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  #1   ^
Old Fri, Sep-13-19, 06:37
Moje's Avatar
Moje Moje is offline
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Posts: 78
 
Plan: Atkins/general low carb
Stats: 196/183/130 Female 5'3"
BF:
Progress: 20%
Location: Colorado
Question Long term success

How many successful folks here have managed to keep the weight off long after you deemed your efforts successful and do you stay on a low carb plan or have you ventured beyond and been happy with the results?

I'm asking to debunk what an "anti diet" dietician is claiming, that low carb isn't a successful sustainable way of eating and actually "harms" your system long term.

Last edited by Moje : Fri, Sep-13-19 at 06:39. Reason: Needed to add more
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  #2   ^
Old Fri, Sep-13-19, 06:48
cotonpal's Avatar
cotonpal cotonpal is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 5,282
 
Plan: very low carb real food
Stats: 245/125/135 Female 62
BF:
Progress: 109%
Location: Vermont
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I have been eating low carb for about 15 years. I have lost over 100 pounds and continue to maintain my weight loss. I am 70 years old and take no prescription drugs. You can read my story in the success thread. The link is under my signature. Your dietician is wrong.
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  #3   ^
Old Fri, Sep-13-19, 07:01
Ms Arielle's Avatar
Ms Arielle Ms Arielle is online now
Senior Member
Posts: 19,176
 
Plan: atkins, carnivore 2023
Stats: 200/211/163 Female 5'8"
BF:
Progress: -30%
Location: Massachusetts
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Well......I kept my weight at 200-210 , usually at 203 for a couple years.

I think a key is eating plenty of calories but making wise choices. Ive never gone back to baking bread nor making homemade pasta. Keeping to the rules on carbs continued. Eating good fats is a good thing. The list of different veggies I will eat has expanded by 4-5 times since first starting DANDR.Overall, remained mindful of food choices and the scale remained important.

Failure came when I started a fast paced full time jo b burning tons of calories such that I could eat everything. Then boss moved me to a stand still job and gained 20 lbs in just 8 weeks.

Fast forward and Im battling the bulge again so......
I have recently added fasting. Due to concerns that this old body needs more help to fix and repair itself. In addition to weight loss.Apparently OMAD has real value as well as 24 and 36 hr fasts to maintain weight as well as weight loss

You might read IDMprogram.com blogs to add to your question.

Last edited by Ms Arielle : Fri, Sep-13-19 at 07:11.
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  #4   ^
Old Fri, Sep-13-19, 07:04
Bob-a-rama's Avatar
Bob-a-rama Bob-a-rama is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 1,953
 
Plan: Keto (Atkins Induction)
Stats: 235/175/185 Male 5' 11"
BF:
Progress: 120%
Location: Florida
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I've lost 50 pounds and kept it off.

I don't remember exactly when I went on LC, 20-30 years ago?

Anyway, it was called Atkins Induction then, now Keto, I've kept the weight off, seldom miss the things I had to give up, and definitely don't crave the things I gave up.

I'm still doing fewer than 20 carbs a day and eating twice as much fat as I do protein. It's the easiest and most effective diet I've ever tried, and as far as I can tell, this will be my way of eating for life.

The only time I cheat a little is on my yearly vacation. While in a foreign country tasting small portions of foods not available here in the US and probably loaded with too many carbs is hard to resist. Keeping the portions small and only tasting those that are really attractive is the key.

