do you work out?

[BrianHG]

Also, I found it is safe to put sprouted breads in the fridge.  Refrigerated, their shelf life increases to a few months as long as they were fresh before you placed the in the fridge.  I have no choice but to buy the bread in bulk here as the local stores purchases them at a limited quantity because of their price and being a niche product, and it appears I'm not the only one in my town who is on the hunt for these breads.

[SilverSolder]

The taste of the sprouted rye is quite nice...  will try the other varieties as time goes - winner, winner, chicken dinner!

I'll be trying the sprouted pasta products too.  -  It's really difficult to find food with a lot of protein if you are trying to cut down on meat and dairy (saturated fats).

[SilverSolder]

Also, I found it is safe to put sprouted breads in the fridge.  Refrigerated, their shelf life increases to a few months as long as they were fresh before you placed the in the fridge.  I have no choice but to buy the bread in bulk here as the local stores purchases them at a limited quantity because of their price and being a niche product, and it appears I'm not the only one in my town who is on the hunt for these breads.

Do you have Trader Joe in Canada/Quebec?  - they had a reasonable range of sprouted grain products when I looked this morning.

[BrianHG]

I'll be trying the sprouted pasta products too.  -  It's really difficult to find food with a lot of protein if you are trying to cut down on meat and dairy (saturated fats).

Pork filet has very little heavy saturated fat, well, the Canadian AAA grade pork filet appears to be in that category.
In the US, I would only trust the most expensive beef Silver Medallion Filet Mignon as I have experienced it.  I only discovered the pork substitute in my later years.

By taste and texture, it takes time to learn how tell how bad the state of meat is today.

Here is 1 way to tell:  If you prepare a Pork Filet for yourself, spicing it with only salt and dried peppers/herbs.  If you have nothing else on your plate while eating, when done, rinsing the plate in warm tap water with NO soap should reveal a squeaky clean plate.  Now try that with any regular poultry or beef or hamburger.  I bet there will remain a slimy oil residue.  Even so called white turkey breast, supposedly the best health-wise for you will leave an slimy grease residue on your dinner plate if you don't wash it with soap & water.  This grease is the stuff difficult to burn out of your body during exercise.  It is also what weighs you down after a meal.

Because of price and health quality, I almost gone exclusively to pork filet so long as I keep seeing that water only rinsing my dinner plate leaves a squeaky clean surface.

Do not expect this attribute from any other cut of meat from a pig.  I discovered this by fluke while looking for a more affordable substitute for beef filet minion.

Eat pork or beef filet like this for over a year exclusively as your protein source and if you eat any other type of meat again, and it will be evident you are eating your way to a heart-attack.


LOL, OMG, take a look at the price difference...
US = $2.49usd/pound
https://www.smokinpetebbq.com/wordpress/save-boneless-pork-loin-roasts-center-cut-pork-chops/
Canada = $1.32usd/pound
https://www.livingrichwithcoupons.com/2018/03/costco-hot-deal-on-boneless-pork-loin.html

[greasemonkey]

You all sound like my wife  .

It could be very true that my weight loss is due to caloric restriction. I am too lazy to keep a log so we'll never know.

But in defense of my thesis:
- I eat as much as I can
- I am almost never hungry (even after a whole day of work & fasting)
- I don't feel cold during the winter (I always wear t-shirts)
- I don't crave carbohydrates
- I eat copious amounts of fat (bacon, eggs and cheese till the cows come home)
- I don't seem to have lost much muscle mass
- I generally feel good
- I sleep well

I also know all this could be attributed to confirmation bias/placebo effects/other uncontrolled variables, take your pick. All I am saying is it works for me.

[Zero999]

Obesity is a worldwide problem. It might have started in the USA, but it's now everewhere. People have eaten grains for milenia, without getting fat. Food is only part of the problem. A big contributing factor is lack of exercise. The USA was the first country where car ownership became the norm, followed by most of Europe, Canada, Austraila etc. at the same time mechanisation replaced physical jobs and TV and finally gaming replaced more physical leasure activites such as sport.

Now listen carefully, secret #1:  Eating grains...

