How I lose weight?

A rough guide to low carb dieting

1. Introduction

This is a guide to explain how I lose weight. It explains a little of the philosophy and some practical details that have allowed me to stay in pretty good shape for the best part of a decade. Occasionally slipping out and then back into good order.

Note this is not 'how to lose weight'. None of us are the same in terms of genetic makeup, our past, our temperaments, our reaction to certain foods, our metabolism or our goals. I've spent about a decade reading just about everything out there about diet and nutrition that's available to the lay reader and have reached some interim conclusions. Interim because I think there is a long way to go, and I'll explain later, the science behind nutrition is in a pretty rotten state.

I should also make clear that there are some people with a good tolerance of carbohydates that can absolutely prosper and stay in great shape on a 'good' low fat diet. Just not me. And lots of others like me I suspect.

2. Why is it so hard to stay in shape anyway?

Well it never used to be - not for most people anyway. It may or may not be a coincidence that in the last 30 or so years since we have been exhorted to reduce the fat in our diets, to observe a food pyramid rich in grains, and to eat processed foods with fat removed and sugar added that the rise in obesity has been astronomical - from 1 in 20 adults in the UK 30 years ago to just about 1 in 4 in 2013.

Coincidence or nay, the timing works and there is some reasonable science to suggest cause and effect. However, in accepting this conclusion we have to accept that pretty much everything we 'know' about nutrition and health is wrong which is a) unsettling, b) hard to believe and c) difficult for just about everyone to accept - especially those in authority.

3. You do not control your appetite, it controls you...

One of the most pervasive fallacies of dieting is the notion that we have conscious control of the amount of food we eat. I think that is probably back to front. In the short term we can choose what we eat; we can gorge ourselves and we can, for a short time at least, force outselves to go hungry. However, over the long term our calorie intake is not under conscious control.

It's not uncommon for us to neither increase or decrease our weight for a whole year, let's say within a pound either way. This is an astonishing feat of balance. To achieve this we need to control our calorie intake, on average, by 10 calories a day - or a fifth of an apple. Through all of the vagaries of variety in both the exercise and food that we eat throughout the year our bodies drive us to eat almost the perfect amount of food.

What I believe, but can't prove but that is consistent with my first hand experience, is that if you eat foods that are sensitive to and enable the complex systems that our bodies have for maintaining our weight then staying in good shape becomes largely automatic.

What I also believe is that there are modern foodstuffs that corrupt the very circuitry in our body that was so useful to us for tens of thousands of years. I believe that foods that have been heavily processed, and especially those with low fat and high carb content, are largely to blame for the unstoppable rise in obesity seen over the last few decades.

4. Why low carb?

My introduction to low carb was initially that of a skeptic. Reading as I did at the time anything to do with nutrition, irrespective of how contrary, I picked up the Atkins New Diet Revolution book. Diametrically opposed to my thinking at the time the claims in the book were too bold (salesy is an understatement!) to resist trying - especially for a period of two weeks that are suggested in the initial phase of the diet.

Much to my disbelief, pretty much every claim was backed up in my experience. I felt good, I lost weight, I wasn't hungry. It ticked all of the boxes. I lost pretty much a pound a day for two weeks. And I kept going for some time after the initial two weeks - why wouldn't I?

Which is not to say that I had not had success with a low fat diet - just that frankly it is bloody hard work not least as hunger is an unavoidable consequence, for me at least, of this way of eating.

5. What does the low carb diet practically involve?

It involves eating eggs, meat, fish, cheese, vegetables, salad and associated vegetables, berries and extra thick cream! Nuts occasionally. Black coffee, Earl Grey and stock. And a few natural-ish low carb bars and some naughty Atkins chocolate bars.

And it involves avoiding processed foods, grains, sugar, potatoes, most fruit, fruit juice, diet drinks, bread, cereal and pain au chocolat (sigh). Not completely. But nearly so.

