Worried about low carb/high protein diet

[Hippa]

Hello all, I have lost a stone since beginning my determined effort to lose weight and get myself out of the ‘obese’ BMI category (I started in October last year). I am now comfortably within the ‘overweight’ category but do not seem to be able to lose any more! I am careful with calories and I do some exercise (I am not able to do too much due to a mild disability). I experience bloating after eating sometimes and am currently experimenting with a gluten free diet to see if that helps.

I do know, from past experience, that a very low carb diet yields rapid and very good results. However, I hesitate due to increasingly literature outlining health concerns linked to a high protein diet. I find it alarming to read about kidney problems and the dangers of cutting out a whole food group. So I carry on with eating less carbs but good ones - brown rice, oats etc. I am not, however, able to shift the scales from around 12 and a half stones! I would have thought that, after four months, the scales would move a little bit more - they have been stuck at that weight for two months now.

[IndigoBlue61]

Low carbohydrate does not have to be high protein. Have a look at the LCHF forum here healthunlocked.com/lchf-diet and also the Daily Diary where you will see our members eat and get help with your meal planning

[TheAwfulToad Visitor]

I think you've got the wrong end of the stick somewhere ... a low-carb diet should add fat, not protein, as a replacement energy source. Humans are very bad at using protein for energy. Yes, you can lose weight that way, but most people find they can't stick with it because it makes them feel terrible. A LCHF (low-carb high-fat) diet is mostly vegetables, with a strong emphasis on whole, unprocessed foods. Fats are sourced from minimally-processed ingredients like meat, eggs, cheese/butter/yoghurt, olive oil, and coconut oil. In practice it looks a bit like a "Mediterranean diet", except with less pasta and bread and a wider range of fats.

Try not to read articles in the press about nutrition. Most of them are written by people who are just repeating some stuff they heard on the grapevine (sometimes with their own made-up embellishments) and who have neither the qualifications nor the sense to assess what they're saying in the context of known physiology.

Generally there's a tiny grain of truth buried in there somewhere, but it's blown out of all proportion. For example, if you already have kidney disease then a very-high-protein diet may eventually result in kidney failure; but cases traced to that cause are vanishingly rare, and as noted, low-carb diets are not high in protein anyway. Brown rice and oats are no better or worse than white carbs from an obesity/glucose-control point of view: your body's response to them is almost identical. The only (purported) advantage is that they come with some extra micronutrients and fibre ... which you could easily get from other sources.

If you'd like to try LCHF (low-carb high-fat), you could join the LCHF group, as Indigo mentioned, but you'll find that a lot of the people here are doing LCHF because they've discovered the same thing you have: calorie-counting (ie., "eating less and moving more") just doesn't work very well.

[Annekelly58]

I had some of the same concerns as you. Especially around the cholesterol levels. The diet itself seems to work if you stick with it. Good luck.

[Hidden]

I am starting to research the LCHF diet & cholesterol link myself. I don’t have a cholesterol problem myself & am zipping along on LCHF. But my husband has a history of blood issues, & while he’s love to lose his extra 2-3 stone, we absolutely have to get this right. Better a plump husband than a dead one. There appears to be emerging medical evidence from research in favour of LCHF - something to do with the size of the molecule. Big good, bad small. But as you can tell, I have not properly applied myself to this yet.

[Hippa]

Many thanks for your replies - it is a real dilemma for me, to be honest, and I am thinking it through.