Purchase bread and pasta made from "Sprouted Whole Wheat".  This is in line with the grains people have eaten for milinea without getting fat.

I know this type of bread isn't soft squeezy like the normal supermarket bread we are use to, but you will not get fat from eating this stuff.  It is not refined white or semi-BS whole wheat flour.  It contains almost everything from the wheat grain, but usually you can only find this type of bread in the health food or organic section of your supermarket.

(I went haywire when I had to move from a my old house where a local pizzeria made their own pizza dough and had a true authentic sprouted whole wheat dough.  (they thought it was normal whole wheat, but, I could tell since I purchase the sprouted whole wheat bread and I recognized it's taste and texture)  The delivery guy was going insane over the 3 years a decade ago I lost over 100lb(45kg) on a few x-large triple-mushroom and cheese pizzas a week.)  (This is what happens when a small mom&pop pizza joint who makes everything from scratch using their own ingredients)

I've traveled to other countries where they don't eat sprouted whole wheat, but ordinary white bread and they're not as fat as Brits and Americans, so it's not that which is to blame for obsity. Granted the bread doesn't have masses of fat and sugar added to it, but it's not wholemeal, just ordinary white bread, made in the traditional way.

If you've lost weight, it's purely because you've reduced your calories and if you're eating a ballanced diet and like the food, then good, but eating too much of anything will make you gain weight in the long run.

Remember, today's white flour breads have added fat, sugar, has nothing bot the bottom end complex carbs which easily break down into more sugar.  Added preservatives are doing a number too.  It's also missing the healthy parts of the grain which is why many breads has vitamin fortification.

Yes, some breads have added sugar, a bit of fat and salt too, which isn't good, but the anti-preservatives thing is total bollocks. Most preservatives are anti-oxidents which naturally occur in other foods such as fruit. A classic example is ascorbic acid, which is also another name for vitamin C. There are a few preservatives which are toxic in large quantities, but that's the same for many naturally occuring chemicals, found in food and levels are tightly regulated.

Trying to get rid of preservatives will make food more expensive, resulting in more wastage, pollution and higher prices. It's not good for the health of the population, or the environment.

Vitamin fortification is a good thing. We don't do enough of it in the UK.

[BrianHG]

Vitamin fortification is a good thing. We don't do enough of it in the UK.

Now I am not against Vitamin fortification, however, I was just saying some of this is being done because bleached refined white flour literally has not vitamins compared to what should have been naturally available in the entire sprouted grain.

I also hate that I have to pay almost 3x for my bread when it just ends up using all the additional health vitamin containing parts of the wheat which just usually gets thrown away when producing the regular white crap.

If our food was properly entire and you have even a minimally good diet, you will be getting all of what you need except for maybe some vitamin D as you may be avoiding just a few minutes of near full body sunlight exposure on your skin.

[BrianHG]

But in defense of my thesis:
- I eat as much as I can
- I am almost never hungry (even after a whole day of work & fasting)

And here lies the culprit.  Your appetite is currently in tune with your needs.  And if you are lucky, this will hold into old age.

This isn't the case for many North Americans.  Our appetite is such a finely tuned system that If we were to only eat 4 pistachio nuts a day over our requirements, within a year, anyone of us would put on an additional 25 pounds of fat.  That amount of food fits on a single tablespoon.  Yes, 1 single additional tablespoon a day of even something like a thick soup for a year over our needs will add 25 pounds after 365 days.  You do not realize that if you a little more or too much over a few days that you will eat a little less over the next 2-3 days without consciously knowing you are doing so.

For those of us with serious weight problems, this 'balance' in our appetite is tilted in the wrong direction.  Since I workout for a solid 1.5hours every second day, when I skip a workout, I am aware that I'm just not as hungry and have no big cravings.  However, after a vacation, by workout #3, my appetite becomes massive.  And whats worse is that my appetite balance is out of whack from diet problems locked in from childhood, or genetic programming, so I either need to restrain myself, or when I occasionally fail to do so, I keep myself in good enough physical shape that I can burn off those additional calories during an enhanced version of my 1.5 hour workout session.  My stepbrother doesn't have any such problem at all, that lucky bastard...

[Zero999]

Vitamin fortification is a good thing. We don't do enough of it in the UK.

