Anyone who lost weight successfully long term without cutting carbs?

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Anyone who lost weight successfully long term without cutting carbs?

This topic contains 38 replies, has 11 voices, and was last updated by  Onel 7 years, 1 month ago.

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  • Have read a lot on this forum and I am wondering, if it is possible to do 5:2 successfully and loose long term weight without cutting carbs. Seems like every person that has been successful on 5:2 (reaching a healthy weight/measures and keeping it) has been cutting carbs or reduced the refined sugar intake. Is this just my subjective view?

    5:2 originally appealed to me, because there were only 2 “diet” days necessary plus reasonable eating on the other days. If I had to cut carbs, then this diet/way of eating is very similar to a lot of low carb diets in my eyes.

    What do you think?(Please no discussion, if cutting carbs or reducing refined sugar is healthy or not. And I know that fasting has positive health effects, but I am talking here about weight loss.)

    (hope I didn’t overlook a thread with the same topic)

    Most of us have realised that it is not just how much we eat but what we eat and whilst we can lose weight without cutting carbs and sugar it’ll be very difficult indeed to keep the weight off.

    Sally,

    I realised excess carbs and sugar were the reason for my excess weight, so it was a no brainer to reduce consumption of bread/pasta/biscuits/cake to levels where I could maintain a healthy weight with minimal effort (I’d choose slim over cake every time ๐Ÿ˜€ ).

    If you’re losing weight just doing 2 fast days and eating ‘normally’ on non-fast days, great. But if you find you aren’t losing (or maintaining) weight then you’ve got to change something…more fasting, overall less food, or reduce sugar and refined carbs.

    It’s your choice, but yes, I suspect most long term maintainers accept that they were previously over-consuming carbs and added sugar.

    Its possible to be successful without reducing processed carbs but it will be very difficult.

    There is no magical pudding (no pun intended). There is a common theme with those that have been successful and are now in maintenance. Ask any of us and you’ll most likely get the same response. Carbs locked up in fibre, such as veggies, legumes, nuts etc. No problems. Processed carbs from refined grains. Big problem.

    Thank you amazon, happynow and bigbooty for your responses. Wondering now, if fasting is then necessary at all. Should we all do low carb instead? I am still talking about just one aspect of fasting: weight loss.

    It is surprising for me that most people loose (a lot of) weight in the beginning and then come to a hold. They look out for other ways to support their weight loss and end up reducing carbs.

    2 questions about that crossed my mind:
    1. Why not doing low carb from the beginning (I am now ignoring the fact of will power and just rationally trying to figure this out)?

    2. Why do people loose in the beginning when doing 5:2 and later not any more?

    Any thoughts on that?

    Sally,

    You’re making generalizations with anecdotal evidence only. There are plenty of people here who have lost a lot of weight without ‘coming to a stop’ along the way, and who didn’t look for other ways to support weight loss but wanted to make healthy sustainable dietary changes, i.e. reduced added sugar and refined carbs.

    I chose 5:2 because of the added health benefits of fasting, not solely as a ‘diet’. All diets work (so they say, I haven’t tried any others!), but keeping it off is the hard part. Well, not with intermittent fasting.

    And I’m really really happy that I’m no longer a sugar and carb junkie ๐Ÿ˜€

    And I don’t think I am low carb, I just don’t eat bread, pasta or sugary sweet things every day. It’s not even a conscious choice, those things really hold little appeal these days. I can’t remember the number of times I’ve gone in search of something to eat, perused shelves full of sandwiches and confectionery and either bought some raw nuts or decided I’ll wait til I get home.

    Hi salllllly, not sure if I got the l’s right.

    I currently live in Japan and it isn’t really practical to go low carb. I have reduced my portion sizes of rice and I’ve cut way back on sugar which is easy to do in Japan. However the Japanese diet is very carb heavy with rice or noddles forming part of almost every meal. Japanese also eat a lot of bread which I mostly avoid because I simple don’t care for it. Most Japanese foods though are low in sugar.

    While living in Japan I’ve lost over 23kg (~50 lbs) over the last four years. The initial weight loss was just through smaller portion sizes and exercises, after about a year my weight stabilized down around 92kg. Over the next two years I wasn’t able to lose any weight and in fact gained 2kg. I exercised a great deal and did lose some fat but even last summer my DEXA scan showed me at 24.5% body fat.

