So the past two weeks, I have shifted my diet from pizza, beer 6 days a week, and fast food twice a day to a low carb focused eating plan. I have put together a meal plan each day and am really good at following it but some things like random cramps and stomach aches are starting to happen and curious if there is something I am missing or can do differently from people who have lost weight by this. Overall, my energy is through the roof and I have never felt better in just a short time while losing about 1lb a day (coming from 6’3" 265lbs w/ about 34% body fat)
Sunday - Thursday, I do not eat any gluten based foods like breads, processed foods, and focus on the 8 servings of fruits and veggies and high protein included grilled meats (chicken/salmon/lean red meat). I also do not drink beer and if anything, vodka on the rocks once during the 4 days. Friday and Saturday I allow my self to eat anything but after a week of eating clean, my motivation more and more is even dropping that stuff as often.
Breakfast ~ 830am Smoothie - One scoop GNC protein, 22 oz skim milk, 4-5 tbsp of peanut butter, ice
Morning Snack ~ 1030am 1 1/2 cups of fresh blueberries.
Lunch Grilled chicken/red meat/salmon - About a serving and a half (1 1/2 chicken breast, a 10-12oz steak cut up, 1 1/2 - 2 filet of salmon)
1 1/2 cups of a veggie (carrots, broccoli, etc)
Sometimes hard boiled egg or two
Afternoon Snack
1 1/2 cups of fresh strawberries
Dinner
Chicken/Steak/Salmon (same portions as lunch)
Salad greens
Grilled Veggies
Apple
I also take a one a day but I am not sure if I should shift to something more tailored to certain nutrients I am missing. I have been told I need to up my salt to help cramps and focus on at least 64 oz of water a day which I am even trying to increase.
While that diet definitely looks better than pizza and beers 6 days a week, it’s far from ideal if your goal is to burn fat. Fruit has a surprisingly high amount of carbs in it (the apple in particular, berries less so). If I were you I’d try and have some sort of egg for breakfast (frittata as Chris mentioned, or a few hard boiled eggs are also an easy option), swap the skim milk with full fat milk, and swap the fruit as snacks with nuts or beef jerky. A general rule of thumb is if it tastes sweet, it’s probably bad for you.
If your diet was that bad before then some adverse effects are to be expected for the first few weeks. If they persist then check with your doctor. Probably wouldnt be a bad idea to check with him anyway, drastic diet changes put a lot of stress on your body, but it’s worth it in the end!
Edit: salt intake definitely needs to be increased when you go super low carb (at my peak on the diet I was below 20G net carbs a day), for lunches at work I used to make a salad with spinach and some other vegetables and some chicken off one of those precooked rotisseries from the store. I’d then save the bones and use those to make broth which I’d drink a cup of a day, really helped with the sodium intake, plus theres a bunch of other healthy shit in there too.
@Motocrossx23 you probably had the migraines horrible because of all the delicious sweet shit your GF makes lol. I’m surprised you two don’t have diabeetus
High Fiber,High Fat (good fats),High Protein. Your choices don’t look all that bad,make sure you’re getting enough calories to stay right around a 1lb loss a week,just so you have wiggle room when you plateau.
@Event@Motocrossx23 I am following a diet similar to @boxxa 's after also being on the pizza/beer diet. What do you recommend changing aside from the breakfast frittata to achieve max fat burning?
Don’t mean to hijack the thread just looking for some more input.
Honestly, with a low carb diet you’re already going to be burning a lot on your own by way of just living. You won’t be storing excess calories so expect to be hungry for a bit.
The only downside to a high protein low carb diet is that it’s hard on your kidneys.
As a matter of course a visit with your Dr to let them know what you’re doing would be cool. Add a routine blood panel to check your creatinine level and peeing in a cup to check for excess protein in the urine. That will give you a baseline as to how your kidenies are doing to start with.
If you want to drop weight high protein is good, but you’ll eventually want to start balancing it out. As a source of carbs, fruit is a good thing. It’s readily absorbed and a whole lot better than breads and starches. Without carbs you’ll feel tired without the fuel to keep you going.
The fewer net carbs you consume the less fat your body will store. Net carbs = total carbs - carbs from fiber. Keep that number low and you’ll lose fat quickly, simple as that. For exercise do high intensity interval cardio, or heavy lifting, general cardio is bad for weight loss. Intermittent fasting can also help. That’s the cliffnotes of it.
That is anything but a “low carb” diet. A typical low carb diet aims to put the body into ketosis & minimize GI (glycemic impact). For a traditional CKD (cyclical ketogenic diet) you should be shooting for 65% fats, 30% protein and 5% (or less) net carbs. If you’re working out heavy I’d suggest shifting SOME of the 65% fat over to protein, ensuring you’re getting at least 1 gram of protein per pound of lean body mass.
There is a TON more to it than this but these are good cliff notes IMO, based on my experiences with CKD dieting.
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Have you ever been on/stuck with a ketogenic diet? If you’re eating the proper amount of fats and you’re actually in ketosis your body knows where to get the energy…fat. Now every body is different to some extent, but my experience has shown that those getting stuck in the “brain fog” phase aren’t eating enough fats.
Personally I perform optimally while in ketosis, my body prefers fats for energy. The key for me was not being long term low carb, rather doing a CKD diet. That weekend carbup is a godsend and replenishes/flushes my body with fluid.
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That brain fog is brutal the first few times. If you do a CKD diet you get used to it and as long as you don’t break the set carbup period your body drifts back in to ketosis pretty easily.
Forget to pull out, have a son, pull said son 1200 miles behind bike up hills with enough toys in the trailer to make an Asian jealous, feel great. I recently kicked my one true weakness-candy. I was usually good for 1-2 boxes of JuJy Fuits/Dots/Mike and Ike’s/Sweedish Fish a day. That was an easy 900 calories of pure shit. Just find what works and stick with it.
in addition to the protien items you listed, i lived on ground turkey (94/95% lean) and ground beef and ground chicken (95% lean) when i shed some lbs. usually put it on top of a salad and mixed it up and used spices/ hot sauce as a dressing. dropped an easy 15 lbs in a little over a month.
meal program was relatively similar with having fruit/veggies inbetween meals. didnbt take any supplements of any kind
breakfast
snack
lunch
snack
dinner
snack
Did anyone read the latest from Time magazine? I happen to see it while waiting for a haircut. It is funny how we are told one thing like it is gospel then years later it changes. End the war on fat!.. and get off your ass.
For anyone interested in this stuff I highly recommend Gary Taubes book Why We Get Fat, it delves a bit into the history of how all this dietary misinformation became prevalent, and the details of what specifically causes the body to retain fat in a relatively easy to understand way.
Is your diet sustainable? It looks to me like that would last about a week or so, and then it would be too big of a change to continue. My recommendation would be to continue your normal style of eating, just cut back on the junk. So no pizza and fast foods, and less beer. That would be easy to do, and definitely something you can continue without much effort. Going from eating poorly to a weight-lifters diet seems too extreme.
I am lucky to have good genes and I stay active, but I eat small meals all throughout the day, chicken or fish every night for dinner, and at least 1 - 2 servings of vegetables, but in turn, I basically eat whatever I want for lunch. This includes nachos from Moes, Mighty Taco, Boston Market, food court, etc… I workout with HIIT style workouts 4 days a week, and I am 160 and 6.3% body fat.
The secret to a good diet is not to diet, but to maintain mostly healthy eating habits and stay active.