Now I am not against Vitamin fortification, however, I was just saying some of this is being done because bleached refined white flour literally has not vitamins compared to what should have been naturally available in the entire sprouted grain.

I also hate that I have to pay almost 3x for my bread when it just ends up using all the additional health vitamin containing parts of the wheat which just usually gets thrown away when producing the regular white crap.

If our food was properly entire and you have even a minimally good diet, you will be getting all of what you need except for maybe some vitamin D as you may be avoiding just a few minutes of near full body sunlight exposure on your skin.

Vitamins and minerals removed from refined grains, isn't clear cut. If a vitamin/mineral is bound to insoluble fibre, then it might not be absorbed that well anyway, just excreated in the feaces. It wouldn't surprise me if some white breads are better sources of some vitamins, than wholemeal, because of increased bioavailability.

I agree about fortification with vitamin D. Folic acid is probably also a good idea, as it's destroyed by too much UV exposure. There's a fine balance.

[SilverSolder]

[...]
Our appetite is such a finely tuned system that If we were to only eat 4 pistachio nuts a day over my requirements, within a year, anyone of us would put on an additional 25 pounds of fat.
[...]

I was amazed to find how many calories there are in nuts.  E.g. 15 grams of walnuts ( which is really not much!) is 100 calories...

Guess who was ignorantly piling on ounces of walnuts on the breakfast oats in the past...   no wonder it was hard to lose weight, LOL! 

To me, the big "Aha" is where the calories are coming from,  there are plenty of counter-intuitive surprises in this space! 

Even my mug coffee with milk turned out to be an issue, when you add it up over a day (week, month, year...)

[BrianHG]

Also, I found it is safe to put sprouted breads in the fridge.  Refrigerated, their shelf life increases to a few months as long as they were fresh before you placed the in the fridge.  I have no choice but to buy the bread in bulk here as the local stores purchases them at a limited quantity because of their price and being a niche product, and it appears I'm not the only one in my town who is on the hunt for these breads.

Do you have Trader Joe in Canada/Quebec?  - they had a reasonable range of sprouted grain products when I looked this morning.

When traveling to California for business, trader Joes is my default stop as I make sure my hotel room has a functional kitchen & I prep my own food except for business dinners.
Luckily here in Quebec, I have access to an authentic butcher, who I personally know by name where I order the top quality meats in bulk, to order by weight, which he vacuum packs for me, then freezes it.

[Zero999]

[...]
Our appetite is such a finely tuned system that If we were to only eat 4 pistachio nuts a day over my requirements, within a year, anyone of us would put on an additional 25 pounds of fat.
[...]

I was amazed to find how many calories there are in nuts.  E.g. 15 grams of walnuts ( which is really not much!) is 100 calories...

Guess who was ignorantly piling on ounces of walnuts on the breakfast oats in the past...   no wonder it was hard to lose weight, LOL! 

To me, the big "Aha" is where the calories are coming from,  there are plenty of counter-intuitive surprises in this space! 

Even my mug coffee with milk turned out to be an issue, when you add it up over a day (week, month, year...)

It's not just calories but how much they fill you up and what other nutrients they provide. For example semi-skimmed milk might have the same number of calories per 100ml, as lemonade, but it also has a ton of other nutrients such as calcium and protein and it's absorbed much more slowly, than lemonade, which is just sugary water.

Nuts are energy dense, but they're also packed full of other nutrients, so aren't a bad thing to eat.

When you eat most of your calories is also important. It's generally better to eat more earlier on in the day, so it can be burned off, rather than at night, when it's more likely to be stored as fat.

However it's still energy in vs expenditure which matters. Tricks such as less energy dense food, which is slowly absorbed, eating enough fibre and not too late help to increase the odds of an energy deficit, but physics always wins.

