My health improvements with LCHF

Yesterday my mum told me about something that she read about people on LCHF and their relationship with their doctors. One guy said that his doctor didn’t want to see him anymore if he started with LCHF. Another one insisted to give blood pressure lowering medicin to a guy with high blood pressure. It wasn’t abnormally high, it was just .. high. When he started with LCHF his blood pressure went down and he never took the medicine.

Besides an obvious weight loss (-13kg) my cholesterol has gone down from 5mmol/L to 3mmol/L. 5mmol/L is normal! My blood pressure has always been low and I’m still dizzy, which I’ve always been now and then so nothing abnormal there.

My belly is not bloated anymore. I look and feel “slim”.
I don’t have a bad stomach. I’m not “hard” like I used to be when I ate too much fiber and carbs.
I’m healthier. I dont get sick as often as I used to
I have more energy. I can, without problem, work out twice a day, which I could never ever do when I ate carbs.
I’m never hungry. I don’t have to starv myself in order to lose weight, I can eat 3000 kcal and still lose weight.
Most importantly maybe.. I don’t have any moodswings anymore!! When I was hungry I could get really grumpy and in such a mood, but now I can stay happy all day! Amazing.

Bad week!!

Very bad week. Awful actually. I’ve been eating sweets for 100 SEK, I had 1,5 waffle, rice with curry, dorito crisps and bread this week. Results: VERY bad skin, bloated, hungryyyy all the time, GAINED 1 KG IN A BLOODY WEEK. So it has to end now.

Unfortunately my student budget doesn’t allow much change in my diet, and I have already bought the next week’s food, so no major changes. I have decided that I am going to eat like I always do of course with no alternations and go on the big guns once I am home in Sweden and don’t have to pay for the food. (Greatest thing about still living with my parents)

Once I am home I have about a month to get that body I want, which means I am doing something called “fakir” which is basically NO carbs what so ever. I will probably do Intermittent fasting as well and, since I don’t have a job, I can easily work out multiple times a day. I will also cut down on the milkproducts except for butter. I have big plans for my butter!!

I will OBVIOUSLY blog about this experiment! 🙂 1,5 week and I am BUZZING.

Fakir is nothing you should do if you don’t have 100% control over your diet. As in, as a beginner you should not try this. I’d say that Intermittent fasting could be your next step, but since I’ve got 3ish kg that just wont let go of me I need to do something radical. I’m expecting big things over the summer!

Chicken stew with cauliflower mash

 

 

 

First of all I must again apologize for my bad photos, i mean .. a fork in the middle of the photo? The food is very good though, and its my own recipe. Here goes:

 

 

Shop and fry 2 chicken filées with butter, add half an onion.
Cut red peppers (1) in slices and chop mushrooms (2 big) to preferable size. Cut bacon (2 streaks) into small pieces and let fry together. Then add about 250ml of coconut cream. Choose your favourite spices and add them – I had pepper, salt, cayenne and curry.

Meantime, boil the cauliflower until it’s soft. Mix it with butter and creme fraiche and then add salt and pepper. Or other spices. I didn’t use measurements, just go on your feeling!

Greatest happiness

I think the greatest happiness in one’s life is when you can make someone else truly happy, or motivated, in this case. Making people listen to you is hard but yet an important stage in everything you do, once you’ve got their attention there’s only fun. Today I read an old friend’s blog about her wanting to lose weight and how much it actually affected her life. I really felt like I wanted to help her, because I know the feeling. Having an overweight makes you so uncomfortable and it frustrates you when clothes never fit or when you have a muffin top (när magen hänger över byxlinningen). So I did. I talked to her and to my delight she already knew about LCHF.

Therese seemed to be really happy over what we discussed and I am thrilled to see and read about the changes she will make!! This excites me so much! A very big good luck to you 🙂

Like the Arsenal fans say “In Arsène we trust” I say “In LCHF we trust”.

Please note that I am not licensed to provide any nutritional advice and if you are a diabetics you should consult with your doctor. I am very happy to help though and share my knowledge and experience. 

New to LCHF?

When I first started with LCHF I was really confused over what I should eat and not. I was a bit sceptical to not eat carbs such as potatoes and rice. I was a bit sceptical to have THAT much cream in my cooking etc so I did my research. The problem with most scientists is that they are subjective, refuse to look at both sides. Well I did research both sides and the more I looked at the pro-carb side the more convinced I was that there is actually no proof that fat is bad for you. So here we go!

