marin01;426651 Wrote:

Are you doing a specific type of diet

--
Abbi

Your wording is odd - If I eat meat and mix it with pasta I can easily
get fat, yet meat has no carbs.  What matters is the total carbs across
the day not the carbs in any one portion of food.

Your wording is unrealistic - If I eat an extra stick of butter each
day as a snack, that's an extra 1000+ calories.  It doesn't matter that
butter has so little carbs the entire stick probably only counts as 5
grams, that many extra calories will overwhelm anything else.

What's true is that for most people but not all people eating low enough
carbs turns off the carb cravings, plus eating enough fat turns of the
fat cravings, plus eating enough protein turns off the protein cravings.
The net result is losing weight without hunger.

Some people want to use low carb to eat very large portions and still
lose.  Doesn't work.  Some people want to use the appetite supression of
low carb to starve themselves painlessly.  It's just as unhealthy as
starving themselves with hunger.

Being able to lose without hunger (except in the first two weeks and at
a few other points during the loss phase) is still extremely nice, but
it is realistic.  Probably not one dieter in history has ever liked
"realistic" but that's the way it goes.  Loss without hunger is sure a
lot better than loss with hunger.  Of course that realistic bit does
kick in at some point - Somewhere around 10-20 pounds left to lose the
hungerless loss stops or drops to 10 pounds per year.  That's still
wonderful for folks with 50+ to lose!

If you are making it up as you go, or you are avoiding all veggies, or
you are staying in the same phase for months on end then yes it is bad
for you.  If you have one of the books on the topic (pretty much any of
them) and you are following the directions in the book, even the parts
you ignored on the first reading and the parts you did not agree with or
believe, then low carbing is extremely healthy.

Nearly all follow-the-book low carbers eat far more veggies than they
did before they started.  And they stopped counting potatoes and corn as
veggies and still eat more.  Definitely very healthy.

Without knowing how much you used to eat there's no way to answer by
comparing to your current portions.  Probably less.

There are all sorts of formulas for guessing calories based on current
weight, goal weight, you name it.  They work well.  Try them.

I'll offer a simple feedback system.  Starting at least 4 weeks after
you started, in the last 2-4 weeks, did you -

1) Saw a new low, never felt hunger: Ideal.  Keep your daily calories
the same.

2) Saw a new low, felt hunger at any time: Consider adding 50-100
calories to your daily quota.

3) Did not see a new low, never felt hunger: Subtract 50-100 calories
from your daily quota.

4) Did not see a new low, felt hungry at any time: Depends on how much
you have to lose.  With 20+ pounds to lose changing mixture of calories
will probably be a better idea than changing total caalories.

My concept is that no matter what portion sizes you started at this
method will gradually drop your portion sizes as you lose and will try
to prevent hunger.  "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"
works with hunger as with so much else.  Folks who are not hungry tend
to have better control of their portion sizes.