Good morning everyone. I think I may take the prize for longest member who hasn't said a word 😳. I can't remember exactly when I joined up but I check in every day and am in awe of everyone's progress but I have never joined in (ridiculously shy).
Over the last year or two I've managed to eat myself up to my heaviest weight ever. I would like to lose a good couple of stone. I am the queen of procrastination and seem to never quite get around to properly getting started with my weight loss journey.
The main excuses are that I still have things in my cupboards that I need to use up like porridge oats and brown rice. I'm a single mum to a 10 year old and am on a tight budget so I can't bring myself to throw stuff out.....
My son is quite fussy and what I tend to find is that if I do make anything LCHF he tends not to like it so I end up having to cook 2 things or just give him beige stuff from the freezer.
My mum has type 2 diabetes and I've sung the praises of LCHF to her from the successes I've seen on here. She's lost about 8lbs from reducing carbs and medication free. But when we spoke yesterday she said she'd read that although eating fat doesn't make you fat, it still clogs arteries. I wasn't sure how to respond to this.
All in all, at the moment I feel I'm trying little bits of lots of different ways of eating and it's clearly not working. My current one is 5:2 but I'm still eating lots of nonsense in the evenings on my eating days. How did people lose their toast and butter, crisps or sweet treat cravings?
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Cuddly76
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I don't know the trick. The bags of rice, flour, pasta, oats etc are not tempting until they are turned into something I can eat. I watched a video before I started saying "throw out all the [..] crackers [..] before you start". I thought, "no, the crackers are unopened, I will keep them for my maintenance stage" and then after a glass (or 2!) of wine one night, I ate most of 2 packets of crackers. 🤯 Hubris got me!
So, throwing them out is the best option. The other thing I am doing is planning a big evening meal within my eating plan. At the end of it, I could usually eat more, but if I wait 30 minutes, I realise I am satiated. Then I just keep away from the snacks. Easier for me, because I have to go to shops to buy them, or get out a mixing bowl and and a fry pan, and my will is strong enough to resist doing that.
Here is something to try. Everytime you want a snack, make yourself a cuppa and promise yourself you can have it in 1/2 hour if you still feel hungry. I find most of the time the hunger passes, and because a said "later" not "no", I do not feel deprived.
I don't have a craving for sweet things, but toast and butter? Oh, yes. If I had bread in the house, this would be much harder.
I can relate to fussy kids. My brother and I (we are both in our fifties) have independently "diagnosed" him as having food avoidance disorder as a child and probably a supertaster. Even decades past childhood, with a lot of health problems and being a smart guy, he still eats a beige diet. And metamucil. But do try to get some other colours into your son's diet if you can.
Thank you for replying. I really like the cup of tea idea.....if I can disassociate tea with biscuits! Waiting for half an hour is also good advice. I think I eat my meals quite quickly so it takes a while for the full feeling to kick in. I should try to slow it down a bit.
I do keep crisps and sweeties in the house for my son but have been only buying things that don't tempt me recently, which is working so far.
I think what I'll do is use up the oats in a big batch of flapjacks and take them in to work so that they can get fat instead of me!!!!! That way I get rid of the bag of porridge oats without wasting them.
When I say my son is fussy, I just mean he would turn his nose up at things like my new improved lasagne in which I use slices of aubergine instead of pasta and he likes his fish in breadcrumbs, that kind of thing. He eats lots of salad and veg though.
Glad if I helped. Tea works for me because I nearly gave it entirely up for coffee, so it's snack associations are long gone. Bubbly water, maybe with lemon or cucumber might be better for your, or a herbal tea. Or coffee, but decaf in the evening.
Eating quickly? You might want to look at mindful eating, which seems like a good idea - that I haven't tried yet. I also eat quickly and am finding it a hard habit to break, so I am practicing stopping at a premeasured amount and seeing how a feel in 1/2 hour or so. Mindful would be better. May next week 🤞
I'm with your son. Pasta and breadcrumbs are lovely, and I wouldn't give them up without good reason. For him, you can get him on LCHF with a new (to him) dishes that he has no expectations of.
Bubbly water from a sodastream was my go-to drink. I can only drink so much tea and coffee and then it seemed that everything else had tons of calories. Until I discovered bubbly water.
