This is partly a response to the conversation between Lerwick1 and IndigoBlue61 (which I was unable to reply to in the Daily Diary thread), but mostly it's just a heads-up for those of you dipping your toes into the low-carb waters - and there seems to be more and more of you lately!
Meals need fat in them
One of the biggest psychological roadblocks on your route to weight loss is the idea that dietary fat is the root of all evil. There are two parts to the low-carb equation: the LC bit means what it says, but the HF (high fat) part is much misunderstood, and much maligned by those whose careers depend on keeping the paying punters trapped in a cycle of dieting and despair.
Fat doesn't make you fat, and it doesn't cause heart disease - at least not in the simplistic sense that dietitians talk about it. It's true that a diet of old-fashioned processed junk - which tends to have a lot of grease in it - is not good for you. However, it turns out that modern processed junk - which is full of fat substitutes - is still not good for you. Whoever would have thunk it? The basic reason is that a junk-food diet is full of refined carbs, sugar, and chemicals, and it's those that are the main cause of the problems.
You might also want to ponder on this conundrum: if fat is so terribly bad for you, why does your body choose to build its energy storage reserves mostly from palmitic acid (a saturated fatty acid)? It seems a bit unlikely, does it not, that Nature would have come up with such a wrongheaded solution?
So you don't need to be afraid of fat; and this is important, because when you delete the carbs from your diet, you need to keep your body fuelled up. Otherwise, you're just running on fumes. The alternative fuel is fat (not protein - humans are not good at using protein for fuel).
Unfortunately, after five decades of hectoring from the powers-that-be, us Brits have mostly forgotten how to use fat in our meals. We've become accustomed to fat-free stodge. So switching to LCHF is not just a matter of keeping the same familiar meals with the carbs removed (or trimmed down), because there would be literally nothing left. It involves a complete re-think of the way you cook and eat. You'll find that your meals have a lot more vegetables in them, they're a lot tastier, and they're filling. You don't need everything swimming in grease; you simply need to start using fattier cuts of meat (and learning to cook them!), and you need to use butter, minimally-processed oils, and naturally-fatty foods (eg., cheese) the way our ancestors used them. I can recommend carbdodging.com for some starter recipes - examples will be easier to follow than me rambling about it.
You don't need to eat less
Again, reams of nonsense have been written on the general theme of "eat less and exercise more". This doesn't work. If it did, humanity would have died out millennia ago. The reality is that when there's a food shortage (self-imposed or otherwise), your body adapts to it by retaining fat for as long as it possibly can, in order to keep you alive. True, you might see some transient weight loss for the first week or two of a "diet", but when your body's self-preservation instincts kick in, it will stop.
LCHF works by taking away your body's reason to store fat. Give it enough calories (in the form of dietary fat) and it'll discard those stored energy reserves.
You don't need to stay "keto"
Although some people swear by it, I've never seen any evidence of long-term benefits (except for people with T2 diabetes). The aim of 'keto' is to force your body to perform a rapid recalibration away from its dependence on carbs. For most people, carb cravings completely evaporate within a couple of weeks, and they can then let their carb intake rise naturally to a sensible level; 50-100g/day allows you to eat pretty much anything as long as you stay away from the big five: sugar, rice, bread, potatoes, and pasta. You'll carry on losing weight.
You might reasonably ask: can't I just go straight into the 50-100g range? If you're just moderately overweight and your don't regularly eat sweets and cakes, the answer is "maybe". Some people do it successfully. If, however, you struggle with "bingeing", you are seriously overweight, you get hungry between meals, or have been doing a low-fat diet for many years, the answer is "probably not". Going keto (<25g carbs/day) for two weeks is the painless way to get the results you want.
thank you. It was my birthday last week so I decided to make myself a birthday cake. It is delicious! It is evil though, having been made with white flour and sugar but I allow myself a small slice a day - haven't dared get on the scales this last week though. Has anyone got a 'miracle' cake that is made of coconut or almond flour? I meant to use Stevia leaf instead of sugar but forgot and what substitute is there for icing sugar when making butter cream icing? I could have used cream but that wouldn't have lasted so long?
And I do like baking! So tonight I put the remaining brownies in the food recycling. I need to rein myself back in again and break the habit of reaching for something in the cake tin every day
Is Low carb diet a risk for AF?
Low carb diet
Cutting carbs and weightloss 
Still trying to get my food balance right
