Low carb doesn't have to be high fat. I lost 60 pounds low carb, low calorie, low fat and high protein. Lots of lean poultry and steamed vegetables. I am now having whole grains and maintaining. For me, I have trouble losing while consuming carbs. Whenever I get into game mode, I have to restrict carbs to lose. That's just my body though.

I'm on a semi-low carb diet myself, I've had a lot of success with it. However, no matter what diet you're on it always requires portion control, which is what got me in High School with Atkins.

I love stat fats and cheese and tend to overdo it, other people however are easily satisfied with a tiny bit. I still regulate my calories.

If you don't like meat, there are non-meat ways to eat lowish-carb, tofu (stay away from meat subs though), eggs, protein powders (i like isoflex), nuts, and nut flours instead of wheat.

I wouldn't really do no-carb, at least not not a long period of time, if you do make sure to take benefiber or something to stay regular

So the only thing is , you can't maintain the diet you are on for the rest of your life, since it isn't working, you are not feeling healthy and you are overweight, or you wouldn't be asking these questions. So you will have to change your diet, yes?
Most of us who have done lower carb have found that we can stay there.
I know I couldn't go back to a high grain diet. I feel pretty crummy if I overdo the grains. I can eat some on occasion if combined with other good foods. But I have come to love my high veggie diet. (if I call it that, people don't lecture me) I can sustain this diet, or one like it, over the long term, recognizing that I won't always do it perfectly. I will have chocolate or cake or pie on occasion. But not regulary, not the whole cake or pie, and always with exercise.
GOod luck in finding the path that suits you.

A person who eats fast food every day cannot image going through life without it
A person who eats tons of fruit and vegetables cannot imagine going thorugh life with out them

But we can quickly change out brain, and our taste buds, and you may be surprised what you can live with, And you are right, a Diet needs to be maintainable for life. BUT I dont think you can gauge a plan until you have tried it, as many food groups change your cravings.
Sugar and white flour elimination alone can change your life forever, and is liveable! Especially when you go into it with the mind set that your life depends on it--because for many of us it does!

Just eat real food like the food detailed in the Harcombe Diet. It's low in carbs but you don't count anything. She has completed over 20 years of research and says that sugar and carbs are addictive and shows you how to eliminate cravings. It's a plan for life rather than a diet..

I would recomend reading Joel Fuhrmen's "Eat to Live". If you prefer eating whole foods and fruits and veggies, then I don't think you should do low carb. Like already mentioned by others you need a diet you can do the rest of your life. I did low carb once years ago, and it worked great. Except as soon as I started eating carbs like fruits and veggies I gained weight back. Now maybe if I hadn't become so discouraged and threw the towel in on healthy eating at the time, I imagine I would have beeN able to maintain fine eating whole healthy foods. But its better to get all the nutrients and vitamins from whole foods and know the way your eating as you lose iS essentially how you'll eat always.

People fail at low-carb diets for the same reason they fail at other diets... they stop following them.

low-carb has a bad rep, because there isn't any consensus on which diets are low-carb and which aren't. Some consider low-carb to mean a diet that has virtually no carbs (meaning not only no fruits, but little to no vegetables as well - this is not a legitimate low-carb diet).

How many carbs, before a plan is low-carb? Even the experts don't agree (many of them consider Eat to Live, as well as South Beach low-carb diets, others call them "good carb" diets).

Some experts call any diet that comes from 60% or fewer calories low-carb. Others put the cut-off at 50%. Others say 200g of carb or less. Others 100g or less. Some say 60g or less and others say 40g or less. Others say eliminating or limiting fruit and grains...

Even in the most carb-liminting low-carb diets, at your goal weight or before, you keep adding greater amounts of carbohydrate foods until you stop losing or start gaining, then you step back to a level that was working and use it as long as it works. You make adjustments as you need to.

People don't follow these guidelines and then say low-carb didn't work. If you abandon the food plan, you're going to gain back. It doesn't matter which food plan you're on. That's not the result of the diet, that's the result of going off the diet.

For most of my life I thought low-carb plans were undoable - what I meant was that I wasn't willing to follow them. I wasn't willing to follow any of the plans I tried, and so I gained back the weight and some extra, each and every try (even though only a few, an extremely tiny minority of those attempts were low-carb plans)

When my doctor suggested low-carb, I thought he was crazy (after all, everyone knows they're unhealthy). It took me almost a year to follow his advice.

I've learned that the only diet that works for me is "low-carb" in that I need to virtually eliminate grains and I need to limit fruit. If I don't I get overhungry and I overeat. I make a lot of mistakes, because it is a difficult diet to follow (any diet is).

I could have decided that I shouldn't eat low-carb - or for that matter that I shouldn't diet at all, because diets never worked for me forever. I didn't need to find the diet that I could invision doing forever - I had to learn to follow the diet that worked and follow it forever (or for as long as I want to keep the weight off).

For me, that plan is drastically limiting carbohydrates (compared to what I was eating, and compared to what most people in the nation eat). Right now I aim at 100g or less (and I do consider it low carb).

If I wanted to lose faster, I could limit calories and carbohydrates more, but I'm ok with the level I've chosen. For now. I don't have to be ok with it forever, but I do have to be ok with it for now.

