LCHF- Low Carb / High-Healthy Fat lifestyle.

Jun 19, 2007
36,615
47,465
On the south side now
AFL Club
Hawthorn
Other Teams
nil
Your weight going up 1.5kgs, is that a positive or a negative for you? (Or neutral perhaps).
I was only 74kgs when I started so didn't really need to go up or down. Just tracked it out of general interest.

Would have tracked body fat % if I knew a reliable inexpensive way to do so, because I think that's changed pretty dramatically
 
Jun 19, 2007
36,615
47,465
On the south side now
AFL Club
Hawthorn
Other Teams
nil
100% spot on. Calorie counting is pointless on a low carb diet. The optimising nutrition link I posted is far more important. The nutrient density and quality of food is far more important.
i don't think it's pointless - some find it really empowering.

It's just the wrong mindset from my POV. All about restriction and control and it means you have to constantly assess each meal for it's numerical value. I don't have the headspace for that. Simple rules that don't require judgement are much easier for me to stick to and not cheat myself when I'm starting to crave.
 

saj_21

Cancelled
Melbourne Board Tipping Champion
Aug 30, 2007
9,004
6,155
AFL Club
Melbourne
Other Teams
Warney's IPL team!
I was only 74kgs when I started so didn't really need to go up or down. Just tracked it out of general interest.

Would have tracked body fat % if I knew a reliable inexpensive way to do so, because I think that's changed pretty dramatically

If your belt is getting tighter around the waist and your tshirt fuller across the chest/back and arms. You are winning!
 
Sep 27, 2012
28,076
55,166
Hawks heartland
AFL Club
Hawthorn
Other Teams
Bushrangers Tottenham Hotspur
I was only 74kgs when I started so didn't really need to go up or down. Just tracked it out of general interest.

Would have tracked body fat % if I knew a reliable inexpensive way to do so, because I think that's changed pretty dramatically

Fair enough.

I would be interested to hear about the mental side of things if you care to expand.

I am actually trying the carnivore (or zero carb) diet at the moment. Mainly because it seems to be good for autoimmune disease (which I have) and I also thought it might relieve another condition I have which I have had no joy curing/relieving with conventional medicine. It has it's drawbacks but it is soooo easy to implement! So far the signs are good as regards relieving my symptoms too. I haven't told anyone I'm on it though (except BigFooty now :$) because my family and friends would freak!
 
Last edited:
Jun 19, 2007
36,615
47,465
On the south side now
AFL Club
Hawthorn
Other Teams
nil
Fair enough.

I would be interested to hear about the mental side of things if you care to expand.

I am actually trying the carnivore (or zero carb) diet at the moment. Mainly because it seems to be good for autoimmune disease (which I have) and I also thought it might relieve another condition I have which I have had no joy curing/relieving with conventional medicine. It has it's drawbacks but it is soooo easy to implement! So far the signs are good as regards relieving my symptoms too. I haven't told anyone I'm on it though (except BF now :$) because my family and friends would freak!
The mental stuff was really interesting. Knowing that I'd tried to shift diet and exercise a number of times and not sustained meant I was going to take a different approach. Although it's partly fuelled by the thought that "I've always been pretty fit, but never had a visible six pack" - what I was really fuelled by was seeing the whole thing as an experiment.

I've been doing this for work a lot - applying innovation processes (not sticky notes and workshops) and treating everything as an experiment, I figured I could take the same approach with health and fitness. So I set those rules in my first post as the experiment conditions and once a week deliberately sat back and had a think about my health and fitness. I might lose weight, I might get strong, I might add weight, I might burn out mentally, I might sleep more - but the only way I was going to know if LCHF (my version) was going to work (increase health, tone, fitness, wellbeing) was to sustain it for a while and see what happens.

Sticking to the diet was the most difficult bit. Main challenges:
- cravings associated with rituals. Post work snacks on the way home. Smashing down burger rings and coke when I was stresssed. Beers with the boys, at networking events, etc.

