Healthy New You: Your Change For Life #2

Been reading a few people on here talking about low carb diets. Thinking about trying this, as I think in terms of trying to be healthy carbs are a major weakness of mine. Was wondering if anyone had any experience of doing a lot of exercise on a low carb diet, like if they found it affected their energy levels or running speeds or anything?

Okay so maybe I'll eat as much chocolate as I like, but try and maintain by doing LOTS of exercise during the day. Sounds perfect to me.

I like your thinking!

Shame I'm already failing on the exercise front

Haha. I'm not exercising nearly enough to make up for the amount I'm eating but never mind it'll only be for a week.

It's not fair that it takes me an hour to burn 100 cals, but ONE MOUTHFUL of Lindor to eat it back!

I had 'carb-flu' for 3 days after 2 days of low-carb (basically felt achey and tired) but after that I felt brilliant.
More energy, lighter, brighter... just generally much better than I did before.

I've been low-carb since mid-February after doing a lot of research into it, and in that since I've had one slip up binge where I ate a lot of carbs (sort of had a "**** it" day and had a big bowl of porridge with sugar and banana, a thick sandwich and some biscuits), and I can't remember ever feeling so sluggish in all my life. It took a massive effort even just to walk up the stairs. I also realised that I was eating all that food mindlessly. I wasn't really tasting it or enjoying it, I was just shovelling it in as though my life depended on it, so if I feel myself wavering now it's easy to remind myself of how horrible that was.

I run 5k 3 times a week and my speed has been increasing on the low-carb diet at a faster rate than it was on carbs.

Just be aware that it takes around 3 weeks for the body to adjust (and that's 3 weeks with NO cheat days: a cheat day puts you back to square 1) to a low carb lifestyle, so you must be sure not to go over 150g of carbs, preferably 100g in that time.
Different people have different carbohydrate tolerances. Some can function well on 20g a day, others feel slow and sluggish without at least 100g, so it takes a bit of experimentation to get your own level worked out.

I seem to be able to eat as few as a want and it has no affect on my mood or tiredness, but I like eating berries and vegetables too much to keep it at 20g per day. Usually I hit around 60g (though because I'm at home at the moment and my mum doesn't understand my way of eating, I'm on around 100g at the moment, with 80g coming from dinner.)

So in short, you might get 'carb flu' for up to a week (depending on how many carbs you eat at the moment and how high you insulin sensitivity is) and it might take 3 weeks for you to feel the full effects, but give it a month and see how you feel.
I've read countless self-reported blogs of people feeling fantastic, and if I had a blog I'd be saying exactly the same thing. Well worth trying IMO. I don't really like pasta, rice or bread anymore. I find them claggy and quite bland, and if I eat any I always have the knawing though "empty calories, empty calories" in the back of my mind, because I could eat so many vegetables in place of the carbs and get so many more nutrients from them.

I had 'carb-flu' for 3 days after 2 days of low-carb (basically felt achey and tired) but after that I felt brilliant.
More energy, lighter, brighter... just generally much better than I did before.

I've been low-carb since mid-February after doing a lot of research into it, and in that since I've had one slip up binge where I ate a lot of carbs (sort of had a "**** it" day and had a big bowl of porridge with sugar and banana, a thick sandwich and some biscuits), and I can't remember ever feeling so sluggish in all my life. It took a massive effort even just to walk up the stairs. I also realised that I was eating all that food mindlessly. I wasn't really tasting it or enjoying it, I was just shovelling it in as though my life depended on it, so if I feel myself wavering now it's easy to remind myself of how horrible that was.

I run 5k 3 times a week and my speed has been increasing on the low-carb diet at a faster rate than it was on carbs.

Just be aware that it takes around 3 weeks for the body to adjust (and that's 3 weeks with NO cheat days: a cheat day puts you back to square 1) to a low carb lifestyle, so you must be sure not to go over 150g of carbs, preferably 100g in that time.
Different people have different carbohydrate tolerances. Some can function well on 20g a day, others feel slow and sluggish without at least 100g, so it takes a bit of experimentation to get your own level worked out.

I seem to be able to eat as few as a want and it has no affect on my mood or tiredness, but I like eating berries and vegetables too much to keep it at 20g per day. Usually I hit around 60g (though because I'm at home at the moment and my mum doesn't understand my way of eating, I'm on around 100g at the moment, with 80g coming from dinner.)

So in short, you might get 'carb flu' for up to a week (depending on how many carbs you eat at the moment and how high you insulin sensitivity is) and it might take 3 weeks for you to feel the full effects, but give it a month and see how you feel.
I've read countless self-reported blogs of people feeling fantastic, and if I had a blog I'd be saying exactly the same thing. Well worth trying IMO. I don't really like pasta, rice or bread anymore. I find them claggy and quite bland, and if I eat any I always have the knawing though "empty calories, empty calories" in the back of my mind, because I could eat so many vegetables in place of the carbs and get so many more nutrients from them.