Low-carb healthy fat living. Intermittent fasting. What’s your why?

I have spent many years trying to lose weight following different diet plans, joining Weight Watchers and most everything that promised to help me lose weight. I reached my peak weight of around 330 pounds in the 1980's which is when I started to realize I needed to do something. Enter diet plans, exercising more and eventually 4+ years with Weight Watchers. The WW's support group is really good and helped me get down to around 250 pounds within 6 months but I realized I had to change my lifestyle and that was something no one else could do for me. I had to make better food choices and eliminate some foods and snacks that I knew were part of my problem.

I initially chose intermittent fasting after reading Lee Aase's @LeeAase health journey - https://social-media-university-global.org/my-health-journey/. What really got my attention was a blog entry in Lee's health journey - An Unfortunately Named Book - https://social-media-university-global.org/2020/02/an-unfortunately-named-book/. The blog entry has a YouTube video by Dr. Jason Fung: Fasting as a Therapeutic Option for Weight Loss that gave me some new insights into my weight issues and how it affects my health. My wife had been doing intermittent fasting for a few months and I just wasn't buying it without a good explanation which is what I found in Dr. Fung's video.

At the time I started intermittent fasting on Jan 18, 2020, I weighed 244.7 lbs. This morning I weighed 211.2 lbs. I started with a 24 hour fast and then started experimenting with the 16/8, 18/6 and 20/4 intermittent fasting periods. The 20 hour fast with 4 hour eating window has worked the best for me but I have to mix a few days a week with an 18/6 or 16/8 so that I can enjoy eating with friends and family outside of my normal windows of what I deem opportunity 🙂 Two things that have helped my on my intermittent fasting journey are an inexpensive Bluetooth bathroom scale and the Zero app (https://www.zerofasting.com/) which was a tip I found in @LeeAase's health journey blog. I chose the Greater Goods Smart Scale and have been extremely happy with it - https://www.amazon.com/Bluetooth-GreaterGoods-Composition-Bathroom-Connected/dp/B07DHSSND5/ref=sr_1_10. It also incudes the Weight Gurus app for tracking your progress - https://weightgurus.com/

Why am I here? To put it simply, when I started intermittent fasting, I set a goal of dropping my weight to 220 lbs. When I reached that goal, I felt so good about myself that I decided to set a new goal of 200 lbs. I have not been at 200 pounds since graduating from boot camp after joining the Navy. My second goal has not been quite as easy to reach as the first one. I have been eating pretty much whatever I want during my intermittent fasting windows of eating opportunity, not counting calories and letting some of my snacks back into my life. I think my missing link is LCHF and I am excited to learn what I need to do to implement a new strategy to help me reach and maintain my new goal of 200 pounds.

So I am here to learn more about LCHF and hopefully break my current plateau.

Thanks, @johnbishop! I've lost about 60 lbs. through a combination of low-carb/healthy fat eating and intermittent fasting. One of my "whys" is that this is really sustainable: I have been below my goal weight of 210 lbs. (I'm 6'6") for 10 months. I'm eating one or two filling meals a day, and even during those fasting times of 16-18 hours I'm not that hungry, because the healthy fats don't cause blood sugar spikes and crashes.

My wife Lisa and I have six kids and are expecting our 14th grandchild soon, and our main "why" is we want to stay healthy and fit and avoid chronic disease so we can be active in their lives for a few more decades. I feel better now than I did 30 years ago, and that's why I started sharing my story and Lisa's on my blog, which you mentioned. https://social-media-university-global.org/ I'm glad you have found it helpful.

I'm glad we have this group where we can support and encourage each other, and provide resources for people who want to try this approach.

Lots of people have reversed type 2 diabetes and have gotten off insulin and medications using #LCHF, with or without intermittent fasting. Here's a blog post I wrote about some of the studies: https://social-media-university-global.org/2021/02/reversing-type-2-diabetes-with-a-low-carb-diet/

I hope we can inspire and equip others who want to achieve health benefits like this.