- I needed things to be EASY. For the first few weeks I was making lunches for work but it killed me. So instead I've got about four options near work (blue bag, fig, spud bar, a place that does roast chicken and veg) and decided the $15 per day was worth it. Especailly with how much I was saving from those sneaky servo visits and nights out on the booze.

- Once I got the protein power, breakfast became smoothies. Again, emphasising quick and easy, I've got a daily smoothy made of spinach, yoghurt, blueberries, banana, natural peanut butter and protein powder. Super easy.

- Kids parties are HARD. (I have kids). Would always love picking at the s**t food. Just had to deny myself that pleasure and load up on the fruit plate if it was there.

- Restaurants are hard. Amazing how SWEET vietnamese and chinese food tastes when you hardly have sugar. Most restaurants have at least one option that fits.

- Socialising took a while to get used to. I do a lot of work dinners and that used to always be 2 beers at least, and a big rich feed. (Damn they shove a lot of sugar and salt in every meal). The trick was not to AVOID socialising. Just pick the best thing on the menu. As I said, most places have an option but sometimes you just have to go to the least worst option. There was one night recently when I caught up with the boys (we all have a really messy group of mates, and that's these guys) and I drank water while they sank piss and I still had an awesome time, just went home at 10 while they kicked on. Was a turning point.

- I watched a TONNE of Jeff Cavalier Youtube videos. Helped me stay motivated on the exercise front. He's also got some good things to say about diet and nutrition.

- When ever I broke a rule I made sure that I didn't keep breaking it. Didn't beat myself up. Just reminded myself that 2 healthy meals in a day is better than none and counted how many days until cheat day.

But - I'm only 12 weeks in (closer to 14 actually). I want this to be permanent, but really enjoying it. Have just learned heaps about how food and exercise affect me for better and worse.
 
May 8, 2007
48,686
71,371
AFL Club
Richmond
Let just preface this by saying not trying to change your point of view or argue who is right and who is wrong just a counter opinion to yours.

Depending on the individuals goals counting calories or having a knowledge of your calorie intake is important particularly for weight loss.

You can still overeat good foods, mind you it is harder than loading up on junk food. And removing/severely limiting a food group can help control overall calories.

I’ve always liked the analogy of eating non processed “clean” foods is like giving your body premium unleaded eating junk food is like e10 and a mix is like regular unleaded.

But I’ve always said diet and training is totally individual thing. You guys not eating doesn’t affect my life and vice versa. If you enjoy it and it helps achieve your goals then why change
Exactly, thats why the link I posted is far better than any bs app (like my fitness pal) that people get hung up on. Apps are ok for the initial period, but learning the basics of nutritional density is far more important and beneficial
 
Sep 27, 2012
28,076
55,166
Hawks heartland
AFL Club
Hawthorn
Other Teams
Bushrangers Tottenham Hotspur
The mental stuff was really interesting. Knowing that I'd tried to shift diet and exercise a number of times and not sustained meant I was going to take a different approach. Although it's partly fuelled by the thought that "I've always been pretty fit, but never had a visible six pack" - what I was really fuelled by was seeing the whole thing as an experiment.

I've been doing this for work a lot - applying innovation processes (not sticky notes and workshops) and treating everything as an experiment, I figured I could take the same approach with health and fitness. So I set those rules in my first post as the experiment conditions and once a week deliberately sat back and had a think about my health and fitness. I might lose weight, I might get strong, I might add weight, I might burn out mentally, I might sleep more - but the only way I was going to know if LCHF (my version) was going to work (increase health, tone, fitness, wellbeing) was to sustain it for a while and see what happens.

Sticking to the diet was the most difficult bit. Main challenges:
- cravings associated with rituals. Post work snacks on the way home. Smashing down burger rings and coke when I was stresssed. Beers with the boys, at networking events, etc.

- I needed things to be EASY. For the first few weeks I was making lunches for work but it killed me. So instead I've got about four options near work (blue bag, fig, spud bar, a place that does roast chicken and veg) and decided the $15 per day was worth it. Especailly with how much I was saving from those sneaky servo visits and nights out on the booze.