I do enjoy the odd fizzy water. I only really drink black tea, green, coffee, water and red wine!
I was giving this a lot of thought....what would make me feel like I was still having something good after my meal. Many moons ago it was tea and a cigarette, replaced with biscuits when I gave up smoking so it's a long term habit. I was thinking that if I'm going down the intermittent fasting route I would swap my morning coffee for black tea then have a creamy coffee after eating at dinnertime. That could work!
The red mist descends when I hear about people telling diabetics they're at risk of heart disease if they eat fat. Inevitably, this keeps them on the high-carb low-fat diet that guarantees a lifetime of diabetes, with all that that entails.
Diabetics have a heart-disease risk that's at least double the general population. So if a diabetic wants to reduce his/her risk of heart disease, the obvious approach is to stop being diabetic. And that means eating fat instead of carbs.
... in which the NHS accepts that dietary fat has nothing to do with heart disease, but they're going to keep feeding people fairy stories about it anyway. That's how bad things have got.
Thanks to ChubbieChops for flagging that one up, by the way.
Regarding your own diet, I guess you'll just have to bite the bullet and give some of that stuff away. Please try to avoid cooking two sets of meals - apart from anything else, it undermines your authority as head of the household. I know someone who has a "fussy" daughter, and just gives in every time the kid says "I don't like that". She now subsists on nothing but biscuits and plain rice. I suspect she'll be diabetic before she's in her teens. My sister also gives in to the "I don't like that" routine. The kids treat the house like their own personal restaurant, and she literally ends up cooking three different meals.
The thing is this: all kids are fussy. They're always a bit suspicious of a change in routine. They don't have quite the same tastes as adults. But if food appears on the table and they don't like it, then they have two choices: eat it; or don't eat it and go hungry. It's hard, as a parent, to watch this process play out, but he'll get the idea very quickly.
I grew up dirt-poor and completely understood that if something appeared on the table, it's because my mum had done her utmost to put it there. Your son is old enough to understand that too.
Don't worry too much about the cost of LCHF, though. Most people find that it's affordable. The key point is that fat is as cheap as carbs (possibly cheaper!), calorie for calorie. Yes, you'll be buying higher-quality produce, but most of the so-called healthy options are very poor value for money. Even if you're on a tight budget, it's doable.
The advice on the kid: I think it depends on the kid. My father took your attitude with my brother, and it was a battle of wills each night. That was the wrong approach for him; he had an eating disorder, I think, though one that wasn't recognised back then. My brother is quite a broken person, and one of my father's greatest regrets in old age was not approaching it completely differently.
Interestingly, I went through a period of fussiness, I would only eat eggs and tomatoes. My parents correctly judged the right approach was to give in and wait for me to come out the other side. My mother similarly told me she refused to eat anything but chocolate frogs for a while as little kid, and again, her parents decided to let her work through that. When she and I would go to a restaurant from when I was about 12 or so, we would always both scan the menu for things we have never tried before.
There is only one thing I cannot eat, banana, and that's because my father imposed his rule of "not wasting food". Even the smell makes me gag, 5 decades later.
It worked for you. It failed for my brother. If my father had done it to me more often, I think I would have a much longer list I of foods couldn't eat.
Well .. I wasn't really suggesting that level of dogmatism. I'm not advocating the "you eat what's put in front of you or you go hungry!" approach without any consideration of the kid's likes and dislikes. Simply that kids shouldn't be allowed to dictate what happens at mealtimes.
It's usually possible to find something that the kid will eat that's compatible with the general goals of a healthy meal and the minimum of family strife.
Sure some kids have genuine eating disorders or funny tastes. I remember reading about some guy who literally wouldn't eat anything except potatoes. He did OK, but I'm pretty sure those people are few and far between, and that they're pretty easy to spot.
The friend I mentioned is putting her kid's wellbeing and future happiness at risk by not making some adult decisions. Of course kids have likes and dislikes and preferences. But when they say "I don't like that" it's more usually the case that they mean "I don't know what that is and I'm not sure if I like it". Somehow or other, kids all over the world end up eating bizarre (albeit nutritious) foods with relish, presumably because biscuits, tomatoes or chocolate frogs aren't an option.