Two of my favorite activities are exercising and eating. For many years I believed that if I exercised enough I could eat whatever I wanted. I earned it, didn't I? However, I did not like the reflection I saw in the mirror. No matter how much I exercised, I was chronically 60 pounds overweight. In the past 10 years, I ran a marathon, nine half marathons, more 5K's than I can count, and even a 200-mile relay; however, the weight stubbornly stayed on.

In April 2020 my husband discovered Dr. Annette Bosworth (Dr. Boz) and read her book Anyway You Can: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079RLTKS9. The book tells the story of how she saved her mother's life by adopting the ketogenic diet.

In June 2020 @LeeAase started blogging about his and his wife's health journey, and I was inspired. At the same time I read Dr. Boz' book, and I was convinced that I needed to give keto a try. My husband and I followed Dr. Boz' course "Consistently Keto", and on September 7, 2020 we began in earnest. We dropped our total carbs to <20g per day, started measuring our urine ketones, and tracking our food using the Chronometer app. I intermittently fast 18:6--meaning I fast for 18 hours, and eat with a six hour window. To date, I lost 25 pounds, I have more energy and feel better than ever, and I am now training for my second marathon.

The hardest part about following the ketogenic diet was making the decision to do it because it is such a different way of eating. How can a diet that says that "bacon is good" and "apples are bad" be healthy? It required letting go of everything I thought was healthy and learning what truly is. I know this group is titled Low Carb/High Fat (LCHF); however, I think of it more as High Fat (as the first priority) and then Low Carb. On the first day of eating like this, my sugar cravings disappeared. I am rarely hungry because my body now taps into my stored body fat for energy rather than depending on carbohydrates. The volume of food I consume daily has decreased significantly. This is really the easiest thing I've ever done and the only thing that has ever worked. Keto is a piece of steak!

I agree @rjwilliams you need to focus on the good things you ARE eating instead of what you're cutting out. I have celiac disease and so I have had to avoid wheat, barley and rye for about 12 years. So I used to focus on what I COULD eat, like steak, but I was also having a lot of high-carb but gluten-free food like baked potatoes and corn.

In some ways I think the fact that I had some foods that were already off limits made it easier for me to go low-carb. I already had a mindset that not everything is fair game for me, so I just had to adjust what was in the OK circle.

A good amount of protein is an important element too. By being satisfied with tasty blends of fat and protein, the carb cravings are much less of a problem.

I’m 57 years old and up to about 7-8 years ago all I’d have to do to lose weight was cut out most sweets and stop eating after supper. I have had six pregnancies and that always worked to get the weight off after each one. Once I became post menopausal and shortly after that diagnosed with Hashimoto's (a thyroid problem) I just couldn’t lose weight the old way and it was starting to creep up on me higher and higher.

I’ve never enjoyed exercise I still don’t so I never could stick to an exercise routine for very long. In the fall of 2016 I had some routine blood work done and my fasting glucose was 102. I was told to cut back on my sugar and cards. That scared me though because I most certainly didn’t want to deal with diabetes at some later point. Lee and I started our journey then. He’s documented that on his blog so I don’t see a need to retell it here.

My why was to lose weight and lower my blood glucose but now the more I learn about the low carb high fat way of eating the more I realize it’s much more than that! I did get my weight off. I weight less than I did in my 20’s and fit into my wedding dress in November for the first time since we were married in December of 1984. I’m feeling good! I went from a size 14 and extra large top to a size 6 and small top. The cellulite is gone from my legs and I feel comfortable wearing shorts and dresses for the first time in 20 years.

I would encourage people to give it a try.

I'm a relative newbie to low carb high fat (LCHF) and have been intermittent fasting for about a year. My "why" focuses on sleep. I'm a terrible sleeper. I don't like focusing on food, so I focus on health living to improve my sleep through exercise (I'm a bit fan of HIT), movement (to get me away from my screen regularly), food and reducing stress. The fact that this has helped maintain a health weight and even shed a few pounds is a motivating side effect.