If I want the results to last forever, I have to be willing to do something forever. It doesn't have to be the same something, it just has to be a something that works. There's no reason that I can't switch to a high-carb diet when I'm at goal, as long as it's a high-carb diet that allows me to keep the weight off. If you're on a 1200 calorie low-carb diet, switching to a 1200 high-carb diet is going to result in a small amount of weight gain (just because your body will retain the extra water it needs to process higher carb foods). However, it would be virtually impossible to remain obese on a 1200 calorie diet. If you regain after abandoning a low-carb diet, it's not from eating carbohydrates, it's from overeating food.

Commit yourself to low-carb, or commit yourself to any other diet you find effective, it doesn't matter. What matters is that you commit to following an effective strategy. It can be any strategy that you find effective. You can even change your strategy (every week if you want to, every day or every hour if you want to) you just have to commit to following a strategy that you find effective. If it isn't effective, abandon it for something that is but don't "just abandon it." That is never effective.

Another terrific post, kaplods. I have been down many of the same roads and always resisted low carb. I did that for a variety of reasons. I'm athletic and need the carbs for energy. I love pasta and bread too much to mess with something unsustainable that tries to eliminate them. I'm social and low carb dieting would make me a weirdo in a big Italian family. What about eating out? It would be impossible as a low carber. It's unrealistic and inconvenient to eliminate handy carbs from my lifestyle. And on and on and on. All baloney. All BS. All wasting years as I increasingly became more unhealthy.

The only diet that works for me IS low carb. Any other plan stokes my appetite and I over eat. I recently increased carbs to change my acidic body chemistry and battle a case of gout (kidneys were over worked by an overabundance of acidic ketones and uric acid). My calories creeped though I tried very hard to control them. I gained about 10 pounds in a week. Just getting back to ketosis is a major battle with my new appetite.

Hi I decided I'd give South Beach a try as its not fat encouraged but lean meat and dairy etc. Thought I'd go the week on SB and have Sat. off to have any favs. I was missing and Sun hopefully a vegetarian day to eat lots of my fav. fruits.Well one week in I lost 4kg during the week and today eating bread I havn't even enjoyed it. So I will be happy to start again on Mon. Maybe I won't need a day off next weekend good luck

Hi I decided I'd give South Beach a try as its not fat encouraged but lean meat and dairy etc. Thought I'd go the week on SB and have Sat. off to have any favs. I was missing and Sun hopefully a vegetarian day to eat lots of my fav. fruits.Well one week in I lost 4kg during the week and today eating bread I havn't even enjoyed it. So I will be happy to start again on Mon. Maybe I won't need a day off next weekend good luck I also got into trying some of the recipes such as using almond meal which made lovely pancakes for a breakfast change and didn't eat many eggs at all

Well feeling stupid here it says wait and try again so added a bit more but did't think both would go through sorry

I was searching for information on the Harcombe Diet ~ it was recommended to me in a facebook group, and I'm picking up the book from the Amazon locker later today. There's not much in 3fc about it, so how stunned was I to read this thread, and discover me in 2010 asking low-carb questions!! Maybe I'm "meant" to follow this WOE!!

Since those 2010 posts, I've lost some weight, re-gained right up to 238lbs, had cancer/chemo/radio/3 years' remission, retired early on health grounds, developed T2 Diabetes, lost 80lbs, re-gained 10, now got 30lbs to go to goal. I controlled my blood sugar so well by eating a lower carb/cleaner diet, and walking miles that they took me off the tiny dose of Metformin I was on.

They also advised me to try eating a bit more of a "mixed" diet, i.e. having a sweet treat occasionally. Unfortunately, that sabotaged my willpower, and I've eaten badly for a couple/several months: I've regained that 10, and I bet my blood sugar is way up again. Interestingly, although I felt physically fine with the increased, nay vast amounts of processed carbs I was eating, I definitely began to feel very off about 10 days ago: floaty and weird and tearful. I was like that last year when the T2D was diagnosed, and it lasted months and felt like a return of the depression that gave me the early retirement. Not good. Not good at all. So today is Day #6 of a self-designed, pretty hard core low carb diet; it's been fairly high fat too, as I tried to wean myself off the "treat" mentality. I've only lost 1lb but I've lost a lot of water, I can tell by my ankles, wrists, and rings.

Amazon and food shopping permitting, I'll start Harcombe tomorrow. I like what I've seen of it, because it seems definitely carb-Limiting, not zero carbs. It seems to be the way to go to help my blood sugar levels and to persist in my weight loss. To be fair, my b.s. levels continued to drop even with a fair amount of "good" carbs - oats, grains etc - added in at the diabetes dietician's insistence but I think I need to at least re-start with a limited carb approach to get back on the straight and narrow again

Hi, VL! Sorry to hear about the 12lbs/glad it's not just me.... I'm going to be brave in a minute and alter my tracker to my true weight, 170, which is up 11. Sigh.

On the other hand, look at this way (for both of us), provided we stick a marker in here and start going down again, we've effectively maintained our weight from what it was at the beginning of the year..... Hm. I'll try and convince my diabetes nurse of that come Friday!

Good luck!