Counting and Measuring

[TheAwfulToad]

The dieticians love telling us to count this, measure that, eat certain portions of A, B and C, and drink X liters of water a day.

The underlying assumption is this: your body is a useless, malfunctioning contraption that can't be trusted to feed itself. But this cannot possibly be true. If it were, we would have died out before we even crawled out of the primeval slime. Feeding behaviour (or energy regulation, if you want to be technical about it) is so fundamental to life that even the most brainless organisms can do it. Even viruses can do it, and they're barely even alive. So where did it go wrong with humans?

Those of us who have stuck with low-carb for a while know from experience where it went wrong: processed foods and "low fat" diets, which seem to cause appetite disruption and metabolic derangement. Avoid those things, and you'll be fine. And "Avoid those things" allows for an extremely wide margin of eating behaviours.

But old habits die hard. The most frequent questions we get are along these lines : how many carbs should I eat? How much fat? How many calories? How many meals a day? What about my portion sizes?

With one proviso (avoid starchy ingredients and add fat where possible), the short answer is: whatever you feel like. Hand back control to your appetite. It knows what it's doing. Or, at least, it will relearn, once you start giving it proper food instead of synthetic substitutes.

Certainly it's worth keeping tabs on things for the first few days, because many people find they acquire an instinctive feel for what's best avoided, and what low-carb ingredients suit them better, by checking macro content. It can be intellectually interesting to see your calorie intake fall as your internal mechanisms drop out of gimbal lock. But if you find yourself counting things for more than a couple of weeks, it's time to take your training wheels off. It might be a little scary at first, but then it's a whole lot of fun.

[moreless]

I couldn't agree more!

[cheritorrox]

Hmmm .... totally agree with overall message, but I think there's a comfort in counting macros which may need more than a couple of weeks! Especially until fat adapted and/or if trying to do 30 or less carbs to kick start (or re-start!)

[TheAwfulToad Ambassador in reply to cheritorrox]

Yeah, Subtle_badger makes a similar point. There is of course a learning curve, and different people will do things in their own good time. Perhaps my "two weeks" timescale is a little optimistic, but everyone should have the ultimate goal of just trusting their bodies to do the right thing.

I suppose I was also addressing those questions of the form : "OMG am I eating too much X? I'm sure I am, and it has so many calories because it's full of fat". The answer might be "even if you are, it doesn't matter - you're going to lose weight regardless, and your body will eventually get sick of consuming too much X".

[cheritorrox in reply to TheAwfulToad]

Yeah get what u say .... been there and done that to lose the weight but any current struggles are with full knowledge of how I shouldn't be doing it... it's almost (ridiculously) like a kid being told "don't do that" (in my head) which of course means you do it doubly!

Willpower and sense WILL return! (hopefully soon!!!!! )

[PandQs]

That makes so much sense as a blindingly obvious truth. The unfortunate thing is that you're not going to make much money from promoting it as a diet 🤣

[Fruitandnutcase]

Glad you said that. When I see comments like that I always think ‘Oh gosh, I never count calories’. I just avoid bread, biscuits, cakes, potatoes, rice and veg that grow underground and that sort of carbs and get my carbs from green veg.

LCHF is so simple once you know where the carbs are hiding - often in so called ‘healthy’ food and the Carbs and Cals book shows you the portion size you (I) should be aiming for

[Hidden in reply to Fruitandnutcase]

I agree wholeheartedly but have been known to look up the carbs in Senna tablets! 🙄

[Fruitandnutcase in reply to Hidden]

🤣😂🤣😂

[Hidden in reply to Fruitandnutcase]

So true. Your avoid list is just like mine. There's so much of the supermarket that I never see these days and I don't miss it. It really is a simple lifestyle to follow. No counting. No measuring. Just eating fresh food according to what my body wants/needs.

[Subtle_badger]

I found it useful to keep tabs on my food for the first month or so. I was still restricting calories then, but I was also monitoring my carbs. I learnt a lot about carbs in for during that month. My favourite was a day I was eating mostly animal products and leafy veg, but my carbs were much higher than expected. It turns out mussels are 18% carbs, the sneaky blighters.

Now I just do a quick Google "turnip carbs" (less than mussels!!) and the food goes the yes or no list. Or if I see a recipe I like, I will enter all the ingredients ingredients in an app to see how many carbs per serving it is. Then it is yes, no or...i can use the app to tweak the ingredients to remove some of the carbs.

[cheritorrox in reply to Subtle_badger]

Sometimes we have to check things out ... er every San Miguel is 12.2 carbs (out of interest a 00 one is 18!) ... doesn't stop me drinking it (esp under current circs) but at least I know!!

[Missdoubleyou]

Bread, pasta etc make me hungry. Physically hungry with tummy rumbling etc. It had nothing to do with how much else I had eaten that day. I’ve cut out bread, pasta, rice and potatoes and I haven’t heard my tummy rumble since. I know from putting what I was eating in to MyFitnessPal for a couple of weeks that I am eating far less calories.