LCHF Diet, Part 3

Health and Fitness [1401.15]

Low Carb Diet, Part 3: Results So Far

After all my due diligence (see parts 1 and 2 of the low carb diet series), I was all set to go.

Normally when I enter into a "gotta get seriously into shape" phase, it would be for something specific like a kendo championship tournament. I'd have specific weight goals as well as workout and practice goals. Unless I got injured, I'd be pretty good about persevering with an "eat less, exercise more" regimen, ineffective though it had come to be.

This time, my training goals were more general: basically, to continue trying to get back up to snuff in kendo (a torn knee in 2007 and subsequent surgery in 2008 had really put me in the basement). For the LCHF diet:

I scheduled the start time to coincide with some kendo down time
I vowed to stick with it for at least 3 months, no matter how much suffering and anguish I had to endure

For point 1, I started the LCHF diet a little before the annual carnival at my local Japanese community center, during which time and for two weeks afterward we would have no kendo practice. For point 2, I mentally girded myself to give up gohan (Japanese rice)!

This may seem hard to understand, but to the Japanese, rice is more than food. Even though I'm technically third generation, meaning my parents were born in the U.S., my mom and dad were raised in Japan and then came to America in their early twenties, so we were, for all intents and purposes, an immigrant family. Gohan was pretty central to life. To give it up, I was expecting to have to exert more will power than I'd ever had to before.

Amazingly, that test of will power never occurred. It turned out the hardest thing about restricting carbs was all the time and effort required to pick it out when eating restaurant food (in retrospect, I should have carried chopsticks with me; it would have made things so much easier!).

Below is a graph of my weight, including body fat percentage, for the past 17 months, from 1207.23 to 1401.14 (let's not worry about the exact units, shall we). A few notes about the graph:

for the first 4 months I was pretty strict about carbohydrate restriction
by mid Sep'12, I had effortlessly blown past the best weight loss I had been able to achieve in the previous twenty years
in early Dec'12 (first break in graph) we spent 10 days in Europe, where I started to sample carbs again
in mid Aug'13, I decided to lose a bit more weight in case it later rebounded after my voluntary change to being self-employed in Oct'13
since Jul'12 I've lost a bit more than 30 pounds (virtually all of it body fat, by my reckoning)

Some notes about the first month:

getting through the carnival was tough. I had forgotten how physically grueling it would be (two full days and nights of manual labor in the July heat). I let myself get dehydrated, never a good idea, but especially bad for keto-adaptation. The worst part was I couldn't sample the delicious food the kendo moms always make!
I learned to recognize an indicator of being keto-adapted: a slightly metallic taste in the mouth
I started having "plumbing problems", but quickly got over them by including low carb vegetables at every meal (e.g. romaine lettuce, tomatoes, broccoli, cabbage)
I started to get some slight muscle and back cramps, but overcame them by immediately upping my salt and fluid intake, and then giving my body time to adapt
like others (see part 1), I pretty much stopped having sensations of hunger or feeling like I had run out of energy (as long as I was not dehydrated)

Right now I'm still following a LCHF diet, but not as strictly as before. I probably eat 75 to 100 grams of carbs a day, give or take a fair chunk. I still have a bit of excess fat (the lower abdomen and upper thighs are real buggers!), but I'm not worried about it. I'm also not worried if I'm still slowly losing weight (as I seem to be), as long as it's from excess body fat and not muscle.

Well, I think that's enough about me! I'll end with a couple of notes that may make my mileage differ from yours:

willpower was not my problem in my previous weight loss attempts
I already subscribed to the notion that any time you eat something, there should be some carbohydrate, protein, and fat present (I'm just using a new ratio these days that restricts the carbs and protein)
I already went through the experience of giving up a favorite class of foods when I became allergic to shellfish (see part 1)

In my mind, the allergy experience is germane. My body has become sensitive to carbohydrates. It doesn't go into shock like it does with shellfish, but the reaction is still bad, and it's worth being vigilant about avoiding it.

In my next post in this series, I'll talk about other references and tools that I've found useful (like how I do the charting above). Stay tuned!

The Seeking42 low carb diet series (note: this list will be updated as articles are added):

Low Carb Diet, Part 1: Prelude               
Low Carb Diet, Part 2: The Art and Science   (click "previous in series")
Low Carb Diet, Part 3: Results So Far        (this article)
Low Carb Diet, Part 4: Tools and References  (click "next in series")
Low Carb Diet, Part 5: The Deep End