can't eat that much !

[alirider]

help - if you are supposed to eat 10 x your weight in calories to lose weight i'll never make it. is this a vital part of the WOE?

i'm i off track here?

[DivaDani]

Hi alirider,

I believe that keeping your calories up is vital to the plan. Luckily, keeping your fat intake high is also really good for losing on LC. If you find you're having trouble eating enough to keep the calories up, just start adding more fats to your diet. Some extra olive oil on your salad or in the pan when you cook your meats, a little extra butter on some other foods...it will add up pretty quickly at 9 calories/gram. If you keep your LC plan higher in fat you will be fine.

Good luck!
Dani

[alirider]

Iwas afraid of that, but i'll try what you suggested.

I have ordered both the Atkins book and the protein power book so I can get a better understanding of this - it seems there is too much to try and remember and it's so different from the way I have been eating and thought I was supposed to eat!!

AND, i can't believe how many carbs are in decaf coffee. A good cup of coffee was something I thought I could still enjoy 3 or 4 times a day!

:(

[gwilson38]

I was just figuring out what your calorie intake a day should be, about 1700- 1800. That may sound liike alot but as Dani pointed out the more fat U add the more calories U will consume and actually the faster your weight or inches will come off. Try eating smaller meals more often?

[clwydd]

Ali,

I've gone from three or four cups of coffee a day to one, and I'm so busy putting away the water that I don't miss it.

I notice that you're following CAD. I'm not sure what the guidelines are now, but I do know that you don't add up the carbs you eat in a day. So the coffee may not be an issue (though what you put in it may be).

If you're just starting low carb, you should stick to one plan, and follow it faithfully for at least a month, rather than picking and choosing ideas from several. That way it's easier to figure out what works for you.

Susan

[alirider]

I'm lucky if I'm eating 1100 a day - I'll just have to try harder except my appetite is gone.

[alirider]

Thanks, actually I have switched from CAD to Atkins because I can't deal with the reward meal. I just couldn't believe I could lose weight that way. I might go back to it as a maintenance way of eating some day.....

:)

[clwydd]

I've just starting increasing my calories, too. I find that adding snacks helps a lot. You can have celery stuffed with cream cheese, for example, and some olives. Some people eat pepperoni with cream cheese or pork rinds with tuna salad. You should approach nuts with caution, but macadamias are very calorie dense (I have 1/2 oz. macadamias, 1/2 oz. unblanched almonds, and 1 oz. brie for my afternoon snack, which will add up to 260 calories).

If you plan out your day with Fitday you can get a pretty good idea ahead of time if you're on track on not and can add a pat of butter here or a Tbsp of oil there (people here have been known to chug olive oil straight from the bottle).

Peek through a few journals and see how other people are doing it.

Susan

[nill4me]

So what I am hearing here (I'm so sorry, but I am SO new)...is that I need to take in a MINIMUM of 10x my body weight in calories?? That seems like SO much. I am tracking also on fitday.com.....I am only averaging about 850/cals a day! I dont think I can EAT that many a day. I have hypothyroidism...so i am hoping that the LC WOL will help with building a better more healthy body, etc. But, I just cannot see eating 2000 calories a day, and still losing weight? I'm confused....I think i need to look around here and do much mroe reading!!
:wave:

[agonycat]

If you eat a diet that is high in fat, which you should be doing, it isn't all that much food.

However if you are trying a low fat version to get those calories up then yes it is a ton of food you need to eat just to get the calories to match.

70 to 80 percent of your diet should be from fat :)

[clwydd]

Nill,

It's hard to get your mind around at first, but it does work. If you check the top of this forum, about three threads down you'll find one called "Hot Links," and it will take you to a lot of previous discussions about why you have to eat fat (and why it won't make you fat to eat it) and why you have to keep your calories up. Just read a few journals and you'll find that it works. Speaking of journals, I just had a peek at yours--yes, you can eat cheese--it may cause stalls in some people, which is why on Atkins induction (?) it's supposed to be kept under 4 oz. You don't have to eat eggs or seafood or turkey. It's fine to eat beef and avocados and mayonnaise and all the things you (we all) have been taught are bad for us.

If you're feeling full at 850 calories, your body is definitely in starvation mode. You have to tell it, by eating more fat, that the famine is over.

Susan

[nill4me]

I will do as you suggest, and do some more reading on the fat intake to help up my calories. I have also noticed that on my Ketostix, the highest I've gotten is 'trace'. I assume now that this is because of the low fats, and such, so my body is storing instead of burning. Thank you so much for the information! I will try some more!

[clwydd]

I don't "do" keostix, but I believe that even a trace is good; it shows that your body is burning fat. In fact, very dark colour can mean that you're not drinking enough water. And drinking lots of water, of course, is the other cornerstone of this way of eating, along with keeping carbs down, eating enough to meet your daily metabolic requirement, and making sure that 70-80% of those calories come from fat (which is actually easier that it seems if you're not eating carbs).

Did you see that there's a Thyroid forum under the Low Carb Health and Technical forums? I noticed a thread there asking if anyone had hypothyroidism.

Relax; this way of eating really does work. I lose weight slowly, but I feel so good that it really doesn't bother me. Just keep reading and asking questions.

Susan