    In May I drastically cut back on sugar from about 50 to over 60 grams / day to less than 20 grams / day, excluding whole fruit. Over the next 4 months I lost 8 kg and my waistline trimmed up a lot, from 103 cm to 86 cm. Then the weight lost stopped. I added fasting and that has taken down another 4 kg over the last two months.

    While I don’t have a high carb diet, it isn’t low carb either and blood work about a year ago showed very little ketones in my blood. Now with the fasting I probably have a little more ketosis going on, but it isn’t supported by a low carb diet.

    The reasons I don’t eat low carb are:
    1) It would be very expensive and difficult in Japan.
    2) I don’t want to spend that much time on my diet right now.
    3) While it would probably make fasting easier, it hasn’t been necessary.

    @happynow: It is true, it is just my observations, which are very subjective. However the mentioned questions are on my mind. May be a forum is not the right place, though I am interested to hear experiences and opinions.

    @dykask: thank you for sharing your story. It is definitely worth to consider the difference between refined sugar and carbs. I live in Germany and like most people here, bread is part of my daily consumption. Nowadays more than 50% of the German population is overweight, but as far as I know, this was not the case 2-3 decades ago. My assumption is thus that carbs from bread can’t be the reason for the weight gain in the population. (@happynow: again personal observation combined with general presumptions…trying to explain my little world to myself…) As well the Japanese cuisine, as you said, includes lots of carbs, but as far as I know Japan does not have such huge problems with regard to overweight. This all supports what you said with regard to sugar being a reason for weight gain.

    P.S. I guess I am just fighting with myself about changing my diet substantially, so far the changes were only minor (fasting, exchanging normal pasta for whole grain pasta, every now and then substitute the sides with more veggies…) and there is so many more changes to be made if I wanted to be consequent. And with Christmas and all those delicious sweets coming up I wonder how to sustainably cut sugar or even carbs…

    @salllllllly Japan is pretty lean by US standards but they have more problems with weight now than in the past. People blame it on western foods that are sometimes popular because they are much easier to prepare. A lot of Japanese dishes require a lot of chopping and ingredients. Bakery goods are very popular, there are even bread trucks that go around selling all kinds of bakery treats. For those sugar is often used.

    The difference between starch carbs and refined sugar is that refined sugars also contain fructose which provides the sweetness. However many people can only metabolize a small amount of fructose per day and the extra tends to get turned into visceral fat. There are likely variations in different people, but I tend to have a low tolerance to refined sugar. However I can eat whole fruit and even dried fruit without problems. However maybe I would easily lose more weight if I cut out fruit. I just haven’t done that.

    I have noticed there are some Japanese soft-drinks that just list glucose as the sweetener. While the drinks are a little less sweet than say Coke Cola they are still sweet enough. I don’t know if that is done to avoid fructose or not.

    Sally,

    To answer your questions from a few posts back. There are inherent advantages in doing IF that you do not get otherwise. Our lifestyle and food intake are such that we very rarely rely on our liver to access stored fats. Like any organ in our body if we do not “exercise” it, it gets lazy. Would you expect to be able to run a marathon without training first? So what makes anyone think that not exercising your liver somehow makes it perform well?

    It took me about a month before I was able to cope with water fasting. I noticed a big change at the 6 month mark. Water fasting is now very easy, that’s how long it took to ramp up my liver.

    Why don’t people go low carb from the get go? Habit. Having said that I don’t think Im low carb. I just don’t get my carbs from processed grains. My carbs come from veggies, nuts, legumes. Processed grains are turned into maltose in your mouth before even swallowing that bite of bread etc. It is then turned into glucose as it enters the stomach.

    Why do people lose weight to start with? Most of the initial loss is actually water and not fat. Your aim is to lower your basal insulin levels. IF helps lower your insulin levels which helps a lot. But then you level out at a new lower level and this is your new set weight point. Want to lose more weight? Then you need to lower the insulin level again. This is where proper food choices come into it. You want to avoid foods that spike insulin levels. Grain based foods are real bad for this. Don’t need to take my word for this, just buy a glucose meter and measure the response yourself. If I have bread for dinner the night before my morning glucose level will be 5.4-5.7 mmol/L. If I have no grain based foods my glucose in the morning will be about 4.7mmol/L. On a fast day it will be 4.0-4.4mmol/L

    Hope that helps.