- Once I got the protein power, breakfast became smoothies. Again, emphasising quick and easy, I've got a daily smoothy made of spinach, yoghurt, blueberries, banana, natural peanut butter and protein powder. Super easy.

- Kids parties are HARD. (I have kids). Would always love picking at the s**t food. Just had to deny myself that pleasure and load up on the fruit plate if it was there.

- Restaurants are hard. Amazing how SWEET vietnamese and chinese food tastes when you hardly have sugar. Most restaurants have at least one option that fits.

- Socialising took a while to get used to. I do a lot of work dinners and that used to always be 2 beers at least, and a big rich feed. (Damn they shove a lot of sugar and salt in every meal). The trick was not to AVOID socialising. Just pick the best thing on the menu. As I said, most places have an option but sometimes you just have to go to the least worst option. There was one night recently when I caught up with the boys (we all have a really messy group of mates, and that's these guys) and I drank water while they sank piss and I still had an awesome time, just went home at 10 while they kicked on. Was a turning point.

- I watched a TONNE of Jeff Cavalier Youtube videos. Helped me stay motivated on the exercise front. He's also got some good things to say about diet and nutrition.

- When ever I broke a rule I made sure that I didn't keep breaking it. Didn't beat myself up. Just reminded myself that 2 healthy meals in a day is better than none and counted how many days until cheat day.

But - I'm only 12 weeks in (closer to 14 actually). I want this to be permanent, but really enjoying it. Have just learned heaps about how food and exercise affect me for better and worse.

Thanks that's interesting. I am finding the mental part is worse than the actual diet, old habits and all that.
 
Nov 12, 2006
3,965
731
Subiaco, Perth WA
AFL Club
West Coast
Other Teams
Subiaco FC
LCHF is definitely an interesting concept for me, especially from an adhere point of view. At my leanest (when I was 20) I was around the 78-82kg mark and militant with low carb, got into powerlifting and just ate everything I could, 98kg within 18 months. Stopped lifting and concentrated on BJJ and MT for a few years, drank too much and hovered around 105kg for the last 5 years.

I've stuck with a 1L 'health shake' of frozen fruit, kale and whey as pretty much my only source of carbs since the middle of June and gone nuts with as much eggs, bacon, chicken as felt like as well as getting back into the start of 5/3/1 and plenty of accessory lifting.

I'm definitely leaner, the scale says 6kg but I feel like its more. my fitness pal is showing 3 days in the last 6 weeks where I went over 2k calories, I eat when I'm hungry and usually sit on 1500-1800 per day.

I would say it's been worth it so far, it has only been a short amount of time, I don't see a reason to change it any time soon though.

Tapped out not long after this post. TL;DR version - performance dropped horribly with such low calories as the weeks rolled on.

I preface this by saying I prepare almost all of my own food - I make my own yogurt, cook all of my own meals, bake my own sourdough etc, I take a lot of pride and joy in my meal prep. You will almost never see me eating something prepackaged or fast food, my damage over the last 7 years is all around brewing and social drinking.

On adherence - I lost interest in eating with low carb, to the point I was regularly hitting 1300cal/day. I genuinely found a dislike for eating the high fat food and in no way could I see myself maintaining this diet.

This might be good in the short term for weight loss but what if you're like me, 186cm, 99kg and want the best out of my cardio and lifting? In no way could I see myself hitting 3-3.2k calories when trying to gain lean mass (my maintenance is around 2600 cals). Carbs have a lot of difficulty in getting stored as fat (de novo lipogenesis from carbohydrate overfeeding in healthy adults compared to fat overfeeding, plenty of studies on this) and are tremendous value from a protein sparing effect and in maintaining muscle glycogen and the added benefit from fibre and nutrients from fruit and whole grains.

Removing alcohol has been the biggest thing to come from the LCHF experiment, I recover better from the gym, liver isn't being taxed, less calories being consumed and fat has more opportunity to be oxidised. My priority now that I've hit my goal weight (half on LCHF, the other on 'whole food' 10% calorie restriction) is to build muscle mass and increase BMR and for that I need a calorie surplus.

