It it safe to go on a low calorie and carb diet?

[rondez]

Im thinking of going on a low cal and low carb diet together. This restricts me to a very tiny food segment and also cuts out a lot of vitamins and minerals than im hoping to replenish through some multivitamin tablets. Im also going to be doing regular exercise. Is there something wrong with trying something like this out? And yes im currently overweight 🙂

[Esya]

Low calories only has an impact on how much you can eat, not on what you can eat. By low carb people typically mean no processed carbs like pasta, rice, bread, cookies etc.. So basically you are only cutting one food group out. You should still be able to get all your vitamins when just skipping pasta and rice etc.. You might actually want to increase the amount of vegetables you are eating while making those changes to feel more full. How big is the calorie deficit you are planning?

[Dominique]

The benefits of being at a healthier weight far outweigh potential deficiencies in micronutrients. Even if you go for a low-carb diet, you can still include veggies like cauliflower, spinach, broccoli etc. that don’t have much carbs in them, but would cover your needs in micronutrients and fiber. A multivitamin would indeed be a good idea.

As to calories, it depends on what you call "low". What matters is the size of your deficit. You probably don’t want to lose more than 1% of your body weight per week in average. A crash diet would cause your weight loss to stall sooner rather than later.

[rondez]

@Esya Hey, thanks for replying. Im trying to eat around 1000 - 1200 Cals per day and without doing much burn around 3000+ Cals. With a 7 min workout ive pushed that to 4000 with intensive im trying to push 5k+ in a week or two. 

[rondez]

@Dominique What if it wasn't a crash diet and something i tried to maintain over a period and the switched completely over to healthy (healthy carbs and less cals) , would that work?. 

[Mukluk4]

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@rondez wrote:

@Esya Hey, thanks for replying. Im trying to eat around 1000 - 1200 Cals per day and without doing much burn around 3000+ Cals. With a 7 min workout ive pushed that to 4000 with intensive im trying to push 5k+ in a week or two. 

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You must be a fairly big guy to break 3K with a 7 minute workout.  That calorie intake isn't a good idea unless you are looking to go sickly thin.  

[rondez]

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@Mukluk4 wrote:

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@rondez wrote:

@Esya Hey, thanks for replying. Im trying to eat around 1000 - 1200 Cals per day and without doing much burn around 3000+ Cals. With a 7 min workout ive pushed that to 4000 with intensive im trying to push 5k+ in a week or two. 

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You must be a fairly big guy to break 3K with a 7 minute workout.  That calorie intake isn't a good idea unless you are looking to go sickly thin.  

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Gave a wrong impression the way i worded that earlier. The 7min workout added 150 - 250 cals to the mix. Im quite new to all this so maybe the way im calculating or going about this is wrong but the plan is to go down to a certain weight and then start working out for muscle. What weigh class is fairly big according to you?  

[Esya]

@rondez

How tall are you? How much do you weight and how much do you want to lose?

[Mukluk4]

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@rondez wrote:

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@Mukluk4 wrote:

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@rondez wrote:

@Esya Hey, thanks for replying. Im trying to eat around 1000 - 1200 Cals per day and without doing much burn around 3000+ Cals. With a 7 min workout ive pushed that to 4000 with intensive im trying to push 5k+ in a week or two. 

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You must be a fairly big guy to break 3K with a 7 minute workout.  That calorie intake isn't a good idea unless you are looking to go sickly thin.  

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Gave a wrong impression the way i worded that earlier. The 7min workout added 150 - 250 cals to the mix. Im quite new to all this so maybe the way im calculating or going about this is wrong but the plan is to go down to a certain weight and then start working out for muscle. What weigh class is fairly big according to you?  

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Really depends on your height.  I'm a fairly big guy (6'1"/275) and my BMR runs around 2200 calories.  

Are you trying to build muscle to look the part or are you doing it for an activity?  

If you are new to strength training, I would check out this article on recomposition: https://legionathletics.com/body-recomposition/

From personal experience it works.  I've maintained my weight within +/- 10 pounds, dropped my waist size 6 inches, increased my overall power (speed and vertical), and people who I only see once a month or so comment on my appearance.  It should easily get you through the first year at which point you may need to go a more traditional cut/bulk process.

As a man, I wouldn't focus so much on cutting weight quickly as you'll look and feel weak/frail (not to mention the health impacts) but go with a more balanced approach (you will look and feel better.

[Dominique]

If your daily energy expenditure is 3000-4000 calories and you’re only eating 1000-1200 calories, that would qualify as a crash diet IMO. You would of course have to establish the accuracy of calories burned reported by your Fitbit. It looks like you’ve only had your Fitbit for about a week, so it’s probably too early.

I agree with @Esya that knowing your numbers (age, height, weight, amount you want to lose) would help.

[rondez]

@Esya @Mukluk4 @Dominique Thanks for taking the time to help out here. Here are my details as it looks like these are the deciding factor. Please remember i have just jumped into this so im learning more everyday. 

Age: 32

Height: 6.9

Weight: 108

Im looking at dropping to 90 or lesser before working my way back up with muscle. What do you guys suggest? The reason i going on a crash diet is i have a month holiday in July. This will help me focus on my diet and exercise and a huge reduction in weight will help motivate me hold out and create a stable course for the rest of the year.

[Mukluk4]

So the big problem I see in starting something while you are on vacation is that it's usually a stress free/nowhere near normal day to day.  

So while you may think you are setting yourself up with a good habit, you are doing that in isolation of everything else that is a normal habit.  Once you go back to work/school and add the stress and time constraints associated with it, you are more likely to break those habits you've built in a vacuum.

[Dominique]

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@rondez wrote:

Age: 32

Height: 6.9

Weight: 108

Im looking at dropping to 90 or lesser before working my way back up with muscle.