I've found if I'm really active, it's almost impossible to gain weight and I tend to under, rather than over eat, which can cause some disordered eating, such as binging, and waking up in the night to eat. When I'd go for a six mile cycle ride at lunchtime, as well as cycling 4.5 miles to and from work everyday, I'd find myself eating all sorts of processed, sugary, fatty food and still lose weight. Now I still cycle to and from work, but I haven't cycled at lunchtime, since the pandemic, as I'm worried about having an accident and going to hospital, so the binging is rare and I don't wake up to eat any more. When I start cycling at lunchtime again, I'll make more of an effort to eat/drink more calories from substances which don't keep my stomach full for too long, as night eating is a pain and I feel drowsy the following day. All the energy dense foods which are considered to be healthy, tend to be slow release and would keep my stomach full, thus reducing my appetite and what I eat later, so I might resort to eating some junk food, after my lunchtime cycle rides, to keep my intake up.

[nctnico]

[...]
Our appetite is such a finely tuned system that If we were to only eat 4 pistachio nuts a day over my requirements, within a year, anyone of us would put on an additional 25 pounds of fat.
[...]

I was amazed to find how many calories there are in nuts.  E.g. 15 grams of walnuts ( which is really not much!) is 100 calories...

Guess who was ignorantly piling on ounces of walnuts on the breakfast oats in the past...   no wonder it was hard to lose weight, LOL! 

Yes. One of the first things to do if you want to lose weight is keep a list with what you eat for one or two weeks and then sum up the calories. There will be several red flags 

[BrianHG]

Yes. One of the first things to do if you want to lose weight is keep a list with what you eat for one or two weeks and then sum up the calories. There will be several red flags 

This usually holds true since it is so easy for our bodies to extract the calories from our processed/refined cooked food.

Example: I eat all my filet mignon blue.  I don't mean disgusting refrigerated cold, but, the bulk core of the meat isn't cooked while the outside is seared for flavor, but the core never exceeds body temperature during cooking.

It was discovered that actual 'cooking' of meat actually performs part of the digestion breakdown process making it 5x easier our short intestine to extract the calories and nutrients from the meat.  The truth is our massive brains burn most of our consumed calories at rest and without cooked food, in our deep ancestry, we might have never been able to fuel our evolution at times of low food availability.
This actually holds true for many vegetables as well.  As an example, raw carrots celery are so difficult to digest, you can almost consider them as negative calories.  Not only can you stuff them nonstop, but it actually will take all day non-stop just to chew down enough of them just to get enough calories to survive.  However, once you cook them, no only are they soft, but sweeter too and it becomes easy for our intestine to extract them as fuel instead of them being fiberous mulch being pushed through our system.

Unfortunately, if we try using this trick, for some of us, it doesn't last too long until our sub-continuous appetite system catches on, adapts, and then you find out you are eating 2-5x the food to make up for that new weird hunger sensation.  It's feels like your stomach is stuffed full from eating all that mulch which you don't seem to be extracting any useful surplus calories from, so you feel as if you always need to eat more non-stop.

Damn it, we cant trick our bodies indefinitely.  Like it or not, evolution has designed us to seek out calorie rich food all too well.

[nctnico]

I'd say it has become way too easy to get food. But you can get used to eating less.

[SilverSolder]

Yes, it is all too easy to munch a couple of snacks and get hundreds of calories in the back door...

[thm_w]

This isn't the case for many North Americans.  Our appetite is such a finely tuned system that If we were to only eat 4 pistachio nuts a day over our requirements, within a year, anyone of us would put on an additional 25 pounds of fat.  That amount of food fits on a single tablespoon.  Yes, 1 single additional tablespoon a day of even something like a thick soup for a year over our needs will add 25 pounds after 365 days.  You do not realize that if you a little more or too much over a few days that you will eat a little less over the next 2-3 days without consciously knowing you are doing so.

I see your points, although I will correct the numbers:
- 4 calories * 4 pistachio nuts * 365 days = 5,840 calories
- 5,840 / 3,500 = 1.66

That would be 1.7lb of fat gained in that year.
Foods are not all bioavailable at their caloric value, almonds are ~80%, pistachios probably not far off. Then add the fact that your body is not perfectly efficient at turning those added calories into fat, so the number might drop to ~70% or so.