Will I try LC in the future? Maybe. I would rather go with a starting point of 200g of protein, 400g of carbs on maintenance and then remove 125g of carbs per day on a cut while maintaining fibre than to totally remove a food group. Over the last few weeks my macros have leveled out to ~40/30/30 with protein the only one I've been trying to hit so certainly not low fat.

I'm yet to see a study where controlling for protein and calories that keto is better at anything, that in the non-obese that the body has an issue with insulin or that in healthy, trained individuals that keto would in any way improve performance unless you were training for ultra marathons.
 
Jun 19, 2007
36,615
47,465
On the south side now
AFL Club
Hawthorn
Other Teams
nil
Tapped out not long after this post. TL;DR version - performance dropped horribly with such low calories as the weeks rolled on.

I preface this by saying I prepare almost all of my own food - I make my own yogurt, cook all of my own meals, bake my own sourdough etc, I take a lot of pride and joy in my meal prep. You will almost never see me eating something prepackaged or fast food, my damage over the last 7 years is all around brewing and social drinking.

On adherence - I lost interest in eating with low carb, to the point I was regularly hitting 1300cal/day. I genuinely found a dislike for eating the high fat food and in no way could I see myself maintaining this diet.

This might be good in the short term for weight loss but what if you're like me, 186cm, 99kg and want the best out of my cardio and lifting? In no way could I see myself hitting 3-3.2k calories when trying to gain lean mass (my maintenance is around 2600 cals). Carbs have a lot of difficulty in getting stored as fat (de novo lipogenesis from carbohydrate overfeeding in healthy adults compared to fat overfeeding, plenty of studies on this) and are tremendous value from a protein sparing effect and in maintaining muscle glycogen and the added benefit from fibre and nutrients from fruit and whole grains.

Removing alcohol has been the biggest thing to come from the LCHF experiment, I recover better from the gym, liver isn't being taxed, less calories being consumed and fat has more opportunity to be oxidised. My priority now that I've hit my goal weight (half on LCHF, the other on 'whole food' 10% calorie restriction) is to build muscle mass and increase BMR and for that I need a calorie surplus.

Will I try LC in the future? Maybe. I would rather go with a starting point of 200g of protein, 400g of carbs on maintenance and then remove 125g of carbs per day on a cut while maintaining fibre than to totally remove a food group. Over the last few weeks my macros have leveled out to ~40/30/30 with protein the only one I've been trying to hit so certainly not low fat.

I'm yet to see a study where controlling for protein and calories that keto is better at anything, that in the non-obese that the body has an issue with insulin or that in healthy, trained individuals that keto would in any way improve performance unless you were training for ultra marathons.
Alcohol makes a huge difference. Dry July was a massive boost for me and OcSober seems to be having a smilar boost.
 

raskolnikov

Cancelled
10k Posts 30k Posts Wordler Werewolf Player Essendon Player Sponsor 2021 - Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti and Archie Perkins Essendon Player Sponsor 2020 Essendon Player Sponsor 2019 Song Contest Winner - 5+ Rounds
Apr 1, 2002
36,677
36,723
Cap Coast
AFL Club
Essendon
Other Teams
Gold Coast Suns
Fair enough.

I would be interested to hear about the mental side of things if you care to expand.

I am actually trying the carnivore (or zero carb) diet at the moment. Mainly because it seems to be good for autoimmune disease (which I have) and I also thought it might relieve another condition I have which I have had no joy curing/relieving with conventional medicine. It has it's drawbacks but it is soooo easy to implement! So far the signs are good as regards relieving my symptoms too. I haven't told anyone I'm on it though (except BigFooty now :$) because my family and friends would freak!

Can confirm the family/friends freaking when you go carnivore.
 

raskolnikov

Cancelled
10k Posts 30k Posts Wordler Werewolf Player Essendon Player Sponsor 2021 - Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti and Archie Perkins Essendon Player Sponsor 2020 Essendon Player Sponsor 2019 Song Contest Winner - 5+ Rounds
Apr 1, 2002
36,677
36,723
Cap Coast
AFL Club
Essendon
Other Teams
Gold Coast Suns
Are you still carnivore?