Bob
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  #5   ^
Old Fri, Sep-13-19, 08:28
Moje's Avatar
Moje Moje is offline
Registered Member
Posts: 78
 
Plan: Atkins/general low carb
Stats: 196/183/130 Female 5'3"
BF:
Progress: 20%
Location: Colorado
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Cotonpal, she isn't my dietician, just one bashing anyone trying to use a dietary approach to lose weight. I haven't figured out what exactly she presumes to do about being overweight and clearly having health issues do to that very thing. I suppose she'd say for me to actually hire her which I couldn't afford anyway. The anti-diet bandwagon is a scam I think to make a profit off of people who've tried everything and haven't been able to succeed. Either way, I'm trying to cross reference her claims just to see how wrong she actually is.
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  #6   ^
Old Fri, Sep-13-19, 08:37
Ms Arielle's Avatar
Ms Arielle Ms Arielle is online now
Senior Member
Posts: 19,176
 
Plan: atkins, carnivore 2023
Stats: 200/211/163 Female 5'8"
BF:
Progress: -30%
Location: Massachusetts
Default

Perhaps "anti-dieting" and "dieting" is confounded with "way of life" or "way of eating".

To me "dieting" is my weight loss phase.

"Diet" is either the food choices to drop weight OR foods typically eaten by a society, or an individual.

WOE AND WOL is my personal food choices that I stick to forever.

Does that muddy the waters enough??
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  #7   ^
Old Fri, Sep-13-19, 10:07
GRB5111's Avatar
GRB5111 GRB5111 is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 4,036
 
Plan: Very LC, Higher Protein
Stats: 227/186/185 Male 6' 0"
BF:
Progress: 98%
Location: Herndon, VA
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I've been low carb, keto for going on 8 years. Lost over 40 pounds during the first 6 months and have kept it off since then. After following this WOE for a number of years, it's very easy to maintain, however, I'm reluctant to call it a diet. It's my lifestyle now. The dietician you're referring to may be using a semantic trick with the term "diet" to infer that they don't usually work. That would be correct, but if one embraces a way of eating as a lifestyle, then all bets are off. It's no longer a diet.

Then again, I love it when people are so definitively negative about how others live. No need to respond, as there will always be naysayers about everything and anything. It's another fascinating dynamic about human behavior.
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  #8   ^
Old Fri, Sep-13-19, 10:38
teaser's Avatar
teaser teaser is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 15,075
 
Plan: mostly milkfat
Stats: 190/152.4/154 Male 67inches
BF:
Progress: 104%
Location: Ontario
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Probably the latest version of the metabolic recovery type stuff Matt Stone used to talk about at 180 degree health. The whole dieting ruins your body's metabolism so you need to eat intuitively and eventually things will sort themselves out.

I'm pretty sure rats and mice eat "intuitively." Expose them to our modern foods, and they get quite plump. Inuition sucks... so does instinct. It's why we're able to trick fish into hitting lures instead of looking for a safer, yummier natural alternative. Intuition is the default. In a world full of human tricksters wanting to make a buck selling you fruitloops, the default sucks. People fail on diets because, if you stop treading water, you sink. I think my highly ketogenic diet works in part because my particular plan calls for large amounts of heavy cream, defaulting to homemade ice cream isn't that hard to do. If you can find something that appeals more than the SAD, things get easier. A Paleo/caveman narrative can be fun, maybe it helps us adhere partly for the same reason that a kid might rather have noodles or chicken nuggets shaped like little dinosaurs.

There's a grain of truth--take somebody starving themselves, refeed them, and they'll overshoot fat mass. Eating to satiety, over time they'll go back to their original, lower bodyweight, or thereabouts. People apply this to people on yo yo diets, blame the down part of the diet for the up part. Certainly there's an association. But who goes on a yo-yo diet? People who notice their weight trending up. So, are the bounces up caused by the dieting down? Or is the dieting down just obscuring things, masking what would otherwise be a more steady trend upwards?

The usual study trotted out for evidence of calorie restriction tanking the metabolism and causing this weight gain once the diet is over is the Minnesota Study. This is a horrible misuse of that study. They called it a semi-starvation study, but the only thing that kept it semi- is that it didn't go on just a little bit longer, the subjects became quite emaciated. Weight rebound, body fat overshoot from such a point is a real thing. It's characteristic of recovery from near starvation, but it's not been shown as an explanation for a guy at 20 percent body fat dieting down to 15 percent body fat and then subsequently gaining to 25 percent body fat when he goes off the diet.

