I have programmed low carb diets for years for clients but not until recently have i tried it out myself. This is a big mistake, as I’m constantly telling my trainers. you don’t undrstand a process fully until you’ve gone through it yourself! The only reason I made it myself is that I like to try out everything I find interesting (I experiment on myself a lot) and I was doing lots of other things before this. So the time came around for me to try out a fat loss regimen and low carb seemed to fit the bill, so here we are.
There’s a ton of variety even in the low-carb community. There are different approaches to the diet — Atkins, paleo, keto, primal, paleo+dairy, Neanderthin (fruit friendly), etc. And those are just off the top of my head. I never knew there was so much to learn in doing low-carb and by actually doing it myself, I’m weeding through the literature and seeing what’s what.
So far I have to say there are definite ways to screw it up, some people might not have thought of. For example, it does seem possible to eat too much protein, which will apparently keep you out of ketosis. I was getting 200g of protein a day and the fat did not budge! Yes, I’ve been weighing my food. It’s interesting, believe it or not. Kind of like a new hobby. you have to get into this stuff to really appreciate it. But when you do, you might find that your body doesn’t respond like the books say. So the idea of “eat as much protein and fat as you want to” is a little off IMO. Over-eating the protein (say above 150g a day) causes the body to turn anything over 150 into glucose, preventing you from getting into ketosis. Lovely.
However, the idea that it’s difficult to eat over around 2000cal on a low-carb diet is true. It is hard unless you go nuts with nuts. For example, eating 200g of protein from real meat every day was pushing it for me. But then again, do the math: 200g protein x 4cal/g = 800 cals! Not a lot of calories there. Get another 1000cal from fat and some residual carbs and you’re likely golden.
So I’m gonna continue my low-carb education and get back to you on the my on-going self-experimentation. Stay tuned!