Could someone advise me on my diet please?

foxylaydee

I think they just wanted to test again... can't really remember now.

BoatMad

foxylaydee wrote: »

Ohhh... ya... there was a question mark over my thyroid too. I was supposed to go back for tests again but I never went back.

seriously do, if you have an underfunctioing or mis functioning thyroid, you need to get it fixed ( its a simple thing )

otherwise you'll find it very hard to loose weight

allthedoyles

@foxylaydee

you should introduce lemon into your drinks menu

njs030

foxylaydee wrote: »

I think they just wanted to test again... can't really remember now.

Did you mention fatigue before? Eek.....

Op if you have thyroid issues no amount if calorie counting will help you lose weight. I have an underactive thyroid and one way I know I need meds adjusted is I crave carbs and feel exhausted....sound familiar?


Off with you for blood tests!!

foxylaydee

Oh no... :-(

That's all i need!

Yes, exhausted... crave carbs and sugar...

njs030

foxylaydee wrote: »

Oh no... :-(

That's all i need!

Yes, exhausted... crave carbs and sugar...

It's really not a big deal. It's just a hormone missing that can easily be replaced in a tablet form.

Pop into your gp for a blood test and you'll know very fast, it's easily sorted.

It may not be either so see your gp before worrying!!

Mellor

Breakfast: porridge with fresh fruit
Snack: fruit salad of oranges, kiwi, peaches...
Lunch: usually two small sandwiches (gluten free) with chicken/turkey.
I'm getting into making omelettes which fill me up for ages!
Dinner: i'm beginning to improve on this one... used to be a lot of take-aways of thai food but now i'm trying to make stir-fries at home- lots and lots of veg and rice. I use coconut oil and put in sauces (sweet and sour.. and another one that's kinda similar from packet/jar)...

Snacks: fruit, toast with jam (love it before bed..otherwise i wake up hungry), soya yoghurt..

If your goal is to lose weight I'd be changing a lot of this. I was surprised by the amount of people saying it's on the right track.

Breakfast is fine.
2 sandwiches plus toast is a lot of bread. Gluten free bread might be smaller, but it's usually dense and higher in calories - not helping your weight loss.
Take aways are bad obviously, so cutting them out is good. But you still mention that you eat of a lot (that curry or stirfry). Homemade stirfries aren't necessarily better.
Sweet and sour sauce in a jar is pure crap. I dont thing that counts as homemade tbh. That combined with a big portion of rice and you could be looking at 600 cals essy, way too much for you.
Snacking of fruit is fine within reason. But its not calories free. could easily make or break a diet.

You don't need toast before bed. It's perfectly normal to wake up hungry. That's what breakfast is for.

I'd guess that you are eating arounf 1800-2000 cals. To lose weight you'd want to be aim for 1300-1400

mathie

Mellor wrote: »

That says excess energy not excess carbs.
You were banging on about this in a previous thread too. Carbs very very rarely get converted to fat.

That's just flat out wrong.

"Your body uses mostly carbohydrates as well as fats for energy. Because the body doesn’t store carbs efficiently, they’re used first. Carbohydrates turn into glucose, which your body burns immediately or converts to glycogen to be stored in the muscles and liver for between meals. If you eat more calories from carbs or other sources than your body can use, the cells store the excess as fat."

http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/happens-unburned-carbohydrates-2461.html

Mellor

mathie wrote: »

That's just flat out wrong.

No it's not.
The pathway exists to convert carbs to fat, it's called de novo lipogenesis. But it's rarely necessary for your body to use it. Eating carb before bed, excess carbs, etc are not enough to trigger it.
You need a lot more than just excess calories to trigger it.

You are misunderstanding the information you are posting. It actually backs up what I'm saying.

"Your body uses mostly carbohydrates as well as fats for energy. Because the body doesn’t store carbs efficiently, they’re used first. Carbohydrates turn into glucose, which your body burns immediately or converts to glycogen to be stored in the muscles and liver for between meals. If you eat more calories from carbs or other sources than your body can use, the cells store the excess as fat."

I've bolded the key parts. Carbs are used first. And it's the excess from all sources (ie fat) that ends up being stored. Our bodies function as efficiently as possible. It will opt for the least wasteful pathway.

Say I burn 2400 calories in a day, that's my maintenance amount. If I go over that, I'll put on weight.
What sort of daily intake do you think will cause carbs to convert to say? in terms of calories worth of protein/fat/carbs?

mathie

Mellor wrote: »

No it's not.
The pathway exists to convert carbs to fat, it's called de novo lipogenesis. But it's rarely necessary for your body to use it. Eating carb before bed, excess carbs, etc are not enough to trigger it.
You need a lot more than just excess calories to trigger it.

You are misunderstanding the information you are posting. It actually backs up what I'm saying.


I've bolded the key parts. Carbs are used first. And it's the excess from all sources (ie fat) that ends up being stored. Our bodies function as efficiently as possible. It will opt for the least wasteful pathway.

OK I did a bit more reading and apologies you're right. I thought that the process (of turning carbs to fat) was much more efficient.

This put a bit of clarity on it for me.