    I recently saw a documentary where identical twins who were slightly overweight went on diets. One started a high carb low fat diet, the other high fat low carb. Interestingly they both lost weight. The one on the high carb diet, however, had more energy and did better in physical endurance tests than his twin. They said his energy came from the carbs turning to sugar (that old sugar rush).

    One other thing that stuck with me was a section where they did similar tests with mice. They said alone the mice lost weight, but when they combined carbs and fat is when they gained. That seems to be the danger; eating too many foods with both carbs and fat, such as ice cream.

    Bronx

    High fat and high sugar, the bliss point. Something food manufacturers exploit readily.

    http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2014/02/horizon-sugar-vs-fat/

    The above link is a review of the twin doctors’ dietary experiment, and explains why the high carb twin performed better. Nothing to do with carbs being ‘better’, more to do with it being a flawed experiment, the high fat twin not actually being fat-adapted at that point, and the experts being pro-carb anti-fat.

    Just following up with what @bigbooty, @bronx and @happynow are talking about.

    There is a vast amount of evidence that almost any calorie restrictive diet works initially. There have been fewer studies long-term but the ones there have been showing the long term results aren’t good and very few people actually succeed keeping most of the weight off in the long term. There are lots of theories as to why almost all diets fail, the main one pushed by the processed food industry is because people don’t exercise self control.

    I know from personal experience that calorie restriction and exercise only take me so far in regards to weight loss. I exercised like crazy for two years and gained weight will continuing a calorie restrictive diet. Sure I could have lost more weight by cutting my calories insanely low. However I was already suffering from too much hunger. I just lacked the self control that food companies think I should have …

    Now with fasting, the hunger is much less and I’m getting results. In fact I just checked and I’ve actually lost about ~5kg of body fat while gaining ~2kg of lean body mass since August. Those are insane results that just don’t happen with calorie restriction. I know many people consider fasting calorie restriction but it is more of feeding restriction. I don’t have to watch calories to burn fat, I just have to give my body prolonged periods of not eating.

    Getting back to the thread topic. I think the main benefit of a low-carb ketogenic diet would be in making fasting easier. As others have noted, it took some practice for me before I could easily fast. I think that would have required a lot less practice on a low-carb diet. I don’t do low-carb because of where I live makes it much more difficult. Japanese are really into a high carb diet and compared to most countries Japan doesn’t have a weight issue. However it is difficult to live somewhere and not eat similar to how most people eat.

    Dykask, Jason Fung explains very clearly why normal calorie-restricted diets are doomed to fail:

    https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/calorie-debacle-t2d-19/

    and other posts to his great blog.

    @barata, yes I started reading Dr. Fung’s blog months ago. At first I thought what he was saying was crazy but he bases his information on studies and provides the references. Now I know from first hand experience that fasting works.

    @sally

    This guy: 50 kg in 9 months of potatoes-only diet. The first 43 kg were lost in the first 6 months.
    6M: https://m.facebook.com/spudfit/photos/a.184618281573456.32823.176361779065773/1042969665738309/?type=3&source=54&ref=page_internal
    9M: https://m.facebook.com/spudfit/photos/a.184618281573456.32823.176361779065773/1106317576070184/?type=3&source=54&ref=page_internal

    The answer is resistant starch. You can read more in this articles I’ve posted in my journal: https://thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/daily-20-23-hours-fasting-window/#post-161038

    So yes, you can lose weight eating high carb, but the source of the carbs is essential.

    Good luck!

