Tried a slow-carb diet for 3 months and got worse results than just counting calories

Everyone says slow-carb is better because you don't have to track as much. I did it strict for 12 weeks in Denver last spring. Lost like 4 pounds but my energy crashed around 3pm every day. Tracked calories after that and dropped 12 pounds in 8 weeks with way more energy. Has anyone else found that simplifying your eating actually makes results worse?

2 comments

2 Comments

ruby45012d agoMost Upvoted

Same thing happened to me. I did slow-carb for about 8 weeks and ended up eating beans and chicken every day because the allowed foods got so boring. My digestion was a mess and I was bloated all the time. Switched back to just tracking calories with a simple app and suddenly I could eat fruit again without guilt and my energy came back. The trick for me was finding that 1700 calorie mark where I wasn't hungry but still losing weight. People say tracking is too complicated but it actually taught me what my body really needs.

jesse_fisher12d ago

Oh come on, is it really that big of a deal? You ate beans and chicken for 8 weeks and now you're acting like you survived a war or something. Plenty of people eat the same stuff every day without losing their minds (I mean, I've been eating the same oatmeal for breakfast for like 3 years now). And tracking calories to the exact number? That sounds way more exhausting than just picking from a list of allowed foods. Most people I know who track end up obsessing over 50-calorie differences in their snacks. The bloating thing might be real, yeah, but swapping one restrictive system for another doesn't sound like freedom to me.