Trouble losing weight
 

Hi,

I was hoping to get some advise. I have been on the Atkins induction diet before and lost 10 and 12 pounds, respectively, the first two times.

Last summer I went on the induction phase of the diet for 4 weeks and did not lose any weight. This year I decided to get serious. I have been on the induction phase of the diet for 7 weeks.

For the first 3 weeks I could not loose weight. (I am 25 pounds overweight.) I cut my calories to between 1200 and 1500 a day. In the last 3 - 4 weeks I have lost 5 pounds. Given the amount of exercise I have been doing (a lot), I'm not seeing any "Metabolic Advantage".

I've been in Ketosis for 6 weeks. I usually eat about 12 grams of carbs. I cut out aspartimine. I have reduced my calorie intake. I have been taking Caprilic acid based yeast medicine, and I have been taking probiotics. I've still hit a plateau.

I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction with either advise or a referal. I live in Las Vegas Nevada.

This is one of those problems most experience. It is what we refer to as yo-yo dieting.

Bad thing is, the more you yo-yo the harder and harder it will be to get anything to work. Your body starts saying "oh not this again" and holds on to every fat cell it has and burns lean muscle tissue thereby slowing your metobolism even more. It doesn't help that aging has this effect as well. So the older we get and the more we yo-yo back and forth on a diet, the slower and more sluggish our metobolism gets.

Good news is, you can rebuild that metobolism, by building lean muscle tissue. Weight lifting. By building muscle we increase our metobolism thereby kicking in that fat burning mode. It does not however happen over night and it is a lot of work.

My advice would be, stop using Atkin's as a "diet" and start looking at it more as a way of life. Get use to the idea that regardless of how long it is going to take to lose the weight, you are and will continue to eat correctly and healthy. It has taken me 15 months to lose 50 pounds. It took me 10 years to gain 60 of it so I am WAY ahead of the game at this point. It comes off really slow but that is okay with me.

Thanks for the info. I'm currently lifting weights and swimming vigorusly. I guess my follow-up questions fall into two categories.


1) I guess the next question is: should I be looking for problems like yeast infections, or food intolerances? I don't know of any symptoms that suggest I would have a problem. Atkins offers these up as scape goats when people are having trouble losing. Does anyone know of any resources (books, internet, etc.) for those of us who are having trouble?

2) Does it make sense for a person that is not getting results on the very restrictive Atkins Induction diet to move to a lower calorie, low carb diet. Adding more veggies, berries and nuts? What would be the right amount of carbs to consume? Mabe over the next few months (along with exercise) I should bounce back and forth between the induction Phase of Atkins and a 50 Gram version???

Here are few suggestions.....12 carbs is not very many, Atkins says 20, you may want to up your carbs, if you jog around this forum you will see that some people up them a bit, using good carbs, vegies and such and started losing again.

Also, you mentioned no weight loss, but have you measured, you have been swimming vigorously and lifting weights. Muscle weighs more then fat, easily. So, you should measure to see if you have lost inches.

One more thing, you may be eating too few calories or not enough fat with your calories a good way to track everything is www.fitday.com if you already do not. Eating low fat low carb is not necessarily a good thing.

These are just suggestions, I am no expert, there are however better educated people then me who may have some great suggestions for you.

Good luck.
Cindy

I've read so many times on here that a person will start to lose AFTER upping their carbs and fat content.
I personnal think you need to increase both as your body may think it is being starved...and a starved body refuses to let go of those pounds. 10-12x calories a day is a minimum...you need more calories if you are exercising and more carbs.

Before you dig deeper....it may be something as simple as eating more...

just my opinion.....cin

Re: Trouble losing weight
 

Yikes!! You need to raise your calories A LOT. Your calories are already below what it would take to sustain your body if you did nothing except lie onthe couch. You need a MINIMUM of 10x your full body weight in calories to keep you out of starvation mode. 11x or 12 x would be better. If you are lifting, you should also eat about a gram of protein per lb of lean mass. Without knowing your body fat percentage, I'd say no less than 120 g per day. If you want to gain muscle (which will raise your metabolism, shrink your measurements and help you burn fat faster), you should eat even more. I aim for 200g, myself, and soon I'll be raising it to almost 300g. I also eat 2500 calories a day. My stats may only show 30 lbs lost, but that's hiding the fact that I've gained 15 lbs of muscle. 15 lbs of muscle, plus 30 lbs fat gone equals 45 lbs of fat lost. At 210 lbs, I can wear sizes 12 and 14 because of the lifting.