Thank you for replying. It is an interesting article and I will pass it on to my mum.
It's alarming that at the end of the article the NHS says it's advice remains unchanged, These are the closing paragraphs....
"Current UK guidelines remained unchanged:
The average man should eat no more than 30g of saturated fat a day.
The average woman should eat no more than 20g of saturated fat a day.
Even if saturated fats don't directly harm your heart, eating too much can lead to obesity, which in turn can damage it.
The key to a healthy diet is "everything in moderation". The occasional buttered scone or cream cake is not going to hurt you, but you need to be aware of your total calorie intake.
Eating a healthy, balanced diet, being physically active and not smoking are the best ways to keep your heart healthy".
Clicking the link on the page to the healthy, balanced dirt takes you back to the advice of 5-a-day and carb based diets. It's really no wonder people are so confused.
With regards to my son, he's miles away from living on biscuits and chicken nuggets. Just that he doesn't like lasagne without the pasta in it or his fish without being dipped in breadcrumbs. He eats veg and salads and is happy to have a pork chop or something. But he still really enjoys a baked tattie so I usually let him have that once a week and I take something out of the freezer for me that I've cooked before. It would be good to have some dishes that we could both enjoy though so I'll have another peek at DietDoctor for inspiration. Batch cooking keeps costs down but I have to make sure I portion it out there and then or else I inevitably go back for seconds!
Indeed. You'd think the folks at the Ministry of Truth would be confused too, but I guess they have 50 years of practice keeping contradictory ideas in their heads. Here's how it stands right now:
[Confused person] Look, if obesity is all about calories, why do I have to eat less fat and more carbs? Surely if I'm not eating too many calories, I won't get fat?
[Ministry of Truth] That might be so, but fat is terribly bad for your heart. No fat for you! Only carbs!
--- 20 years go by, and multiple studies show that fat is neither here nor there ---
[Confused person] So fat doesn't make me fat, and it's not bad for my heart either? Can I eat butter now?
[Ministry of Truth] Oh no! Fat may not be bad for your heart, but it might make you fat.
Anyway, sounds like your son will be just fine. I got the wrong end of the stick there - I was imagining a kid who wouldn't eat anything unless it had chips with it. Frankly, I wouldn't like lasagna without the pasta either! And there's absolutely nothing wrong with a weekend baked potato (or whatever). Growing boys can usually dispose of whatever you throw at them without getting fat.
Incidentally, I seem to remember reading some research suggesting that diets with more fat and fewer carbs result in much-reduced teenage acne. Found a page on dietdoctor about it:
Hi, i've been on this LCHF woe for just about 2 years now. My husband steadfastly refuses to hop on board (sadly i recon he's heading for diabetes in the future). Anyway, i have found some excellent swaps that even he will eat, along with me for main meals. In particular you may find QueenKeto's pasta recipes will be more accrptable ... it has a much more 'like for like' texture. In fact I'm visiting my elderly parents atm and they have enjoyed the low carb lasagne I bought with me. Also, fish and chicken etc, can be 'breadcrumbed' with almond flour; nuts; wizzed up pork scratchings (or combo of all) and all offer a reasonable 'like for like' swap. There are many Low Carb food blogger's out there (alldayidreamaboutfood; ketodietapp; wholesomeyum; gnomgnom; myketokitchen - many with YouTube video recipes, to name a few I use regularly) to help you find variety and alternatives. DietDoctor is an excellent site - in fact recommended to me by my GP. Anyway, hope some of this info can help you persuade your son to be a little more adaptable so you can continue your journey to improved health and wellbeing. Good luck.
I agree and would like to add, by adding good fats such as cheese butter and olive oil, the taste is remarkable. Also season well, don’t be afraid to use salt in foods which you prepare and cook from scratch, as goodness knows how much salt goes into processed food. I use sea salt and although it is probably 3 to 4 times higher in price (I pay £2) it seems to last a very long time.