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OK, I ran your numbers through this online calculator, as a way to double-check numbers you got from your Fitbit. Your calculated BMR at your current weight is 2211. Your calculated TDEE at "high" activity level (2nd highest) would be 3814. At "extreme" activity level (highest on the scale), it would be 4201. Based on that, I would strongly advise against eating 1000-1200 calories (this would be half your BMR, which is what you expend doing nothing at all. Even more so if you plan to burn 4000-5000 calories, which would require an amazingly intense activity level (probably the equivalent of 20-30k steps a day). Especially if you plan to go for a low-carb diet, given that carbs are the preferred fuel for physical and mental (your brain) activity, unless you’ve rewired your system to use fat, as the keto people do (though the process can take several weeks and requires nearly no carbs to be eaten).

Let’s assume that you would somehow manage to keep a daily deficit of 3000 calories (in spite of all of the above) for the entire month of July. In theory, this should result in a weight loss of 6 pounds per week, i.e. 24 pounds (10.9 kg). This would still be short of your goal of 18+ kg. In practice, your weight loss would likely be less than that, for a number of reasons (reduction in metabolism being one of them).

You said in your profile you’re a dad. Why would you want to make your and your family’s vacation miserable by starving yourself to the point of having very low energy, not being able to enjoy eating out, playing with your kid(s) etc.? Why not take advantage of your vacation to develop healthier eating habits that would be sustainable over the long term?  You can still have a moderate deficit, lose 2-3 kg and continue after your vacation.

Your current BMI is 25.5, so it’s not like you need to lose a huge amount of weight for health reasons. At your target goal (90 kg), BMI would be 21.3. That’s pretty thin and I wouldn’t get there too fast, otherwise you risk losing a fair amount of lean mass, which is tougher to build back.

[Dominique]

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@rondez wrote:
The 7min workout added 150 - 250 cals to the mix.  

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Your BMR per minute is 2211/1440 = 1.53 calories (there are 24 x 60 = 1440 minutes in a day). In order to burn 150 to 250 calories in 7 minutes, you would need activities with METs between 14 and 23. You can check the Compendium of Physical Activities for such activities. Here are METs for running at various speeds:

The current world record for running a mile is 3:43.13, so running at 14 mph is not the kind of workout someone looking to lose weight would routinely perform as a way to burn more calories. This is to say calories burned during workouts, as reported by your Fitbit tracker, should be taken with some caution.

[JJBB2002]

Here's the good news. If you really go low carb - no grain,  no starchy vegetables, no added sugar and restrict your fruit to one to two servings a day, you won't need to count calories because your hunger hormones will start to work correctly again and you will drop weight because you will not overeat and your body will be able to access your stored fat for energy so you won't be starving. It takes a couple of weeks to adjust to it - the first nine days I went without sugar I felt like I was white knuckling in it because of the cravings but then they went away. Also make sure to watch the kinds of fat you are consuming, because once you eat fewer carbs you will be consuming more fat. Dietary fat is good for your body and good for your brain but it needs to be natural fat. Natural fat is fat that comes from animals, dairy, and pressed from fruits and vegetables like olives, coconuts, and avacados. Stay away from soybean oil, canola, corn, etc. as they are inflammatory. When food manufacturers process those oils (beause it's not like you squeeze a soybean and oil comes out) they use processes that corrupt molecules. We've been doing the higher healthier fat diet for over 2 years now and I've dropped over 50 pounds - when I restricted my calories prior I was only able to take off about 30 and I was starving all the time and it took a couple of years to lose that 30. Total loss as of today is about 85 pounds and even with the higher fat which includes saturated fat, my cholesterol numbers are excellent. 

[Dominique]

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@JJBB2002 wrote:

Stay away from soybean oil, canola, corn, etc. as they are inflammatory. When food manufacturers process those oils (beause it's not like you squeeze a soybean and oil comes out) they use processes that corrupt molecules. 

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I’ll comment on canola: first of all, I don’t believe canola is inflammatory in and of itself, or any more so than olives. Secondly, canola can be mechanically cold pressed, just like olive oil, in which case it has similar benefits (though the health benefits of olive oil have been far more researched, due to the prevalance of olive oil in many Mediterranean cultures). Of course, it’s going to be significantly more expensive than the regular grade (just like with olive oil). And btw, olive oil can be (and is) obtained by heating and using chemicals, just like other vegetable oils. You probably won’t find these lower-quality olive oils in the US (because since it’s imported from far away and considered "premium", they only import the best stuff, cold pressed extra virgin), but you will commonly find the cheaper, lower grade versions in European grocery stores: they’re just labeled "olive oil", without any mention of "virgin", "extra virgin" or "cold pressed".

[Dominique]

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@JJBB2002 wrote:

If you really go low carb - no grain,  no starchy vegetables, no added sugar and restrict your fruit to one to two servings a day, you won't need to count calories because your hunger hormones will start to work correctly again and you will drop weight because you will not overeat 

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If we follow this logic, it must be hard to maintain one’s weight (once you’ve reached your weight goal) with such a diet. Since you reach satiety at an eating level that automatically results in a caloric deficit, you surely must put extra effort into eating beyond satiety, lest you "inadvertently" start losing further and eventually become underweight.

[JJBB2002]

Actually, that's not true. Once you pull poorly regulated insulin activity out of the equation, your body's hunger hormones work efficiently and they regulate when you are hungry. It's not a calorie deficit if you have stored fat. The body uses that stored fat so the 'I'm hungry, time to eat message" isn't sent out and you don't feel hungry. The body then uses that stored fat for fuel. If you no longer have excess fat stores, your body no longer relies on that for necessary energy, so it triggers hunger so that you eat when necessary.