    Thank you all for your answers. Have lately been reading a lot in this forum and the provided links (thanks to everyone for that). I must admit that I first didnโ€™t want to bother about the insulin talking. I thought that a calorie is a calorie and fasting is weight loss simply because of reduced calories. I do still believe that this is the underlying principle, but there is more to it, in particular as Dr Fung wrote: hormones. It does help a lot to understand the body more in order to support weight loss AND live healthy long term. It seems like nothing in live is as easy as it appears, in particular, when scientists contradict each other, studies are sponsored and influenced and last but not least science is changing over time as well.
    Mhm, liked this WOE for its simplicity, which I will keep. I will gradually change my entire WOE, but stick to the fasting. It really seems to be in human (or just my?) nature anyway. After fasting for a few months it gets easier and easier to not eat on other occasions as well. And I do realise that I feel hungrier, if I eat in between than when I do not eat at all. As dykask told, also for me it is easier to eat not at all then to eat smaller amountsโ€ฆnot enough self-control. And food is laughing at us everywhere: Advertising on the streets or on TV, bakeries, everywhere food is accessible and affordable. That makes it hard for me to resist. Eating nothing is the easier choice for me.
    I like what Dr Fung is writing. I am not sure, if this following is in line with him: I believe that we can be in control of our bodies. We make choices every time we eat, thus we can overcome the food industries and our hormones. And there we are again: carbs seem to play a role, when it comes to influencing hormones (insulin).

    https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/multifactorial-nature-obesity-lose-weight-ii/

    It is important to keep in mind that there are many factors to obesity. Simply eating too much for too long will make one fat so calories are a factor, just not the only factor. In fact one thing that I really find amazing with fasting is that the calorie math more or less works, at least for me. With calorie restriction the calorie math has never worked for me. Typically I have to miss more than 5000 kc to loss a lb of fat, typically much, much more. Counting calories becomes wasted effort because it just doesn’t normally work that way for me. If you look a the US the average calorie intake in 2011 was around 2750kc/day for every person! Assuming everyone was a man that would mean 350 excess calories a day. By the calorie math that works out to a pound of fat every 10 days. Very few people manage to put on 36.5 pounds of fat a year in the US. That calorie math doesn’t normally work and that is because there are many factors involve in both gaining and losing of fat.

    So getting back to your question – carbs do matter, but they are only one of the things that matter.

    In my case, on the average I’m currently eating more (calories) but losing body fat now. That is because I got smart and realized that a calorie isn’t just a calorie and in fact calories aren’t even a concept in our bodies metabolism, just an estimate we put on things to show energy released by combustion. In fact a lot of non-editable stuff has calories in that context. The concept is incomplete when applied to humans. I know I wasn’t lazy and I know I wasn’t over-eating when weight loss didn’t happen for me for two years. I just had my head stuck in my butt counting calories that didn’t even really apply to my issue. Still for a year before those two years, I did loss weight by eating less and exercising more … so it was a factor, just not the only factor that was keeping me fat.

    Now I know:
    * How much you eat matters!
    * What you eat matters!
    * When you eat matters!
    * How frequently you eat matters!
    * Current hormonal health matters!
    * Drugs in the body matter!
    * Activity levels matter!
    … (like many more factors)

    What is most important for different people is often different. For example for me reducing refined sugar was like a gateway drug and enabled me to really start losing weight and even to fast because it greatly reduced my hunger. Probably doesn’t work the same for everyone else.

    Agree with what you said. Try eating 2000 cal of sugar each day and 2000 cal of veggies. See what happens after a month. Well that’s on the assumption that you can survive eating sugar for a month. Gut bacteria plays a big role in good health. A healthy person has over 6500 different species of bacteria. Someone eating refined crap has about 2000 species. Eating refined crap means all the nutrients are basically removed in your stomach. You starve your gut bacteria which live mostly in your large intestines. Not good.

    @bigbooty good point! There are so many factors that aren’t even on my radar yet! We have more bacteria in our guts than we have cells in the body. They probably have a huge amount to do with what makes people react differently.

    Okay McFood starves them, what happens while we are fasting? Do they just start eating each other or do they even die out? There is a lot I don’t know.

    HappyNow,

    Thanks for the link, I hadn’t read that before.

    I just read The Obesity Code and it was very eye opening. From personal experience I can’t say I agree with everything the doctor wrote, but it is going to be a good guide to try to follow.

    There was a book in the freebie bin at work called “Why Diets Make Us Fat” by Dr. Sandra Aamodt, so I grabbed it. I haven’t read it yet but hope it’s enlightening.