You'll hear five, or maybe six percent of diets are successful.

My diet history. Before going low carb, I probably dieted at least once a year, starting in my late teens. That gives about a dozen attempts. Then low carb worked, brought me down to 170. A few false starts, do those count as dieting attempts? Call it 15 attempts until that 170 held. Even then I got to "fail" at dieting, since I tried multiple times to get down below 160 consistently. Let's be very conservative and call it another five... that's 20 diets I've been on that "failed." For the last five I get to be a successful maintainer and a failed dieter simultaneously.

Of course this is mostly poorly documented... But is my claim hard to believe? How many people go on a diet every New Years? Most of my diet attempts failed, not because dieting doesn't work, but because I didn't know how to make a diet work. If twenty people try something, and nineteen fail--I think the number is largely made up anyways, but if they do--what if those nineteen try again? Yeah, the process can take an embarrassingly long time. It did for me. Taking a year or two to entertain "diets don't work" would have just prolonged the process.
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  #9   ^
Old Fri, Sep-13-19, 11:26
Mycie14's Avatar
Mycie14 Mycie14 is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 877
 
Plan: Dr. Bernstein, low carb
Stats: 200/178/155 Female 68
BF:
Progress: 49%
Location: Southern California
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I lost 50 lbs low carbing, reaching my lowest weight as an adult 4 years ago. I have maintained 35 lbs of that weight loss. My weight crept up from the lowest because I let my carbs creep up. But I never abandoned low carb during the past 5 years.

Low carb is the only thing that has worked for me. I tried many diets and even tried low carb multiple times before I got diagnosed as a T2 diabetic. That diagnosis was the "scared straight" moment for me. All of my health markers have improved on low carb (A1c from 12 to 5.7, cholesterol levels normal, energy level much higher, no afternoon crash).

For me, low carb is much easier to stick to than low fat. I can actually feel satisfied and not be thinking about food all the time. Low fat always left me starving and white-knuckling it to not eat too much.
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  #10   ^
Old Fri, Sep-13-19, 11:55
Bob-a-rama's Avatar
Bob-a-rama Bob-a-rama is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 1,953
 
Plan: Keto (Atkins Induction)
Stats: 235/175/185 Male 5' 11"
BF:
Progress: 120%
Location: Florida
Default

I don't call it "A" diet, I call it "My" diet.

It's for life unless something unexpected happens that would be better for me.

If you want long term success, you need to change your way of eating for the long term. If you lose a bunch of weight and then go back to your old way of eating, you may as well not go on the diet.

If you go on the diet and make it your new way of eating, you have the best chance of success.

Bob
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  #11   ^
Old Fri, Sep-13-19, 16:22
GRB5111's Avatar
GRB5111 GRB5111 is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 4,036
 
Plan: Very LC, Higher Protein
Stats: 227/186/185 Male 6' 0"
BF:
Progress: 98%
Location: Herndon, VA
Default

The Whole30 is an interesting concept, and it's referred to as a program, not a diet. It's really a Paleo "program" that I could easily live with, as it has people avoid for 30 days all dairy, alcohol, grains, legumes, seed oils, and anything with preservatives. It allows fruit and other things I don't eat. The major quibble I have with it is the 30 day period, as this is really the concept of a "diet" that most have. While the word "diet" is not defined this way, but today most think of it as a temporary period of time, almost like a penance, of restricted eating to lose weight, then, it's over. The Whole30 should program should drop the 30. I know people who have had great success with it, then when the 30 days is up, go back to what they were doing before, and surprise (not), the weight goes back to what it was before.