I invite @m1rmiller @woot @avmcbellar @Erinmfs @bobbyboomer @burningfeetinphoenix @iceblue @berdyaev11 @thumperguy @sd4 @nla4625 @allysonleigh @healthysickchick and @rubarb1957 to this conversation. Whether you're new to LCFH and fasting or you've been doing it for years, I'd like to hear your "why"? What's your interest in keto, low carb, fasting, healthy living?

Thank you for inviting my further contribution. My initial interest in intermittent fasting was sparked by reading about autophagy induced by fasting. There are all sorts of varying posts regarding what it takes to induce autophagy by fasting but the one I'm using posits that after 18 hours of fasting your body will begin to consume damaged and dead cells as fuel and subsequently replace them with new cells. For someone who has lost about 85% of my kidney function, that process holds great appeal. As for sleeping, I don't have that problem, although at 74 years old I do have an enlarged prostate that does cause me to wake up every 2 hours to urinate through the night. Fortunately, I usually don't have any problem falling back to sleep after 10 or 15 minutes. I fence competitively at the national level so I get plenty of exercise and also like HIIT. I use the stairs in my apartment building. I climb 50 flights up and down taking 2 stairs at a time just about everyday. I also have been practicing tai chi for the past 40+ years and do that for about half an hour everyday. Also practicing Zen meditation for the past 40+ years.

I am 81 years old. I have been eating a very low carb diet for about 17 years to control my form of reactive hypoglycemia (thriftygene.net (no ads, no promotion)). My diet is almost exclusively meat and low carb vegetables. My treats are nuts and backing chocolate (100% coca ). I do not lose weight on this diet. Most people do, my web site explains all. Women with my genetics get gestational diabetes.
I am 82 years old. I had an autoimmune event in 1957 (see thriftygene.net no ads, no promotion). I have reactive hypoglycemia. In 1964 I took a glucose tolerance test. The *** specialist said I was prediabetic. He was very wrong. My blood sugar is slowing down but rising for 2 hours. The reason I took the test was that a smart doctor noticed that all the symptoms me and my wife described would be explained as very low blood sugar. I looked at the result of the test and determined that I was getting my symptoms 3 ½ hours after eating too much sugar/starch/alcohol. I modified my diet but not enough. About 17 years ago I put myself on a very low carb diet with the normal amount of fat. I started to gain weight so I cut the fat in my diet to the point that I lost weight. I now eat too many nuts and my weight has stabilized. About 3 years ago I figured out what was happening and wrote the web site thrifygene.net. I advertise with google (after 3 people identified as google read my web site and saw that it all made sense) to health care professionals. The reason most people lose weight on a low carb diet is the following. They eat enough protein so the excess is changed into ammonia. The body releases insulin to change ammonia into urea. When the insulin enters the blood stream the body does not know that it is only supposed to change ammonia into urea. It starts to change sugar into fat. The body releases Human Placental Lactogen to make it self temporarily insulin resistant which prevents very low blood sugar. You end up with a lower blood sugar than the body is comfortable with so the liver changes fat into sugar. The reaction sugar into fat and then fat into sugar is very energy intensive. You lose up to 1/3 the energy available. You raise your metabolism and lose weight. People with my gene are usually insulin resistant. We do not change sugar into fat. We do not raise our metabolism. We do not lose weight.
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I should add that after eating my diet for 17 years my High Density Lipids are 66. My shit is very soft. I am still about 40+ lbs overweight so I take a vaso relaxer to control my blood pressure. With the pill it is fine. Ir you read thiftygene.net you will see that my brain is working as good as ever. .

I’m following LCIF to control high blood sugars, for more energy. Eat from 11:00 am until around 7 pm.
Have lost about 50 lbs. and it’s easier to move around. Don’t enjoy counting calories. Carbs much easier to count and control.