Take some measurements, too, because if you lift and you lose fat and gain muscle at the same time, the scale may not move. For example, in the last month, I have lost 2.5 inches off my waist, 2 off my hips and 1 off each thigh, but my weight on the scale has stayed exactly the same. If I didn't have measurements, I might have thought I was stalled and given up :)

Hope that helps!

Friday

mjmjmj:
 

I can't tell whether you're male or female, your age would be helpful too.

Have you ruled out thyroid problems? If you've read Dr. Atkins books, you probably know that is an often overlooked but very real and common reason. The first time I got stuck on Atkins I already suspected something was wrong because I didn't feel so good, a few months later I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism.

Overexercising, believe it or not, will diminish thyroid hormone output, slowing down your metabolism. Here's an excerpt from an interview conducted by Mary Shomon, creator of the www.thyroid.about.com information site with Dr. Ray Peat:

Mary Shomon: You feel that excessive aerobic exercise can be a cause of hypothyroidism. Can you explain this further? How much is too much?

Dr. Ray Peat: I'm not sure who introduced the term "aerobic" to describe the state of anaerobic metabolism that develops during stressful exercise, but it has had many harmful repercussions. In experiments, T3 production is stopped very quickly by even "sub-aerobic" exercise, probably becaue of the combination of a decrease of blood glucose and an increase in free fatty acids. In a healthy person, rest will tend to restore the normal level of T3, but there is evidence that even very good athletes remain in a hypothyroid state even at rest. A chronic increase of lactic acid and cortisol indicates that something is wrong. The "slender muscles" of endurance runners are signs of a catabolic state, that has been demonstrated even in the heart muscle. A slow heart beat very strongly suggests hypothyroidism. Hypothyroid people, who are likely to produce lactic acid even at rest, are especially susceptible to the harmful effects of "aerobic" exercise. The good effect some people feel from exercise is probably the result of raising the body temperature; a warm bath will do the same for people with low body temperature."

In fact, anything the body perceives as too stressful will activate production of cortisol which definitely interferes with weight loss. I was doing EVERYTHING wrong back in '00, eating too much soy, doing 45-mins. aerobics 6X/wk and I couldn't lose weight either, so take it a little easier and you'll find that in this case "less is more".

Further in that interview, Dr. Peat recommends the use of coconut oil for normalizing metabolism. I'm starting to use it today!

To view the entire interview click here:

http://thyroid.about.com/gi/dynamic.../ray%2Dpeat.htm

For more about coconut oil:

www.mercola.com/2002/mar/24/coconut_oil.htm

No. Your problem is you're not eating enough. You exercise alot and you're only consuming 1200??? Thats starvation mode if you're really exercising that much. Also try upping your carbs a little.

Quote:

What would be the right amount of carbs to consume?[B]

Nobody can tell you that.. Everyones body is different but I'm guessing you're already consuming way less then 20.. But try upping them by 5 atleast, and keep upping little by little and see what happens.

[B]

Quote:

Mabe over the next few months (along with exercise) I should bounce back and forth between the induction Phase of Atkins and a 50 Gram version???

NOOOO :nono: Yer doing it again. That yo-yo thing is what you really need to break out of. You went back and forth from diet to diet, and now you're trying to do yo-yo induction :rolleyes: .... That's the same thing. Induction is only really to get you into ketosis..once your into ketosis its time to move into OWL and stick with that.

Btw, going back and forth from 50 to 20 would just make you gain a few pounds and its gonna make your stall even longer and harder to break then it is now.

And sicne you're lifting weights, you're building muscle which is replacing the fat... And again, 1200 cals is so not enough for that. Should atleast be drinking a protein shake an hour after you workout if you don't want to eat that much..

