Hi Everyone,

I just met with a personal trainer yesterday to help me keep progressing forward while I'm injured. We reviewed my workout and diet history. He is designing a weight program for me, but also suggested major changes to my diet.

He thinks I should be able to double my weight loss by cutting my fat down to 20% a day, adding carbs with protein and eating less calories (1500 a day or less). He also suggested eating 5-6 small meals (300 cals or less) a day. He told me that your body doesn't have to work as hard to burn fat cals, so your metabolism gets boosted when it has to work harder to burn carbs. I didn't think this was true on a ketogenic diet.

While increasing the rate at which I lose weight is appealing, the new food plan is freaking me out. I tried it today and I've been starving! I'm sure it's from adding low carb bread with breakfast. I do not want to go back on a low cal low fat diet!

Anyone have any thoughts or comments on this? Oh, I should tell you this guy works with hard core athletes, he is now working with 3 people who are in olympic qualification. I'm wondering if I need a little less intense trainer.

If a low carb diet was working before stick with it. 1500 calories a day is unrealistic if you are going to work out. You will feel starved and will never be able to continue. That is what I have loved about low carb diets. I never get grumpy from hunger pains and I eat when I'm hungry, not when someone tells me I should. I could probably lose weight faster if I only ate iceberg lettuce and drank water and took in 750 calories a day, but what fun would that be? I have been able to stick to a diet for 3 whole months and rarely feel I am missing anything (unless someone is eating yellow birthday cake with cream cheese icing, but I digress). As far as you trainer goes, he is preaching traditional fitness, which has failed millions for decades. I would listen to his exercise advice possibly, but stick with low carbs.

Most trainers are biased toward high-carb/low fat/low-cal. While this does work for some people I would guess that you are on this forum because you are not one of them. 1500 cal is way too low! When I tried the BFL diet I was eating about 1500 cal, 20% fat and I was also hungry all the time and even more irritable than usual. He still may know what he's doing when it comes to exercise, so I wouldn't dump him yet!

Jen

Omigawd -- why does your trainer want you to ditch Low-carb and go back to low-fat??? That's what got us all here in the first place. We NEED fat. Fat burns in the fires of FAT. If he is trying to get you to do low-carb/low fat then, frankly, it doesn't sound like he knows what he is doing.

I agree with the above posts -- 1500 seems way too low if you are going to work out. Also, if you are hungry, how are you going to keep from cheating? Can you eat low fat for the rest of your life? The trainer is sounds like an old-fashioned low-carb basher.

This is my vote: don't mess with success! You have lost almost 50 pounds with low carb. I'd look for a trainer who is open and knowledgable about low-carb diets.

Carbs are burned easily. The fuels that burn the easiest are the first that will get burned. Fat cells are the most difficult to burn and the body wants those cells to keep you from starving. What is the most natural way for your body to rid itself of excess water? Drink more water. Likewise the way your body naturally rids itself of fat is to eat more fat.

Cindy,

There is very little connection between dietary fat and bodily fat. The body does not take fat from your dietary intake and say "Hey, there's some fat, I'll put that fat on your hips", NO. No the body doesn't work that way. The body breaks down that fat into useable components and if there is extra fuel in your system that can be stored, the body will convert that extra fuel into your own personal body-fat-cell stores.

Carbohydrates are converted the fastest into personal body-fat-cell stores. Proteins and fats are converted more slowly and less willingly by the body. If you have to chose between fat, protein, or carbohydrates; the carbohydrates will convert to body-fat faster then dietary proteins and/or dietary oils/fats.

J.

P.S. Get a different trainer that understands the new discoveries about low-carbing.

Thanks you guys for such a fast response! I was really not interested in giving up low carb! I think I will give this guy a try. He seems really knowledgable about working with injuries and getting people up and running again. I'm keeping my low carb lifestyle for good! I know it works for me and I can stick with it for life!

No quite, Fats convert the easiest to fat stores. Something like 95% efficiency.

Carbs and protein are very low efficiency for fat stores. The body would prefer not to waste too much energy converting these.

The problem comes when you mix hi-fat and hi-carb. Your body burns the carb for energy and stores the fat as fat.

Cindy, I currently following a low fat, low carb diet eating only about 1300-1600 cals a day...but the reason this works for me is that I keep protein really high. You will not get hungry this way and it is plenty of calories, it all depends on the ratios. That being said, different things work for different people, so you can try your program and if it is not working for you tell your trainer and he/she should work withyou to modify the plan so that you can live with it as well as see results.

I eat the way your trainer suggested and it works for me (in 24weeks my body fat has dropped 7%). I have never been hungry on it, when your eating 6 times a day you don't get time to be hungry.

But as has been said it doesn't work for everyone, have you tried it?

On the total calorie intake thing, it is better to take in the calories and burn them off by training rather than have a deficit to start with. If you are unable to train at the moment due to your injury then that is where the trainer is saying to cut the cals. Regardless if on a low-fat or a low-carb diet, if you take in more calories than you burn your going to put on fat.

But maybe you do need a trainer that is more sympathetic to the way you want to do it.

This is one of these arguments that will go on forever, personally I could not bring myself to eat a high fat diet just doesn't seem right to me.

elijaeger,

I guess that we must use different science books, but that's okay. There are many differing opinions (usually stated by the authors as facts) on exactly how the body functions.

J.

Hey J,
In the spirit of good conversation, which books are you citing as references? I see you've read quite a few, as I have. Most of my knowledge comes from Protein Power by the Eades. I generally look at Dr. Atkins with a suspicious eye though. He makes a lot of claims that just can't be backed up by the scientific literature.

No claims about dieting can be backed by hard scientific literature. The body is too complex and the chemical reactions that are undergoing inside cannot be adequately recreated in any laboratory. Theories abound, but I know what works for me.

Elijaeger,

Sure, I am currently in the process of becoming a Certified Fitness Nutritionist, through a course offered by NESTA (The National Endurance and Sports Training Association).

One of the best sources for easy-to-read science of low-carbing books, however, is my favorite book: "Living the Low-Carb Life", by Jonny Bowden. I have purchased this book so many times, and given it away so many times, that I don't a copy for my self any more. I need to pick up another copy!

I have read Protein Power as well as Barry Sears: Enter-the-Zone. I find that a lot of physical-types, like Sears and Eades, tend to follow, what I call, the old school methods. I enjoyed reading Atkins in the 90's and really enjoy a lot of the new school of thought on low-carbing, even through it tends to fly in the face of a lot of traditionally held beliefs about nutrition.

It may be some of the rebel in me that just likes to challenge the established ways of thinking with new creativity. I read an article in Runners World lately and the writer wrote a passage that I really liked. He titles one of his sections with: "Every Five Years: Good Advice Becomes Bad Advice!".

Our thinking is just always growing in new ways.

J.

Well, some things are fact and some are conjecture. Overall claims about superior weight loss on any given diet are guesses.

What I claim as a fact is that in a overfed setting, dietary fat will be converted to body fat at about 95%. While protein converts to glucose quite frequently (~58 percent of your daily protein converts to glucose), the process of conversion of carbohydrate to fat occurs quite rarely, in a process called "de novo lipogenesis" under high amounts of carb overfeeding.

You get fat because your body is using the dietary carb for fuel, and storing the dietary fat.