Originally Posted by ERHR:
I'll give you my perspective as a fellow BFC-er who has not intentionally deviated from the plan's guidelines. I too can see at least one situation in my near future when I would like to go off-plan - eating 1-year-old wedding cake on our anniversary next month. I'm pretty sure I'm going to eat the cake. I figure that while I like the BFC and am going to stay on it for the forseeable future I doubt I will be exactly on this plan for the rest of my life and it would be useful to know how my body reacts to a bolus of sugar/white carbs now that I have retrained it on the BFC.

Will I have cravings for sugar or other carbs that day, the next day, for the next week? Will they be stronger than the cravings I had before? If I can handle a single slice of cake with little-to-no apparent repercussions I will consider the BFC more sustainable. If it stops my loss for a week or causes me to go off-plan again later, I probably won't try it again until I reach my goal weight or find another plan that doesn't cause me to go crazy on sugar when I do eat it.

Also, I disagree with JohnP that the BFC and other low-sugar/moderated-carb plans work solely because of calorie restriction. This is based on my experience with my body, research I have done, and professionals I have spoken with. This is why I haven't to this point taken any cheats on the BFC like I did when I was only calorie-counting.

ERHR, thank you for the BFC perspective!! This is the type of situation I'm referring to the EVERY ONCE IN AWHILE chance to have cake, something sweet, etc.

Also, I think that with my body, that it's insulin and fat storage that are affecting my fat loss, rather than calories alone. We can all talk about thermodynamics, calories in calories out, and blood glucose levels until the cows come home, but I truly do not believe in "a calorie is a calorie".


We will all just have to agree to disagree on that front!

I know that science debates the calorie vs. carb vs. fat issue and that will continue to go on. However, I also know that I have gone for 4 weeks on a calorie restricted diet (doing 30 minutes of cardio 3-4 times a week) and lost 1.8 pounds. The week that I started the BFC, I started on a Thursday and had lost more than that by Saturday. This is my second week and I am anxious to see what the scale says on Saturday. Restricting my carbs has worked in the past. I just could not keep them at 20-40 for the rest of my life. I am curious to hear how a cheat day works for a dieter on a restricted carb/sugar diet.

Whether a cheat day will harm or help you during your hardcore diet phase is really up to your personality - are you the kind of person who can eat 1 piece of cake and then do nothing or are you the kind of person who is going to eat 1 piece of cake and then ice cream and then french fries, etc?

But unless you have a medical dietary restriction where some things in certain foods will harm/kill/endanger you, you are going to have to cheat when you are in maintenance. Processed sugar may not be the healthiest thing for you, but you are going to capital-M Miserable if you are afraid to eat cake and ice cream for the rest of your life.

Originally Posted by annabanana76179:
I know that science debates the calorie vs. carb vs. fat issue and that will continue to go on. However, I also know that I have gone for 4 weeks on a calorie restricted diet (doing 30 minutes of cardio 3-4 times a week) and lost 1.8 pounds. The week that I started the BFC, I started on a Thursday and had lost more than that by Saturday. This is my second week and I am anxious to see what the scale says on Saturday. Restricting my carbs has worked in the past. I just could not keep them at 20-40 for the rest of my life. I am curious to hear how a cheat day works for a dieter on a restricted carb/sugar diet.

As much as I am beating a dead horse I feel somehow obligated to point out that the reason you lost weight to fast when switching to BFC is because any low carb diet causes glycogen levels to drop in your muscles which means they also release water. In this aspect there is no debate.

A cheat day for a low carber will work just like it works for anyone else assuming they do not use the scale as a means of judging how it worked because the scale may go up due to water weight.