Breakfast
Definitely the hardest one for me but here’s what I usually eat:

• Scramble egg (cream, spices, cheese..) with bacon
• Avocado with shrimps mixed with mayo and curry
• Home-made bread (of almond flour) with ham/cheese/cucumber
• Smoked mackerel
• Greek yoghurt with blueberries (Greek yoghurt contains less than 5g/100g and blueberries contain little sugar as well. I don’t eat this very often though)

Lunch
Something easy

• Omelette (contents of own choice but vegetables, ham/bacon, cream, cheese, onion etc)
• Chicken drumsticks with mayo
• Half grilled chicken
• Leftovers from the day before

Dinner
Endless options

• Any kind of meat with broccolimash/sallad/vegetables (ONLY overground)
• Soup with a cream/coconutmilk base (personal favourite is shrimp soup)
• Any stew with cream and hot spices
• Every meal that you used to eat is easily converted into LCHF style! Just think “no carbs” and “cream or cocnutmilk”. Tada!

Substitutes

I’m not a big fan of substitutes, say sugar free cakes instead of the real ones. People that I know are on LCHF eat cakes every other day, but sugar free of course. For me that is the same thing, because it’s still sweet. When do you know you’re a sugar addict? Well, that’s when you try to find substitutes for your cravings.

Picture borrowed from this blog. (recipe available as well)

Substitutes that I am a big fan of though are broccoli and cauliflower. Instead of rice and mashed potatoes you can make mashed broccoli or cauliflower. If you want to make rice, just shredd the cauliflower and boil it very quickly.

Do you know how much sugar your breakfast contains?

Do you eat berries, fruit and yoghurt for breakfast and think its healthy? You are most likely wrong..

Based on what I would eat, my breakfast would contain 66g of sugar. Thats 3 times my current daily intake. That breakfast would contain only 8g of fat, 6g of fiber and 11g of protein. Basically, all you eat is sugar and you call that healthy.

Not only do you poison your body, you make your bloodsugar go through the roof and then it comes down as fast again and you get cravings for something sweet, BEFORE lunchtime. What do you do? You’d probably have a fruit, and your bloodsugar hits the roof again and comes down in time for lunch. Your lunch probably consists of potatoes, rice or pasta and there goes your bloodsugar again.

This rollercoaster triggers the insulin, which is the fat storing hormone and you will gain weight instead of losing. I got to admit though, I used to eat like that before! But with sportsmüsli instead and low fat youghurt but then I never reached the goal I wanted.

It’s not really about discipline either. How can you have discipline to not eat when you are actually starving? I was always hungry when I ate that much carbs and sugar. Always. If you skipped out on a meal because “you wanted to lose weight” you ended up starving yourself because you didn’t get enough energy.

On a low carb diet you force your body to take energy from stored fat instead of stored sugar. This process takes DAYS, but once you are in ketosis your body starts burning fat, even though you are not exercising and I can almost go a whole day without hunger. And I’m not starving, because my body is taking the energy from my 160,000 calorie storage.

calculate how much you have in your body: (body fat % x your weight) x (1000 x 9) 

However, if you leave out both carbs and fat then you are in a starving mode again. If you reduce carbs, you need to add fat and vice versa.

Low carb + fat = Weight loss and maximized muscle gain

The thing about carbs

Photo taken from Novotel Tower Bridge’s breakfast menu.

Carb, or carbohydrate, is the common name for sugar (also called saccharide) and their chemical structure. Saccharides (sugar) consist of three different carbs: Glucose, sucrose (table sugar) and starch (Basically long structures of glucose (druvsocker)).

Carbs are digested in your stomach into sugars, which raise your bloodsugar (Why dietists encourage diabetics to eat carbs is yet a mystery….). When your bloodsugar goes up, more insulin is set free, which helps the sugar to get into the cells to become energy. A high insulin transforms bloodsugar to fat, which encourages the fat storage.

So, in other words;
Carbs are sugar
Sugar raise the bloodsugar
Bloodsugar triggers the insulin
Too much insulin transforms bloodsugar to fat
Increased fat storage
You gain weight.

And for you who still argue that the brain needs carbs, you are wrong. The brain needs glucose (which is a type of sugar) but the liver produce glucose from fat and protein from the food you eat, so there is absolutely no need for carbs in your diet.

What about the fibers? Fibers have no important role to play. They are indigestible and provides no energy. However, they make you feel full, but we know already that fat does that too.