For me, cravings haven't gone completely yet - hubby is sitting there with a big box of chocs (leftover from Christmas) and I would love one and I know that I wouldn't stop at one! But I am feeling so much better on a LCHF diet - spare tyre has gone down a lot, feeling so much more alert, no bloating or feeling stuffed - that I am able to resist. I know exactly what you mean about trying different ways of eating. In the old days (about 2 months ago), I would decide every couple of days or so, that THIS is how I am going to lose weight and get healthy, depending on what article I had read that day. Then I stumbled across this forum and started a LCHF way of eating. I'm finding that I am so much more motivated by this way of eating because I am not hungry and I don't feel deprived and the food I am eating is delicious. I would urge you to give a LCHF diet a serious go. I've started the Keto, 2 week challenge. I'm cooking this for hubby as well, but stick a jacket spud on his plate, or pasta or chips. Perhaps you could adapt your meals in this way for your son?
You can sign up to the Keto diet on the Diet Doctor website, free for a month and there are several no nonsense short videos which give a very simple clear introduction as to what is involved.
Finally, get googling - things like, 'does eating sat fats cause heart disease' and so on. This will help you answer your mum's doubts and queries and your own for that matter.
Well the porridge oats are now flapjacks which are going to work with me tomorrow....my colleagues will scoff them in minutes. Just the rice to find a home for now and then I'll feel psychologically ready hahaha
The two week keto plan looks very manageable. Did you do it? I'm glad you told me your husband gets what you're eating but with a bit of carb thrown in. I was really curious as to how others managed with non dieters in the house and I will try it with my son.
I think you're right that I could do with a bit more research into LCHF and the findings so far.
Well done you for resisting the chocolate, especially when someone else is enjoying them right in front of you. That takes amazing willpower!
Well done on the flapjacks - just make sure they do get to work! how about just cooking all the rice and freezing it in portions for your son or visitors. I know I wouldn't be tempted just by cold rice! Although thinking about it, I also have rice (wholegrain of course!) in the cupboard. It has good best by dates (not that I bother with them much) so I'll use them as and when for hubby and visitors.
I did the Atkins diet years ago, and successfully lost a lot of weight so I had an idea of what to do for keto. Have lost 6lbs since just before Christmas but have stalled this last week. So I started the 2 week keto challenge yesterday and had the most delicious meal last night. Couldn't eat everything it said! Fasting until this evening and all good so far. I learnt a lot of new stuff from the he Diet Doctor's videos .
Oh, and it wasn't willpower that helped me resist the chocs, it was motivation xx
Yeah! I'm finding fasting easier than portion control, because "I will just have one" would be fine if it was just one, but it is a slippery slope. But instead I know that having one will end my entire day's fast, and usually the "one" isn't worth it.
Though I am still thinking about "does anyone want a chip?" from over a week ago. They look luscious.
Haha, yes not having one of anything naughty is better than 'just having one'. I am a carboholic - chips, chocs, gin, wine, toast!
I watched the Diet Doctor introductory videos last night as I have just started the keto, 2 week challenge. I'm fasting until tonight's dinner. I felt my heart beating more strongly earlier and I had a headache and I felt a bit peckish, so I have just had a half vegetable stock cube (pleb's bouillon cube) in hot water. Mind you, I had to add more salt as the cubes I had bought (organic) were salt reduced! It also contains maize starch, palm oil and caramelised sugar which is infuriating. Note to self....look for bouillon cubes.
Anyway the whole point of that diversion was to say I enjoyed my half a stock cube lunch and feel much better re heart and headache and feel I can continue the fast until dinner
I brush my teeth after I have cleared away from our evening meal and if my husband gets the chocolates out, I don’t bother, basically too lazy to clean my teeth again also I don’t want all that sugar coating them 😂😂
Yes I've heard that before and have tried it but then decided I would to brush my teeth again! Didn't work for me but maybe I'll try it again. I mean every little helps!
Hi ChubbieChops, if you’re feeling chocolate deprived, there’s a useful website called sugarfreelondoner that I’ve used for a number of baking recipes - she uses mainly low sugar dark chocolate but does occasionally use milk too and has a good recipe for home-made chocs.
I went cold turkey and simply stopped eating toast, crisps and chocolate totally.
Eating meat fish and veggies in abundance meant I still felt full, so that distracted me, I guess. I probably still had the cravings, but upon getting them I'd eat something different.
6 months and 4 stone lighter, I guess I no longer eat those things.
