, especially if you fear gaining weight which most of us really can't afford to do!
Thank you moreless for this amazing and inspiring post. It has brought with a tremendous Amount of interest! I can’t wait to read your links to see how you have made your journey - I bought real butter this week & creme fresh! Thanks again very inspiring 👌🏻
Interesting. Do you have any links please? I heard this study (I believe) referenced on the food programme by (I think) the editor of the BMJ journals group, and she seemed to state that the 'sweet spot' of 40% carbs was optimal, and that at EITHER the lower or higher ends of the carb distribution curve there was greater morbidity/mortality. Did I misunderstand? Thanks in advance for any links/references.
This is brilliant moreless, thankyou. I also read some of the links to your original posts and had no idea LCHF was such a recent concept - I thought I was just very late arriving at the party🎉🎉
LCHF has been around, but it was 'hidden' from most of us, as they're still trying to do, unsuccessfully. With the advent of the internet, we now have access to far more information than we ever used to and are able to share that information with each other. It's not just a select few that have the knowledge now and with knowledge comes power!
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Broke my keto eating, so cross.
Bowel movements low carb eating 
Heading for Higher Fat/Low Carb
Staying low as I can go so far.