It's that simple. No big fanfair, no complexity. And no hunger. A reduction in cravings. And a reduction in waist size.

6. What is a diet?

Diet is what you eat. Diet is not a quick fix to a long term problem. If you are overdrawn and change your spending habits to be more frugal you may pull yourself out of debt. However, if you return to your original profligate ways eventually you will end up back where you started. This is little more than common sense. Alas it also implies some hard work, some discipline, some sacrifice and some lasting changes - all pretty unpalatable stuff.

Therefore a diet must

Anything that fails to deliver on these three criteria is doomed to fail in the end.

7. Feedback

Irrespective of the diet I have chosen to try there has been one constant in my ability to sustain weight loss or maintain a good weight - feedback. Obviously feeling better, feeling your clothes getting bigger around your waist, getting compliments from friends, family and colleagues (until you get in too good shape of course!) is all good feedback. However, for me, more accurate and regular feedback works even better.

This can be done in two ways on a low carb diet. The first is to weight myself every day and track progress or otherwise. On a low carb diet you'll find your weight varying tremendously, perhaps as much as 2kg in a single day. However, this variability does not call for less data points (for instance to weigh yourself once a week), it calls for more data points but focus on a moving weekly average which will smooth out the variability.

This is probably best done with electonic scales and Withings do a cool thing that connects to your Wifi and broadcasts your weight to their servers. You can then track your weight on their website or the mobile applications.

The second method of feedback that I find useful is to measure is the level of ketones in my urine using Ketostix. When your body is burning fat as a fuel - the principle driver behind the low carb diet, this is a reliable indicator that your diet is working as you would expect.

This feedback keeps me on the 'straight and narrow'. It makes the consequences of my actions have a demonstrable and near-immediate effect which helps to sharpen resolve and commitment.

8. Exercise

Everyone 'knows' that you have to exercise to lose weight right?

Unfortunately the science says otherwise. Study after study has shown the non-efficacy of exercise to assist weight loss.

This is probably as exercise makes you hungry. It's also probably as people over-estimate the calorie burn they are achieving during their workouts.

And this is also very much in line with my view that appetite is not under conscious control - so if you go burn some calories exercising, if you're not eating right as well then you will not lose weight.

However I would say two other things about exercise. It might not be essential or even beneficial for weight loss, in fact in many ways I you may find it harder to lose weight while doing a lot of exercise, but it has innumerable other benefits in terms of physical and mental well-being and performance.

The other point to make is that this is with respect to non-life changing, 'normal' amounts of exercise. If you've got the appetite and lifestyle that can accomodate twenty hours of exercise a week I suspect that this would make a significant difference.

9. Diet drinks

I have consumed Diet Coke for most of the last decade. I have managed to lose weight and stay in shape drinking it. But I'm fairly convinced it is not my friend. Frankly, it should not be possible to have that much fun for less than 1 calorie. There has to be a payback. Having broken free for the last few months I can clearly say that I'm happier without it, sticking to my diet has been easier and I have not suffered the wild cravings I used to in the past.

The mechanisms are not clear. But the sweet taste may trigger responses in your body so that it is in a state expecting some nice sweet food. When that payload doesn't arrive it works overtime to make you try and go get it.

10. Education...

The best way to stay in shape is to take an interest and read - having an understanding and a rationale for doing something is a powerful motivator. All of us suffer the effects of confirmation bias and so it's best not to only read anything that will support your current assumptions and beliefs.

The science behind our understanding of nutrition and health is in a parlous state. In part because it is very difficult to do; the body and our environments are complex and variable, controlling for confounding factors in every study is nearly impossible. Each experiment would need to be very long and you always have to trust peoples ability to record their lifestyles accurately which is notoriously difficult.

For every study supporting a low fat diet, there is another support a low carb one. Every study can be discredited if it doesn' fit the preconceptions of the critic; the methodology can always be challenged is some way.

However, of the many books I have read the following two stand out as good reads.