Long-term success is something that I thought a lot about when I first started eating low carb. I was motivated to stay consistent and when results started happening, my motivation was reinforced. There were times early on when I felt like crap, particularly as I was transitioning my energy source to fat burning mode. I made all sorts of plans when away from home to stock up on lc snacks to ensure I didn't go off the deep end. After I felt great doing this WOE, I developed a routine that became a habit, and it really became easy to plan and consume meals. I dropped breakfast, as I no longer was hungry early in the day. I no longer wanted snacks, as I wasn't hungry at various times during the day, sometimes during the whole day.

Today, I admit I have a hard time comprehending how people make it so complicated, but that's exactly what I did in the early periods. It is a major change for many, and to hear "experts" claim a lc approach is unhealthy, or dangerous, or unsustainable is amazing to me, as it's obvious that anyone making these claims has never experienced it themselves. They just know it's bad and advise against it for the sake of others' good health. Just as we were advised to go high carb, low fat, and eat frequently so many years ago. Yep, now they were the visionaries . . .
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  #12   ^
Old Fri, Sep-13-19, 17:20
cotonpal's Avatar
cotonpal cotonpal is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 5,282
 
Plan: very low carb real food
Stats: 245/125/135 Female 62
BF:
Progress: 109%
Location: Vermont
Default

I started eating a low carb paleo diet to maximize my health. Weight loss was never the only goal. Since I viewed this way of eating as a means to both regain and then maintain my health it never occurred to me that I should go back to my old bad habits. I have a kind of mantra:

If you want the results you have to create the causes.

So that's what I continue to do, day after day and year after year, create the causes for maximizing my health.
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  #13   ^
Old Fri, Sep-13-19, 18:26
Bob-a-rama's Avatar
Bob-a-rama Bob-a-rama is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 1,953
 
Plan: Keto (Atkins Induction)
Stats: 235/175/185 Male 5' 11"
BF:
Progress: 120%
Location: Florida
Default

My parents both died early due to obesity diseases. I'm the only one in my family under 300 pounds.

I saw my parent's demise as a potential future of mine and didn't like that.

I tried 3 or 4 other diets before I found this one. Weight loss was my goal.

Keto is simple for me. Fewer than 20 carbs, approximately twice as much fat as protein, and don't stuff myself.

I don't have to restrict particular foods like the Paleo folks, or the Mediterranean folks, if it's low carb and the protein/fat ratio is close, it's OK to eat.

I don't have to work at it.

I just have to avoid what used to be bliss foods for me. I have new bliss foods now.

Bob
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  #14   ^
Old Fri, Sep-13-19, 21:00
jschwab jschwab is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 6,378
 
Plan: Atkins72/Paleo/NoGrain/IF
Stats: 285/220/200 Female 5 feet 5.5 inches
BF:
Progress: 76%
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GRB5111
I know people who have had great success with it, then when the 30 days is up, go back to what they were doing before, and surprise (not), the weight goes back to what it was before.


I don't think that is supposed to be how it works, though. You do the 30 days to figure out what's bugging you in your diet so you can continue to avoid it. I don't remember it even seeming like a weight loss diet per se, more like a food journaling opportunity based around avoiding common triggers (for weight gain, bad digestion, headaches, etc.). I think the 30 part of it is about it taking awhile to clear some symptoms food sensitivities. It bills itself as an elimination diet and that is exactly what it is. I actually really love it. But you have to understand what it is. It's not necessarily about weight loss. A lot of my friends who've done it don't have weight to lose.
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  #15   ^
Old Sat, Sep-14-19, 03:56
Grav Grav is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 1,469
 
Plan: Banting
Stats: 302/187/187 Male 175cm
BF:
Progress: 100%
Location: New Zealand
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Quote:
Originally Posted by teaser
Yeah, the process can take an embarrassingly long time. It did for me. Taking a year or two to entertain "diets don't work" would have just prolonged the process.

Truth. After an entire childhood's worth of obesity, that's pretty much what I'd convinced myself for around another 20 years.

Glad that's all history now though. Dropped ~110 pounds on low carb during 2015 and 2016 and have pretty much kept it all off ever since.
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