No. Just did it for a one month trial. There were some benefits but I found it very restrictive. It may be something that I do on a one month basis now and then but not permanently.
 
Apr 8, 2006
39,890
41,105
2014 or 2008. Probably 2008.
AFL Club
Hawthorn
Other Teams
Dallas Cowboys and Texas Longhorns
If you're trying to cut body fat down towards single digits you need to be tracking macros and calories

I agree with that. Earlier this year got to circa 12% bodyfat according to a DEXA scan. This was achieved by not counting calories on a LCHF diet though watching what I eat. I thought this is too easy and started snacking more on almonds and sugar free chocolate between meals. 12 weeks later I got another scan and bodyfat had gone up to circa 13%. Everything else (i.e. training and meals had stayed the same). I subsequently cut out snacking between meals (between 6 to 7 a day mind you) and whilst I haven't had another scan yet, I can see the difference. I guess for most people though who just want to get to 15% - 20% range they don't need to count calories and just need to be smart with food choices.
 
Jun 19, 2007
36,615
47,465
On the south side now
AFL Club
Hawthorn
Other Teams
nil
For the last week I've been wearing a fitbit and counting calories.
I know earlier I said counting calories is a ******* hassle (and it is) but I thought I would try and start getting a view on my macro intake.

I haven't consciously changed my diet since tracking calories, but I have often thought "cbf entering that into the Fitbit app so I won't eat it". Usually it's the last few bites of the kids dinner that they haven't eaten.

According to the app I'm running at about 1000 calorie deficit a day and my carb intake (despite not eating bread, rice or pasta) is up around 40%.

Anyone else struggle to eat the sheer amount of protein it takes to put on lean muscle?
 

EasternTiger

Norm Smith Medallist
Oct 15, 2007
7,914
11,539
Socialist Leper Colony
AFL Club
Richmond
The can of tuna with chilli oil I'm getting stuck into has 24g of protein per 100g. I really should cut out condiments and switch to springwater.

The John West Smoked oysters are 20 g protein per 100.

185g can of tuna plus 85g oysters.

61 grams of protein for $6. No salad.:cool:
 
Apr 8, 2006
39,890
41,105
2014 or 2008. Probably 2008.
AFL Club
Hawthorn
Other Teams
Dallas Cowboys and Texas Longhorns
I find tuna hard to eat regularly. My fish of choice is grilled salmon - high in fat too. I find the easiest foods to eat day in day out for me are red meat, macadamias, vegetables and eggs. I eat organic eggs, mince and steak (either scotch or porterhouse). Just don't seem to tire from these (chicken and tuna can be a real chore).
 

EasternTiger

Norm Smith Medallist
Oct 15, 2007
7,914
11,539
Socialist Leper Colony
AFL Club
Richmond
You know you're on to something when people following a particular diet are complaining about how difficult it is to eat enough of it.

I still crack up reading this diet from 1984.

The Maximum-Definition Diet:

Breakfast:
Eggs (no limit)
Meat (any kind, no limit)

Lunch:
Same as breakfast

Dinner:
Same as lunch

Although the list of suggested supplements would choke a billy goat.
 

raskolnikov

Cancelled
10k Posts 30k Posts Wordler Werewolf Player Essendon Player Sponsor 2021 - Anthony McDonald-Tipungwuti and Archie Perkins Essendon Player Sponsor 2020 Essendon Player Sponsor 2019 Song Contest Winner - 5+ Rounds
Apr 1, 2002
36,677
36,723
Cap Coast
AFL Club
Essendon
Other Teams
Gold Coast Suns
My meal plan at the moment is pretty much:

Breakfast - bacon, eggs and spinach, Keto coffee

Snack - Lindt 90% (wish I could get 99% in my town but I haven't been able to find it)

Lunch - Caesar Salad

Snack - Almonds or Macadamias

Before Gym - Protein shake

Dinner - Protein with green vegies

Snack - Greek Yoghurt and Berries
 
Back