We can also look at some real world studies where this was attempted, and see that adding walnuts/almonds to peoples diet will not cause them to gain weight. This is because the participants eat less of other foods to compensate, likely less healthy ones. Of course, if you went with a cup of pop instead of the pistachios, well, the results would be out the window..

https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/96/2/296/4576806
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/calories-in-a-pound-of-fat#section4
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/nuts-and-weight-loss#section2

I thought fats are OK nowadays -  i.e. unsaturated fats as in olives / olive oil, walnuts, etc. etc. - with no limit imposed other than staying below about 35% of the daily calorie intake as an absolute max?

One of the big surprises to a nutrition n00b like me,  was (a) how much fat there is in dairy products, and (b) the fats are all the "bad" saturated type!   Sadly, as I love milk, cheese, youghurt, and the rest of it, and can't be dealing with reduced strength versions!  (I'd rather have 1/4 glass of whole milk than a full glass of skimmed, if you see what I mean.)

Full fat dairy should be ok, ideally yogurt/cheese or similar.
Personally I feel milk (13g lactose per cup), and low fat dairy should be avoided, but I don't believe the literature supports that.

https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/146/1/81/4616088
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00394-012-0418-1?rel=1
https://academic.oup.com/advances/article/10/5/924S/5569507
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00394-017-1581-1
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-017-0243-1

[BrianHG]

This isn't the case for many North Americans.  Our appetite is such a finely tuned system that If we were to only eat 4 pistachio nuts a day over our requirements, within a year, anyone of us would put on an additional 25 pounds of fat.  That amount of food fits on a single tablespoon.  Yes, 1 single additional tablespoon a day of even something like a thick soup for a year over our needs will add 25 pounds after 365 days.  You do not realize that if you a little more or too much over a few days that you will eat a little less over the next 2-3 days without consciously knowing you are doing so.

I see your points, although I will correct the numbers:
- 4 calories * 4 pistachio nuts * 365 days = 5,840 calories
- 5,840 / 3,500 = 1.66

That would be 1.7lb of fat gained in that year.

O)k, going along with your numbers, you would need to eat a surplus of 42grams worth of pistachio nuts to gain the 25lb over the year, not 4.2grams worth.  That's around 60 nuts.

if you went with a cup of pop instead of the pistachios, well, the results would be out the window..

Ohh boy, all I can say to those is learn to drink water...  Exercise helps you want to prefer water over any other drink.  However, if you exercise and drink those sports drinks, it trains your appetite to expect flavor  and nutrients from what you drink and this will not help you kick the soft-drink habit.  No matter what those sports drinks marketers push, drink water and eat a proper diet instead and you will do better in the long run.  If you don't have a diet or sugar drink problem, then you are fine to take in those sports drinks, but they aren't as necessary as the marketing hype would like you to believe.

[Zero999]

But in defense of my thesis:
- I eat as much as I can
- I am almost never hungry (even after a whole day of work & fasting)

And here lies the culprit.  Your appetite is currently in tune with your needs.  And if you are lucky, this will hold into old age.

You obviously haven't looked at the weight loss graph he posted, which shows this clearly isn't the case. He's 1.83m tall and weighed 80kg, a BMI of just under 24 and lost 10kg in just over four months, a BMI of just under 21. The speed of the weight loss and the fact only 40% of it was fat, is the hallmark of a crash diet.

You all sound like my wife  .

It could be very true that my weight loss is due to caloric restriction. I am too lazy to keep a log so we'll never know.

But in defense of my thesis:
- I eat as much as I can
- I am almost never hungry (even after a whole day of work & fasting)
- I don't feel cold during the winter (I always wear t-shirts)
- I don't crave carbohydrates
- I eat copious amounts of fat (bacon, eggs and cheese till the cows come home)
- I don't seem to have lost much muscle mass
- I generally feel good
- I sleep well

I also know all this could be attributed to confirmation bias/placebo effects/other uncontrolled variables, take your pick. All I am saying is it works for me.

Perhaps your wife is right?

Of course it's just to caloric restriction. Your body has being buring fat and muscle, both from its stores and the little you've being eating. There's no other explaination for this.

You don't have to be underweight to be have malnutrition and I'm not talking about the sort caused by lack of vitamins, but energy-protein deficiency. Loosing that much weight, that quickly, will certainly cause some degree of malnutrition, especialy as your BMI wasn't that high to start with.

