Pros:
Steady energy flow all day.
No need for bonk rations on audaxes. In fact, food for fuel is a complete non-issue on rides.
Improved appetite management: An end to feeling at the mercy of food.
Currently, I can forget about food for hours at a time. I can eat only at mealtimes and be fine with that, whatever I'm doing. Keeping under 2,000 calories eaten is easy. I eat breakfast, or not. I can skip breakfast, lunch, or tea, if I'm not hungry, and sometimes I'm not hungry . There's no compensatory eating later if I do eat less at a meal.
+1
I generally eat more protein than is recommended and this is probably a contributory factor to the lack-of-weightloss, but I can't bring myself to eat cream or butter rather than cheese. The bodybuilders reckon you need more protein if you're to build muscle and lose fat, and I'd rather do that than not. :shrug:
I also have the slowest metabolism in the world- me & the Galapogas Giant Tortoises, and I'm starting to wonder if there's anything I could do to attain the weightloss that should be theoretically possible given the calories in/calories out I process.
I'll be sticking to it for the foreseeable. Doing without cake, biscuits and bread is much easier than you think it'll be. And alcohol hasn't been a regular feature of my diet for years, so I barely notice that's gone.
I hear you. My experience though is that FAT is the key to success. Avoiding things like cream and butter may be closing a door that, if open, could kick-start and maintain your weight loss?
So. My personal experience with this.
November 2012 onwards is the third sustained period of low-carb eating that I've done in the past 15 years. Every time, my debilitating (and I do mean debilitating) IBS symptoms just melt away.
The first time (1999-2000), I went from 11.5 stone to 9.5 stone with absolutely no exercise - I was working full time and studying for a degree and had no time for or interest in doing anything that might involve sweating (eeugh!). Then I got married... to a controlling sort of man who was a body builder... and I decided to "learn to cook". In 6 months I put all the weight back on and was a complete mess.
The second time (2009-2010, I was a cycling fool and did lose weight (from 12.5 stone to about 11) but I wasn't really serious about eating low-carb for the long term.
The third time (as Adam said, from last November) followed 6 months of absolute IBS
HELL. I was desperate to stop it. Had all sorts of hospital tests done. Tried a number of different pills and special diets. In the end though, I knew from experience that low carb had worked in the past -- not just helped, but
stopped it dead -- so, in the face of my GP's initial protestations, I decided to go back to low carb eating.
It had been so long since I'd read anything properly serious about low carb diets, I decided to go back to basics. I read the last edition of Atkins' New Diet Revolution, which was written after Dr Atkins' death by a team of 3 doctors, 2 of whom were Volek & Phinney. I noticed a definite shift in emphasis on a number of key principles from the 1999 edition of that book, so I set off on some Internet searching that quickly led to Volek & Phinney's LIVING book. Worth mentioning that by this time I had already been on a low carb diet for several weeks and feeling much better but was starting to wonder how this was going to work (what to eat? how much? when?) once I started up again with long rides in the spring. LIVING gave me a pretty good inkling of what the answer might be -- and PERFORMANCE confirmed it. It's all, as someone said up-thread, remarkably simple. And much EASIER to do than all the carb loading and glycogen-depletion-avoidance techniques as per "accepted wisdom".
I have to say, I don't feel "full of beans" as Chris describes. I do remember feeling that way the first time I was on the Atkins diet. On the other hand, I am now so much more active than I was then. And I've learned I can count on the energy I need being there when I need it. Every time I'm confronted with a need for extra/more energy, even at short notice (e.g. coming round a corner to be confronted with a bl**dy great mountain!), the energy I need is somehow there. I don't know if I've ever had a "top end"! But I am a much better climber this year than I was last year... a lot more power in my legs and a lot less huffing and puffing. Having lost some weight will have helped that, but I know that it's my body's more efficient way of using fuel -- the right fuel -- that makes it happen.
Like fboab, there are foods I miss. I allow myself occasional very small portions of mash potato. And ice cream. I could miss fruit if I let myself but it *always* triggers an IBS symptom of one kind or another, to a greater or lesser degree, and the thought of that is enough to keep me honest! The only food I get honest to God cravings for is chocolate but I've realised these are completely emotional cravings, not at all physical, so I have decided to avoid chocolate altogether. Completely teetotal. Best that way.
Hope this is of some help to someone.