Hi peonypetal,
I am in my 50’s , have been cal counting at times throughout my life while also eating carbs. – I started on the BSD in October 2017, I am down 90lbs, and feeling much fitter, and have more energy. I did multiple rounds back to back of BSD which initially had positive results on the scales. In April/May/June the scales stopped changing but the inch changes continued. My work load in August is hectic, and work is physically active so I have spent the month continuing to eat low carb but not counting calories. I still have a spare tyre and areas of wobby skin so over the last month I have been thinking about where I go from here. –
When I started on this WoE I was thinking in terms of a diet, follow the BSD long enough to get the weight off, and then I can go back to eating as I used to, over time I have realised that I feel so much better eating low carb and want to continue generally eating low carb for the rest of my life. There will be exceptions, the occasional ice cream on a day out, or the occasional piece of cake at a celebration. Life is for living after all. However, there have been periods for me where according to the apps the difference between cals in and cals out were often in the region of 14000 per week and yet I wasn’t seeing the level of fat burning that I would expect.
I have spent a lot of time reading about the science behind this idea, and the work of experts on supporting people in resetting their insulin “system” (I would particularly recommend the work of Dr Bikman, and Dr Fung). I have come up with some ideas for changes on what I am doing and thought those considering going longer than one cycle of BSD may find them helpful.
– In the BSD book there isn’t any mention on targets on carbs, but the research all suggests that the magic happens when you get insulin levels right down. Depending on how hooked you are on carbs that may be something you do in stages, for example get rid of all the “big whites” bread, rice, pasta, sugar etc, and once you are comfortable tweak your diet further by using one of the apps like fatsecret or myfitnesspal to log everything you eat including levels of carbs and set a target of 20g a day. – You are aiming to be in ketosis. As a vegetarian its difficult for me to get my carb intake down to under 20g I tend to be closer to 30g. Once I have more me time in September, I plan to spend more time looking at vegie keto recipe books.
There are a number of us on the forum who because we had a lot of weight to loose and were enjoying seeing the scales move decided after the first round to continue with multiple rounds of 800 cals a day. My concern is that too long on the 800 calories will result in your body adapting to being more efficient making it difficult to maintain the weigh loss in the long term. There has been some research into participants in a program called The Greatest Loser and they found that their metabolism slowed down substantially more than just the change in calories needed by their smaller bodies. That change in metabolism is because they were not on a low carb diet and because their body adapted to the change in the number of calories available. – The question is, if you are low carb does your body adapt if you follow the same eating patterns every day. The team of people working with Dr Fung who have practical experience of coaching a lot of people who are Insulin Resistant or T2D to turn their health around suggest recommend not following the same eating patterns each day.
Look at it this way, using figures to make the maths easy. If you burn 1600 calories a day and take in 1000 calories a day from a keto diet then over the course of a week you will have 7 x 600 = 4200 calories of fat from your body to make up the difference. Alternatively if during your week you eat keto, but have a mixture of days of eating 1600 calories or 600 or 1000 each day you can still have the 4200 difference in calories over the course of the week but can also mix it up so that your body is less likely to adapt to a low calorie diet. – It takes more will power of course than applying the same limit to the amount you eat each day, but I think its the safer option if you have a lot of weight to loose so plan to be eating this way for a long time. – Instead of following the 5:2 diet, make it a keto – 4:3 to keep the calorie deficit high enough to achieve the rate of weight loss you want.