Taking my Own Advice: The Power of Logging Food Intake

I've posted a lot in the past about how when I have been trying to lose weight how helpful I have found it to weigh food portions and log my daily food intake using software.

So when my recent attempt to drop the five pounds I packed on over the holidays seemed to be going nowhere, I decided it was time to take my advice and haul out the food scale and LifeForm food tracking software.

I've been logging my food intake for almost a week now, and, as usual, learning exactly what I've been eating is an eye-opener. Because I needed to clear the insulin out of my system (why is a long story I won't go into here) and because I can't handle more than a tiny amount of carbs without insulin, I've been eating the classic 1990s Atkins diet: meat, eggs, cheese, low carb vegetables and a daily large romaine salad filled with avocado, artichoke hearts, olives, green peppers and a small amount of tomato. I've been taking one 3 oz glass of wine at night which has helped greatly to lower my fasting blood sugar.

As expected I have found that my daily carb intake has hovered below 23 grams, which is reflected in the very good blood sugars I've been getting. However, I've been surprised by how many more calories it turns out I've been eating. Far more than what I thought I'd been eating.

Though by now I should know my portion sizes, I've been eating a lot more calories than I thought. Since I'm only 5' 3" and sedentary thanks to a really bad back, my body needs only about 1,600 calories a day to maintain. To lose weight, I have to eat less than that, and logging showed me that while I was eating less, it was only around 100 to 200 calories less--which means it would take from 18 days to more than a month to lose one pound. No wonder I wasn't seeing any dramatic weight loss.

So for me, the difference between weight loss and no weight loss often boils down to a few bites of cheese scattered through the day. Those few bites probably explain why so many stalled Atkins dieters find that cutting out cheese jump starts their diet.

It has nothing to do with any inherent properties of dairy, as many people erroneously believe. It's just that having what feels like "a few bites" of cheese lets you add an extra 300 calories to your daily input without feeling like you've eaten anything. And if you are within 20 pounds of your diet goal--the range where calories really start to count--those three hundred calories may be all it takes to stall you.

Logging my food showed me another problem area, too. Just as I caution others on my diet page about protein intake, which you can find HERE eating too much protein can also cause problems, and it turns out I have been eating a lot more protein than I need to eat.

I'd forgotten the important point that neither Atkins or Bernstein mention: that after a few weeks on a ketogenic diet your body makes certain adaptations which allow your brain to run partially on ketones. Once this takes place, you need a lot less protein than you do during the first two or three weeks on a low carb diet. This adaptation may also explain why so many low carb dieters stall out after week three. They are still eating those high protein intakes that the books recommend which aren't needed once the body is fully adapted to the diet.

This excess protein does a couple things. One is that it really irritates my urinary tract thanks to the production of ammonia as a breakdown product of protein digestion. But even more importantly, the liver turns that excess protein into glucose which raises my blood sugar. So as soon as I eat too much protein, I get hungry.

People often claim that ketogenic dieting ends hunger, but this is only true if the diet keeps blood sugars flat. For a person like me whose pancreas doesn't work properly, too much protein leads to significant rises in blood glucose as my liver transforms 58% of that protein into glucose. And that rise makes me hungry.

The answer for me may be to eat more fat and less protein. I have calculated how much protein I need to eat and it is about 30 g or five ounces less than I've been eating each day. If I can get the protein down to where it is supposed to be, hopefully I'll end the hunger that has me nibbling all that cheese and get my calories down to where I can lose the 1 to 2 pounds a month. That is a healthy rate for me. Even better, past experience has shown that I can maintain a weight loss achieved by dieting at that rate--though I may have to get back on the metformin to do so.

Meanwhile after 3 weeks on this diet I am down roughly 1 lbs not counting the 3 lbs of water weight that dropped off me as soon as I cut out all the carbs. Naturally weight fluctuates up and down on a daily basis, but averaging my daily weight gives me a pretty good idea of what is going on, and I probably will make it to 2 lbs lost for the month if I go easier on the protein.

How are you folks who started the January diet doing? Will you make it to the Super Bowl, still on your diet, unlike 99.5% of those who started on January 1? I hope so!

If you are having trouble, I'd urge you to find an online support group where you can find people who may have helpful tips for solving the problems you are running into. All the low carb diet books grossly oversimplify what is required to lose weight on this diet and they also make you feel like everyone else who does the diet finds it easy, which isn't true. Experienced dieters can really help you as you encounter the known speed bumps along the road.

You'll find a list of online low carb support forums HERE.