That sounds familular and is quite worrying, as it marked the turning point when my dieting started to push towards something resembling an eating disorder, even though it wasn't clinically diagnosable at that point. I hope you don't go down the same path.

It's still relatively early days, since you've only being doing it since the end of last year. I've done a similar thing in he past and I remember it took awhile to realise anything was wrong. The human body can often take a real hammering, before it becomes nocticable. The lack of appetite isn't surprising and is caused by ketosis. I remember feeling good about the weight loss, but somehow still wanted to lose more.

Why did you decide to lose weight in the first place? Your starting BMI isn't considered to be overweight by medical professionals. I know BMI is just a rough indicator, but even if you were carying a little excess fat, it was certainly more healthy than this and I doubt you needed to lose more than 5kg.

Have you dieted before? If so what other diets have you tried?

[SilverSolder]

Interesting fact:  BMI (Body Mass Index) was developed at the behest of Florence Nightingale, who wanted a way of stating numerically whether a person was malnourished (underweight) or not.

Nowadays we use it mostly on the other end of the spectrum...   that's progress!

I stumbled on an article about this woman last night, she was a fascinating figure in history.  One of the first to apply science to health care.

[thm_w]

Perhaps your wife is right?

Of course it's just to caloric restriction. Your body has being buring fat and muscle, both from its stores and the little you've being eating. There's no other explaination for this.

You don't have to be underweight to be have malnutrition and I'm not talking about the sort caused by lack of vitamins, but energy-protein deficiency. Loosing that much weight, that quickly, will certainly cause some degree of malnutrition, especialy as your BMI wasn't that high to start with.

BMI of 21 is OK, depending on what studies you look at, maybe worse for someone older (>50). But I do agree, 4kg fat loss 6kg something else. If possible in the future should aim to not lose more lean mass.
17% BF is good. This number could be high or low by 5% or more, hard to say without seeing the guy.

Probably best to get some blood tests then, and check for any nutrient deficiencies.


https://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587(18)30288-2/fulltext
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/abs/10.7326/M15-1181
https://www.bmj.com/content/368/bmj.m688 (fiber!)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0193368

[greasemonkey]

Probably best to get some blood tests then, and check for any nutrient deficiencies.

To that I agree. I will do some blood test and other exams this fall. I also have records for the last 10-15 years to compare.

Now to the issue of malnutrition. AFAIK the are no essential carbohydrates. So theoretically at least the absence of carbs in a diet does not lead to malnutrition. And don't forget I am still eating everything else.

These are the symptoms of malnutrition according to the NHS. Undoubtedly I have the main symptom (5-10% weight loss in 3-6 months) but none of the other. And believe me if you do physical work you know when your energy is low.

Muscle mass loss
I lost roughly 4kg of fat and 6kg of lean mass. This means that when I was 80kg I had 16kg of fat. This means that 20% of my weight was fat. Now I am 70kg and have 12kg of fat. That is 17% fat. So although in absolute numbers I lost more muscle than fat I am relative more muscular. I can do 6 pull-ups now. 6 months ago I could barely manage 2.

Why did you decide to lose weight in the first place? Your starting BMI isn't considered to be overweight by medical professionals. I know BMI is just a rough indicator, but even if you were carying a little excess fat, it was certainly more healthy than this and I doubt you needed to lose more than 5kg.

Have you dieted before? If so what other diets have you tried?

I did not decide to lose weight because obviously I didn't need to. I read Gary Taubes' book Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It and thought I would try. By the way if you decide to cut carbs your life becomes much simpler. There is nothing to buy from the gas station on your way to work (maybe dried nuts)  .

I had only dieted once before (10 years ago) in order to be a faster tennis player. I was about 85kg back then and dropped to 77 in three months. But I got my diet from a nutritionist and also had a nice lady who cooked my meals. The diet was not restricted in calories, just less carbs and fat. After that I oscillated between 75 and 80kg.

Please understand that I am not trying to peddle anything here. If someone told me this 6 months ago I would have had the same reaction.

[Zero999]

Probably best to get some blood tests then, and check for any nutrient deficiencies.

To that I agree. I will do some blood test and other exams this fall. I also have records for the last 10-15 years to compare.

