All the advice on losing weight recommends increasing fibre. If I eat fibre I get crippling gut cramps, wind, constipation, fatigue and bloating.
I can find no advice on how to lose weight without increasing fibre intake.
I have a BMI which is just into the overweight area (by about 7lb) but my waist is 38" putting me in the danger zone. All my weight is belly and bust!
I've tried cutting calories but find I have to eat next to nothing if I avoid foods which cause me issues. If I eat 1400 calories of what I can eat I am starving to the point of lightheaded and loud rumbles!!
I do HIIT workouts daily and walk for an hour every day.
I'm really struggling.
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Hello. I can sympathise with how you’re feeling. The best diet I have found that works and totally eliminates all the symptoms you described, is a low carb diet.
It is not unhealthy and will leave you feeling cleansed whilst shifting excess weight. It also stabilises blood sugar levels by taking away the spikes caused by carbs.
Most of the carbs we eat are processed stuff that contain flour that becomes gloop in our gut. How can we be expected to process that?! It gives us the cramps, bloating, wind and makes us feel sluggish. Steer away from bread, pasta, cakes, biscuits, potatoes and rice. There are countless alternatives.
Like much of the "healthy eating" advice out there, the blather about fibre is mostly just that ... blather.
The fibre superstition arose from some work done by Dr T.L. Cleave in the 1950s, who found that sailors (who were eating a particularly dreadful version of the already-bad 1950s diet) often had debilitating constipation which could be cured with a daily spoonful of flaxseed fibre.
As they usually do with such things, the nutritionists overgeneralized Cleave's result, and pronounced that everyone should be eating X amount of fibre per day ... typically in the form of starchy carbohydrates like potatoes. However there is absolutely no evidence that lots of fibre is critical for human health as long as the diet is otherwise healthy. Nor does fibre have anything to do with maintaining a healthy weight.
It's broadly true that your gut biome likes indigestible carbs. They convert them into things we can absorb and use (eg., short-chain fatty acids) in exchange for a comfortable, protected environment. But if you're eating a varied diet with plenty of vegetables in it (LCHF/low-carb, which AliIRJ mentions, is loaded with fibrous veg) you'll be getting all the fibre you need.
Regarding the second part of your dilemma: yes, you can lose weight by starving yourself. That's where nutritionists get the idea that reducing calories causes weight loss, but it isn't that simple. If you give your body no other option but to burn through its fat and muscle for fuel (by not eating) then it will do so. However it will attempt all kinds of adaptive measures first before taking that last-ditch option, and most people can survive without any fat loss whatsoever on 1400kCal/day. We've had members here going down to about 900, 1000kCal and still seeing no fat loss. Which is completely to be expected.
Bottom line: eat less and move more doesn't work. Do a bit of reading around and understand how your body uses fat and glucose for energy. The key to maintaining a healthy weight (I won't say "weight loss" - that's a process, not a goal) is to give your body adequate amounts of fat and minimize its access to starch and sugar. Don't take any notice of the websites which proclaim this to be incredibly dangerous. We're talking about meals with lots of unprocessed whole foods (veg/meat/eggs/dairy): excellent sources of macronutrients, vitamins and micronutrients. The scaremongers are basically saying that the fresh food our ancestors thrived on for centuries is bad for you, and we should all be eating stuff extruded from factories.
All of the information you need about the forum can be found in Pinned Posts healthunlocked.com/nhsweigh... and I hope you'll be joining all the Events, Challenges and Clubs that we run, especially a weigh-in and the daily diary.
We've found active participation to be key to successful weight loss and, of course, it's a good way to get to know people, find inspiration and share support and encouragement.
Wishing you all the best
Hello! As Toad has said, you don’t have to eat fibre to lose weight. What you do need to do is cut out sugar, and the foods that turn into sugar in the bloodstream like potatoes, Pasta, white rice, & bread. Dr David Unwin & Dr Dan Maggs have videos explaining why & how this works. There are people who manage on zero fibre, they just eat meat & eggs. It’s called the carnivore diet. I am not sure I recommend that, and I personally do need to eat lots of fibre.
The things that typically cause all the unpleasant symptoms you describe are wheat, beans, pulses, broccoli, & tomatoes. If you do want to eat fibre, not for weight loss, but to keep everything moving, psyllium husk & linseeds, with lots of water, & tend not to cause bloating etc. This is because they do not get digested but pass through the gut, irritating it & therefore moving it. This is generally how it works but bodies behave differently.
Exercise is brilliant but it mostly does not prompt weight loss. You can’t out-exercise a bad diet. I have tried & have broken knees as a result.
Another of my pet peeves is official advice telling obese people to exercise more. This is a really, really bad idea. You can't maintain proper form and you're putting terrible stress on your joints. Gentle exercise is fine (eg., stationary cycling) but things like the Couch-to-5K programmes are wrongly targeted at overweight people, IMO.
All of the information you need about the forum can be found in Pinned Posts healthunlocked.com/nhsweigh... and I hope you'll be joining all the Events, Challenges and Clubs that we run, especially a weigh-in and the daily diary.
We've found active participation to be key to successful weight loss and, of course, it's a good way to get to know people, find inspiration and share support and encouragement.
Excellent advice from everyone. I have IBS and have been doing low carb high fat for a while now and walking an hour each day and have at last lost the 5lbs which I couldn’t seem to get rid of. I don’t feel the need to snack and have stopped buying anything which might tempt me to eat for the sake of it. Hope you find a way which works for you. Best of luck.
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