losing weight revisited - low carb + mobile app

So I posted awhile ago about low carb diets and wanted to revisit the subject. I typically weigh about 5 9", 175lbs and have struggled for quite a long time trying to lose 10 pounds.

a few years ago I did a keto diet and was able to get down to 165. At that weight my abs are starting to show and my face is thinner. Unfortunately my wife got pregnant and during that time I gained it back as I ate a lot of second dinners with her.

Due to having zero will power in the face of all the desserts my kids eat, I havent been able to lose the 10 and even got up to about 178.

Over the last 10-15 years, nutrition has made some strides in understanding how hunger works and why people struggle to lose weight. Ultimately as many of us have thought, it is still fundamentally about calories in vs calories out. You will never bypass the physics of this. However the one thing you can have some influence on is how bad you feel when you have the calorie shortage you need to lose weight.

Everyone has noticed that your body tends to want to stay at the same weight. It turns out there are two hormones leptin and ghrelin that work to control hunger. Leptin is produced by fat cells, the more fat you have, the more leptin you have. Leptin reduces hunger. The problem is that like many hormones, your body gets used to a certain level over time. So if you are fat you need more leptin to feel full. When you lose weight you have less leptin than your base and that makes you feel hungry until your body acclimates to the new level.

Ghrelin is produced by the stomach and makes you feel hungry. When your stomach stretches, ghrelin production is reduced which makes you feel less hungry.

glucose (carb) intake, also stimulates leptin, but the impact is short. Fructose does not stimulate leptin nearly as much. This may be one reason why high fructose corn syrup is making everyone fat.

Unfortunately experiments with giving people leptin did not reduce weight as their bodies adjusted the hunger response to whatever level of leptin you give over time. Your body gets used to a particular amount of leptin and then makes you feel hunger when you have less than that and full when you have more. As you lose weight you start going well below the setpoint and you have to acclimate your body to the new base level of leptin.

Different types of food give you longer feelings of fullness. Protein gives by far the most lasting feeling of fullness, then fat, and carbs give you very little fullness, mainly from the stretch of your stomach and the insulin spike. Fructose does not stimulate leptin production, but glucose does.

Keto works by focusing your diet on the types of food that make you feel full the longest. A cup of rice is around 200 calories with is similar to around 1/4 pound of filet mignon which has about 230 calories. The filet will keep you full for a lot longer.

Im finally steadily losing weight again using of all things, a mobile app, called my fitness pal. It (and many similar apps) have a huge database of food. The app keeps you to a calorie deficit of about 400 calories a day. This will lose about 1 lb a week. This is a slow enough rate that Im not suffering, too much.

Im still mostly doing low carb, but the app makes it much easier to factor in eating the carbs and the impact of exercise. Im getting about 1800 calories a day with only a 400 calorie deficit. Im not ever really famished, but Ive learned that it is really easy to accidentally go over the 400 calories. A couple extra slices of bread/day, a little too much oil, or a dessert can easily put you over. I suspect this is why I wasnt losing the weight.

I mountain bike and that typically gives me an extra 600-1000 calories on the day I ride. Turns out that is a huge amount of extra food.

Im down to about 173 (5 lbs from max) after 5 weeks and it has been effortless. The app gives me concrete info about whether I have the calories available to eat something. Without the app I wouldnt be sure and would end up just a little bit over. That was enough to prevent me from losing any weight.

One thing to keep in mind is that you have a lot of water. I fluctuate around +/- 3 pounds, especially after I ride in this hot weather. 173 is my morning weight, but during the day I can be as high as 175 or as low as 172.

good luck to everyone who is trying to lose weight and hope this helps.

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losing weight revisited - low carb + mobile app