Now to the issue of malnutrition. AFAIK the are no essential carbohydrates. So theoretically at least the absence of carbs in a diet does not lead to malnutrition. And don't forget I am still eating everything else.

These are the symptoms of malnutrition according to the NHS. Undoubtedly I have the main symptom (5-10% weight loss in 3-6 months) but none of the other. And believe me if you do physical work you know when your energy is low.

Muscle mass loss
I lost roughly 4kg of fat and 6kg of lean mass. This means that when I was 80kg I had 16kg of fat. This means that 20% of my weight was fat. Now I am 70kg and have 12kg of fat. That is 17% fat. So although in absolute numbers I lost more muscle than fat I am relative more muscular. I can do 6 pull-ups now. 6 months ago I could barely manage 2.

Why did you decide to lose weight in the first place? Your starting BMI isn't considered to be overweight by medical professionals. I know BMI is just a rough indicator, but even if you were carying a little excess fat, it was certainly more healthy than this and I doubt you needed to lose more than 5kg.

Have you dieted before? If so what other diets have you tried?

I did not decide to lose weight because obviously I didn't need to. I read Gary Taubes' book Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It and thought I would try. By the way if you decide to cut carbs your life becomes much simpler. There is nothing to buy from the gas station on your way to work (maybe dried nuts)  .

I had only dieted once before (10 years ago) in order to be a faster tennis player. I was about 85kg back then and dropped to 77 in three months. But I got my diet from a nutritionist and also had a nice lady who cooked my meals. The diet was not restricted in calories, just less carbs and fat. After that I oscillated between 75 and 80kg.

Please understand that I am not trying to peddle anything here. If someone told me this 6 months ago I would have had the same reaction.

No, I don't think you're pushing anything. I'm concerned about you because I've done a similar thing before and suffered from health problems in the long term. The first year or so was good, but I ended up with an eating disorder, which took awhile to recover from and still have some lasting damage. One thing to note about that link is it says unintentional weight loss, but the effect on your body is the same, regardless of whether you're on a diet, or have inadequate access to food.

Restricting carbohydrates has the same effect as restricting calories, as you said, there are fewer food options, which makes it easier to eat less, but that doesn't mean it's good. It's funny how people think they've just discovered the magic new low carb diet, when in fact it's old. I've read similar books to that before. It's all a load of bollocks and only works due to caloric restriction.

It's true that there are no essential carbohydrates, but that doesn't mean that low carb diets are healthy. Cutting out whole food groups severely restricts other essential nutrients. Ketosis is bad and no human population has lived off a ketogenic diet for very long. Contrary to popular belief, even the Inuit don't live off a keto diet, because they get plenty of carbohydrates from glycogen in freshly killed meat. 100 years ago people lived of a diet with very little meat and loads of carbohydrates, compared to fat and obesity wasn't an issue.

Severely reducing your food options doesn't make life simpler, but less pleasurable. It mean something as simple as going out for a meal is a PITA. You might be able to kid yourself, that ordering a steak with a salad is nice, but you still don't receive the same level of enjoyment as you would, had you been able to select from the entire menu and eat everything on the plate.

Your wife also seems to be concerned about you, which indicates what you're doing is likely to be detrimental to your health. It might not be obvious to you at the moment, but that doesn't mean it's not damaging you. Hopefully this is just a crash diet and doesn't progress into anything more sinister, as it did with me.

[nctnico]

Severely reducing your food options doesn't make life simpler, but less pleasurable. It mean something as simple as going out for a meal is a PITA. You might be able to kid yourself, that ordering a steak with a salad is nice, but you still don't receive the same level of enjoyment as you would, had you been able to select from the entire menu and eat everything on the plate.

Yup. I'm still eating chocolate but just less of it.

[coppercone2]

btw something interesting you might find life style improvement gains from putting on muscle (different then) losing weight. the leg cramps I used to have were not related to weight. It just had to do with bigger muscles in the right places. Also related to injury resistance. IMO don't care about your weight if you want to get stronger. this is for all the people that like steak, pizza, posture and cake. Having been fat and much less fat before, I can tell you muscle is fairly permanent, and you reminisce about it much less.