    Bronx

    dykask,

    Good question to which I don’t know the answer. My water fasts were initially 60 hours (2 days) and I only fast for 36 hours now. When I first started I was either getting diarrhea or I was constipated. In hindsight I now at least partially put that down to my gut bacteria having a big fight and reorganising itself in response to my new eating regime. It takes about 1-2 days for food to transit so I don’t think a small interruption will stress the bacteria too much? Well, not after they rearrange themselves given the new food environment they find themselves in. The other interesting thing is that will fasting I temporarily stop defecating. So essentially the stool sits in the large intestines waiting for peristaltic action to remove it. So the bacteria are munching away on it for the 1-2 days. So perhaps there is nothing to worry about long term?

    Bronx,

    Personally I think most diets fail because its an unsustainable way of eating. You can only keep doing it for so long before you crack. The potato only diet, the rice diet etc. You cant do this long term. You then go back to what you were eating prior to the diet and it all starts to unravel. With IF fasting you just incorporate it into your normal eating patterns. I don’t feel as if Im missing out on anything. In fact my “normal” has changed for the better. On the rare occasions I have tried to have a sweet treat Ive felt sick. The food tastes sickly. I bought an iced coffee drink the other day as a treat. Took a sip and felt sick. Had to throw it away, couldn’t drink it. It had 10% sugar content. 15 teaspoons of sugar in 600mL.

    It seems to me that there is a difference between people who look at 5:2 (IF) as just another weight loss diet, i.e. two days restriction and five days normal (that ‘normal’ often being excess calories/sugar/whatever) and only until they’ve lost weight, and those who recognise their pre:5:2 lifestyle diet was unhealthy and unsustainable and actively want to embrace change every day, not just on two fast days..

    Spot on Happy!! If you treat it as another “diet” youre dooming yourself to another failure. If you treat it as a sustainable eating pattern then youre in for lots of success. I read lots of posts where the poster says they have to suspend 5:2 because they are going on holidays, or its so and so’s birthday. Hmmmm not sure youre doing yourselves any favours. We are on holidays in Darwin as I write this. My wife quizzically asked, “your not fasting on Monday are you? Were on holidays!!”. My response was, yes of course, Monday is my fast day.

    Don’t treat it as a diet. No brainer really.

    Well I’m old enough and ugly enough that I no longer feel the need to please people by eating when I don’t want to or eating things that I don’t want to! It still surprises me that people are offended when you say no to free cake or don’t want to eat breakfast.

    I just wish OH would listen to me ! ๐Ÿ™ ๐Ÿ™ This is why he’s on another plateau. At least he’s very strict on the FDs, but I cannot persuade him to lessen the carbs, sweetened drinks etc.

    Ha ha Barata, sorry, but you can only take a horse to water. And in my experience, my OH takes notice only if another man said it ๐Ÿ˜€

    Horses AND donkeys, Happy ๐Ÿ™

    @bigbooty, I’m only done one fast over 60 hours … most of mine are now 35 to 40 hours, just finished a 37 hour fast. I also did a lighter HIIT workout right before breaking the fast … I’m still trying to sweat out some extra salt I consumed. ๐Ÿ™‚

    @happynow I find that I do eat 500 to 1000 extra calories the day after a fast, the second day is pretty normal and when I have 3 days I’m normally eating less than normal. It seem natural. I’ve found that fasting has changed the way my stomach feels. However, I’m only two months in and only about 10 lbs down depending on what day I pick to compare, so I’m not sure if that could be considered successful yet. My line in the sand is if I can move down to the same pants size I wore my high school senior year. I have one size to go.

    In general I think fasting is changing my relationship to food. Even when I’m “feasting” I’m more mindful and even thankful about the food I’m eating. That attitude is much more natural than it was when I was trying to lose weight by starvation. (Calorie restriction) I really like Dr. Fungs recent post. https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/difference-calorie-restriction-fasting-fasting-27/

    The summary is spot on for me:
    “So hereโ€™s your choices:

    1) Caloric Reduction as Primary: less weight loss (bad), more lean mass loss (bad), less visceral fat loss (bad), harder to keep weight off (bad), hungrier (bad), higher insulin (bad), more insulin resistance (bad), perfect track record over 50 years unblemished by success (bad)

    2) Intermittent Fasting: More weight loss, more lean mass gain, more visceral fat loss, less hunger, been used throughout human history, lower insulin, less insulin resistance.