Whether eating a high fat diet gives you atherosclerosis (clogged arteries) is hotly debated in academic & medical circles. The research is not conclusive despite decades of being told that a high fat diet is bad. Cholesterol is not one single thing that is bad, but a transport mechanism for energy to get around your body, we all need it. It becomes a problem when small & low density fat molecules attach to the cholesterol vehicle. It’s not clear that eating fat causes these low density molecules to attach, more recent research suggests that it’s the unused sugar that we turn into fat in the liver that becomes the low density ie problem cholesterol particles. If you want to learn more the a book by Gary Taube, Good Calories Bad Calories explains but it’s pretty academic.
Hi Hidden, I’ve recently lost 18lbs on a mixture of low carb, IF and low calorie dieting. I recently had a cholesterol test and was surprised by the fact that my LDL had risen and my HDL also had gone up and was now too high! TG are low. Doc of course wants me on statins as at my age (70) my levels can only get worse & stroke’s a real risk! I’ve persuaded him that another test in 3 months when my weight has stabilised may be different. Having researched why, different ‘experts’ say different things, but basically when on a diet levels can go up temporarily as you’re releasing fat from cells. However, If LCHF is proven to cause high levels, how will that work with people who have T2D who are already at risk?
HDL can't be "too high". Your results are entirely as expected, and are healthy (high HDL and low TG suggests a low risk of stroke and cardiovascular disease, although these numbers are really rather meaningless). You might want to look at this "cholesterol calculator" here:
The problem here is that doctors are told to put everyone on statins. They'll therefore pick out one particular number that justifies the prescription - eg., higher LDL, or higher TC - and then go right ahead and give the patient statins. "First do no harm" went out of the window years ago.
People who have T2D are at risk of heart disease because they have T2D. A healthy LCHF diet reverses T2D and therefore dramatically reduces their risk of heart disease.
If your doctor continues to insist that a diet of fresh, unprocessed ingredients is disastrously unhealthy and that you'd be better off eating corn-, soy- and sugar-filled crap extruded from factories, you might want to find another doctor ...
Thank you TheAwfulToad. I don’t think I’ll be pushed into taking meds. I do find it strange that the NHS has an upper limit on its reference range for HDL which we’re always being told is ‘good’. My doctor is an advocate for the low carb diet and the practice is now running a low carb program for patients. It’s taken the NHS (or at least some doctors) years to recognise this way is healthier and hopefully they’ll change their attitude to cholesterol levels soon. Some experts now think TG:HDL is a better indicator and the tests need to start measuring particles.
Hi, I know this is an old thread, but something popped into my mind as I was reading it. The ex deputy of the Labour party was diagnosed type 2 a few years ago and it was in the news. He dropped the weight impressively quickly and reversed the diagnosis. Then a bit later, there was some headline saying, 'Tom Watson puts butter in his morning coffee!!?!' and he was quoted as saying something like, it helps keep me full' or something similar. Now I understand what was going on!! Well it certainly worked well for him!! And presumably, if you lose the weight, you don't have to spend the rest of your life eating butter with everything?
You say "eating butter with everything" as if it's a bad thing. 🤣
The whole thing is insane. On the basis of epidemiological studies, we are told to fill our plates with rice, pasta, potatoes, bread, foods that have only been available to humans for - at most - 10,000 years and stop eating saturated fats that we have been eating for aeons.
I don't want to say my specific health issue, but I was told by an NHS consultant to reduce fat in my diet, because of course she didn't believe I ate low fat. However, I have since found that my biggest risk factors for my condition, beyond family history, is visceral obesity and blood glucose. I have definitely reduced the former, and must have reduced the latter though I haven't been retested.
Nothing wrong with eating butter with lots of things for the rest of my life (especially the sort with salt crystals in it)😋 but I suspect the putting butter in TWs morning coffee was actually a bullet coffee which is A thing, and very nice it is too, although it can be an acquired taste.
Just looked him up and found out this: (He) is currently setting up an independent commission into tackling obesity and stemming the rise of type 2 diabetes. And he did the Keto diet! Our new hero????
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how about just cooking all the rice and freezing it in portions for your son or visitors. I know I wouldn't be tempted just by cold rice! Although thinking about it, I also have rice (wholegrain of course!) in the cupboard. It has good best by dates (not that I bother with them much) so I'll use them as and when for hubby and visitors. 
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