If this works for me I'll be on it for life.
The theory is that rather than being fuelled by a carbohydrate>glucose>insulin path you're fuelled by fat>ketones.
I'm not a mouse but :
Clicky.
I came across this book
Why we get fat (available
here if you have no morals) and the author makes a claim that stands things on their head.
We don't get fat because we overeat, we overeat because we're fat. I've spent an awful lot of time counting calories, and attempting to eat healthy low fat food. I ride thousands of kms every year. And I'm fat. I'm so obese I'd get free gym membership from my GP if I lived in Stowmarket. I have no other 'bad health' markers, I have ridiculously low blood pressure, a RHR under 50 and have the 'right' waist-hip ratio.
I religiously counted in and out and it didn't work- reducing my calorie consumption makes very little difference to my weight, it makes me feel grumpy and deprived and living on a net 1200kcal I lose less than 300g a week. How much are you supposed to exercise? 90 minutes a day wasn't enough. And yes, I did do (girly light) weights.
We know that hormones regulate most things. Turns out appetite is one of those. Endocrinologists know this- thyroid isn't the only metabolic regulator.
How about this: when you eat carbohydrates your body produces insulin which stores glucose as fat. And you keep feeding yourself carbs, and you keep producing fat. and it never gets used because you ride for hours, and you keep feeding yourself carbs, otherwise you bonk. So you use all the 'loose' glucose, all the glucose from your liver, and you never break into those stores, you stay fat.
When you reduce those carbs your body has to do something else. So you starve the glucose out, and you start to make ketones instead. Instead of having 2000 calories of glucose swilling around, you have 40,000 calories of fat. I probably have even more than that. And you can use it now, you don't bonk, you have a continuous slow burn of fats turned into ketones that run you.
There's a world of science to back up this theory, there's races of hunter-gatherers who never ate carbs and lived just fine on fat, and (god help us) there're dozens of Americans blogging about it. One thing we do know for sure is: when you stop, all the lost weight comes back. So if this works for me, I'll be on it for ever.
It's not easy. But I'm an all-or-nothing kind of gal and 'don't eat carbs' is easier for me than moderation in all things.
I don't miss cake. I don't miss bread, or rice, or pasta. I miss fruit, and vegetables. (I
am eating veg before you all go shouting 'SCURVY!
1' at me, but salad, spinach and brassicas are no substitute for carrots and swede and sweet potato, and do you know how many carbohydrates there are in tomatoes? hmm?).
It's early days. Ask me again in 6 months, and I might well say 'it was bollocks, didn't work'. But I might be 15kg lighter on a diet of cheese & spinach omelettes for tea and double cream for breakfast, and become a real evangelist.
I appear to have written an essay. Sorry. Have some footnotes:
1Apparently a diet low in carb, high in fat, and with moderate protein has a much lower requirement for vitamin C. Inuits ate nothing but pemmican (mashed meat & fat) for months and didn't get scurvy. You only need the vitamin C when you have all those carbs to deal with.
Apparently.References:
Taubes,
Attia,
Volek & Phinney,
Lustig.