"This study helps explain where those other 278 grams came from. Basically, the problem is that storing carbs as body fat via de novo lipogenesis is inefficient. By comparison, storing dietary fat in body fat reserves is easy and efficient. These women were eating a diet high in both carbs and fat, and they were eating more calories than they could use, meaning that they had to store some. In that situation, it doesn’t make any sense to burn the dietary fat for energy and then laboriously convert all the carbs to fatty acids for storage. It’s much more efficient to simply burn the carbs for energy and store the dietary fat.

That’s exactly what these women did. Only a little bit of the extra sugar that they ate was actually stored as fat. Mostly, eating a bunch of sugar caused them to store a lot more dietary fat, which accounted for 98.6% of the fat that they gained. De novo lipogenesis was turned up, but that wasn’t a major reason for their fat gain."

https://paleoleap.com/science-turning-carbs-to-fat-de-novo-lipogenesis/

Mellor wrote: »

Say I burn 2400 calories in a day, that's my maintenance amount. If I go over that, I'll put on weight.
What sort of daily intake do you think will cause carbs to convert to say? in terms of calories worth of protein/fat/carbs?

Can you rephrase that. Im not sure what you're asking?

mathie

Also Mellor can you help me understand ... if the body is so bad at turning carbs into fat why would someone consuming 5000 cal of coke a day get fat?
I can't comprehend the science behind it!

Mellor

mathie wrote: »

Can you rephrase that. Im not sure what you're asking?

I was just saying an example of typical days over eating. But it's grand you found the same in the above article. It's a good summary.

Basically the body will burn carbs, and storebthe fat because that's the most efficient. But neither carbs nor fat are to blame. All that matters is total energy.

Mellor

mathie wrote: »

Also Mellor can you help me understand ... if the body is so bad at turning carbs into fat why would someone consuming 5000 cal of coke a day get fat?
I can't comprehend the science behind it!

If somebody consumes massive amounts of carbs/sugar the body won't waste it. After daily energy is burned, it will store the rest (along with daily fat).

But the intake required to reach that point is massive and not likely to happen under normal conditions.
5000cal of Coke would for example be 11litres. So there's a good chance they'd die from water intoxication at that level.

Say you burn 2500 calories. And you eat 500g carbs (2000 cals) and 225g fat (2025 cals). You just burn the carbs and store the fat. As it's most efficient.
You only start converting carbs to fat once carb intake alone is above total energy expenditure. You talking 600-800g of carbs a day for a few day in a row. That's a huge amount of food.

But every calorie of carbs displaces a calorie of fat. The net effect is the same. It just means you don't need to fear either carbs or fat. Time of the day is irrelevant. Total intake is the focus.

mathie

Mellor wrote: »

If somebody consumes massive amounts of carbs/sugar the body won't waste it. After daily energy is burned, it will store the rest (along with daily fat).

But the intake required to reach that point is massive and not likely to happen under normal conditions.
5000cal of Coke would for example be 11litres. So there's a good chance they'd die from water intoxication at that level.

Say you burn 2500 calories. And you eat 500g carbs (2000 cals) and 225g fat (2025 cals). You just burn the carbs and store the fat. As it's most efficient.
You only start converting carbs to fat once carb intake alone is above total energy expenditure. You talking 600-800g of carbs a day for a few day in a row. That's a huge amount of food.

But every calorie of carbs displaces a calorie of fat. The net effect is the same. It just means you don't need to fear either carbs or fat. Time of the day is irrelevant. Total intake is the focus.

Thanks for that.

But if they consumed 1000g of carbs a day and nothing else then roughly half that would be turned to fat?

But de novo lipogenesis doesn't turn carbs to fat efficiently so how do they get fat?

Going back to my previous link "They found that the carb-overfed women stored about 282 grams of body fat per day, but only 4 grams of it came from de novo lipogenesis. De novo lipogenesis accounted for a measly 1.4% of their fat gain."

https://paleoleap.com/science-turning-carbs-to-fat-de-novo-lipogenesis/

Mellor

mathie wrote: »

Thanks for that.

But if they consumed 1000g of carbs a day and nothing else then roughly half that would be turned to fat?

If somebody was to consume 1000g carbs (4000cals). The 1500 excess would be converted to fat, with energy lost in the conversion.
But that kind of intake is not going to happen outside of a study. In the real world if somebody consumes 4000 calories. They'll be eating fat and carbs.

But de novo lipogenesis doesn't turn carbs to fat efficiently so how do they get fat?

Going back to my previous link "They found that the carb-overfed women stored about 282 grams of body fat per day, but only 4 grams of it came from de novo lipogenesis. De novo lipogenesis accounted for a measly 1.4% of their fat gain."

That's because the diets were made up of protein, fat and carbs. They were fed a normal control diet, plus 50% from mostly sugar and some fat.

"total macronutrient intake of 375 g carbohydrate, 136 g fat, and 56 g protein daily"

So say they ate normal-ish diet, sat 49% carbs, 40% fat, 11% protein. Then an overfeed of 30% sugar, 20% fat.

Instead of converting the sugar to fat via de novo lipogenesis. It retains the fat from the normal diet, and burns the extra sugar for daily energy instead.
So it ends up with close to 50% of fat left over and stores it directly without losing energy converting carbs.

Our bodies are too smart for their own good sometimes.

mathie

Thanks for that.
A very good explanation of the whole process.