    Almost every medical society, doctor, dietician and mainstream media will tell you to use choice #1. I prefer to tell people to take choice #2.”

    @dykask: Thanks for that link. I can see now how I’ve been influenced all my live with all that advice about calorie restriction. (Although I do not completely like how Dr Fung puts numbers into relation) I understand the underlying thought and agree. He explains it really well and convincing. I like 5:2 due to the simplicity, it is manageble to introduce it into my life style long term, it is bearable and I can see myself doing it all my life.

    @bigbooty: Great you have the discipline to do it every week all around the year. I did have a break of one week so far for my holidays. I like that I can take a break and continue the next week as if nothing happened. This gives me freedom and helps me to see it as my way of life: 5:2 is my normal routine, but on holidays I change routines. After holidays: back to normal. But, everyone is different and I am sure there are better ways to do things than the way I do them.

    If you can get back on the 5:2 horse straight away all is well and good. Just finishing up my Monday fast. Went to some watering holes for a swim with the family. Walked 7km along a trail. Long day. Just got back to the hotel. Everyone pigged out for lunch at the watering hole and then back at the hotel. At least no one teased my for not eating. Looking forward to tomorrow.

    Some factors leading to calories reduction diets failing where fasts may succeed include:

    1. Calory reduction diets retain constancy of eating, just at a lower level. Therefore the body is not forced to switch into ketosis (fat burning). So instead of switching to burning stored energy reserves (fat), the body simply reduces energy output to match the reduced energy input. i.e. Less activity, more tired, lower metabolism

    2. Under calory reduction the body grabs proteins as an extra energy source to counter the reduction in other energy input. This results in muscles being depleted because of proteins being used instead for energy. The resulting lowered lean body mass means lowered metabolism. On the other hand, once the body has switched to ketosis under fasting there is no energy shortage, so no need to use proteins for energy, so no extra muscle depletion, and so no lowered metabolism.

    3. Hormones react to calory reduction energy shortages in a way that strongly increases our desire to seek food. The equivalent hormone responses don’t happen when the body switches to ketosis possibly because there is no energy shortage when fat is being burned. This hormone difference is a long term difference between the two methods of weight reduction. i.e. the hunger pangs stick longterm under calorie reduction diets.

    4. Calory reduction diets give us no break from our habit of eating the fake (processed) foods that caused our weight problem in the first place. Fasting gives our bodies this break. The fastest antedote to fake food induced insulin resistance is fasting. The next fastest is to stop eating them.

    5. The body is naturally genetically adapted to fasting because fasting/sufficiency cycles have always been our natural state. We are not genetically adapted to constancy of food, much less a conscious choice of constant food limitation in the face of hunger.

    Dr Jason Fung is the best resource I’ve found to explain these processes.

    I want to introduce you to what appears to be an entirely new food classification…in addition to carbs, protein and fat. They’re called whole grains. As long as the American Diabetes Association and other groups and individuals insist on calling real carbs such as whole wheat bread and whole grain pasta as whole grains, then I can see a dire, critical need to remove whole grains from the discussion of carbs entirely…hence the new classification. Google up Whole Wheat Berries and Whole Oat Groats and use images and tell me what you see. Not being condescending whatsoever because I was thoroughly bamboozled by the unethical ADA and I’ll even include Paleo folks, like so many people. Whole grains and Whole beans are one of the most low glycemic foods and posess weight loss and anti cancer, anti diabetic benefits like no other. Whole grain bread compared to whole grains is like calling whole fruit to fruit juice. Powdered grain and fruit juice are poisons to everybody. Some process the poison better than others but they’re still poisons. There are invaluable vitamins phytochemicals, healthy Phytic acid, fiber that they are essential in one’s diet. Low starch carbs are also invaluable for the same reason.

    Losing weight without carbs is great. Maintaining it can be difficult though

    Hi Bobbynoogie,

    I’m imagining the thrust of your argument is not just restricted to whole grains versus pseudo whole grains.

    What you seem to be pointing to is how processed modern foods have become, and how unhealthful that over-processing makes them?

    And that by over-focusing on food types and nutritional elements, dieticians (and Paleo people, and other individuals and groups) are ignoring the central importance on health of the DEGREE of processing of the foods we now eat.

    Am I getting that wider interpretation of what you’re saying correct?

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