SlimShady:
 

I don't think that's "yo-yo" dieting. Even Dr. Atkins recommends going back to Induction whenever necessary. 50 gm. of carbs is not high at all, for instance it's just Phase II on Protein Power, on the Schwarzbein plan it's 15 gm. per meal and a number of vegetables (non-starchy) are considered "free" so translated to "Atkinese" it would be way more. As long as a person doesn't go back to the bread, pasta & pastries, adding more healthy carbs cannot be classified as "yo-yo"

Here's what Dr. Atkins has to say about going back to induction from maintainance (or going off the diet for a period of time) repeatedly:

From page 216 DANDR:

"If you keep retreating to induction from lifetime maintainance, it becomes a form of yo-yo dieting. I'm not saying you should not go back to induction when you need it, I'm simply saying don't do it regularly, in the belief that it will always work the same way for you. You may be in for a nasty surprise"

and that nasty surprise is:

From page 159 DANDR:

"When people learn that they can lose weight quickly as they do during induction, they sometimes take their ability to lose weight for granted. They don't think in terms of a lifetime commitment to the Atkins lifestyle--just a quick fix for overindulgence. The result of this faulty thinking is yo-yo dieting and metabolic resistance to weight loss ."

The more times you lose weight only to regain it, the harder it becomes each time to lose the weight again. Your body "remembers" the last time you dieted and responds by lowering your metabolism much more quickly each time you re-start. The only thing that will overcome that metabolic resistance is time and patience, along with not starving your body so that it learns to trust that you won't starve it again and be willing to let go of those fat stores.

Hmm, that must be in the new edition which I haven't read. I still have the "yellow" book (got it in '98) so it looks like he has changed his "story" yet again.

If that's really so, most of us are "fried". Since it's human to err and the majority of people who start this (or any other WOE) well into their adult lives, are going to miss the foods they grew up on and enjoyed for decades, sooner or later are going to "stray" and become after many years of having other habits ingrained "yo-yo" dieters (I know I'm one!).

I can't fully agree with a statement that sounds to me like an effort to explain away the natural imperfection of Atkins (hey, there's nothing perfect in this world!). A healthy body should NOT lose its ability to utilize fat efficiently as fuel whenever necessary. We were "designed" to be omnivorous so we may survive on any type of food that is available to us. The real problem lies in our having chosen too many inferior foods "to suit our tastebuds" b/c we live in times of abundance. And in so doing we have compromised our health. In other words, the reason Induction fails to work the same is because L/C alone cannot improve all aspects of our health. Hopefully, by teaching our children better eating habits we will prevent them from falling in the trap many of us find ourselves in today.

Even though Dr. Atkins in recent years (not for nearly 20 years) has ammended his books to "stay current with the times", he also tries to put the blame on why the plan won't work as expected on EVERYONE. Even though I still think he is a pioneer in L/C, I concluded a while back that "his" WOE is NOT fullproof or a one-size-fits-all.

The last thing I want to point out is that recently I read about some study that showed eating too much meat/animal protein may diminish thyroid function (now I wish I'd paid more attention to the reason why). And last year I read the same about dairy. In Chinese medicine if someone has thyroid problems they must stay away from dairy at least a year. Both are staples of L/C. Could that be the reason why a lot of people end up getting "stuck" no matter what they do? I just wish they'd go ahead and run some serious studies so we'd know once for all what to believe!

Raquel...

Resistance to weight loss doesn't just happen with going on and off induction ala Atkins. It happens with ANY diet where you repeatedly gain, then try to lose weight. Every time you gain and then try to lose, your body becomes more resistant to losing again. Years of low calorie dieting have much the same effect; your metabolism is reset to survive on a lower level of calories which makes weight gain very easy and weight loss very difficult. This is a built-in defense against periods of famine. A "healthy" body should not lose it's ability to lose excess fat, but after years of low calorie dieting and abuse, most people no longer have "healthy" bodies in that sense. An occasional indescretion is not a reason to go back to induction levels again. Dr. Atkins recognizes that we are all human and prone to the occasional slip and addresses that in his book. Personally, after 16 months on low carb, I have very little difficulty sticking with it and am rarely tempted to eat something I shouldn't.
We can "survive" on any food available to us, true enough, but that doesn't mean we will survive in a healthy state. Yes, we are omnivorous and that's not a fact that is incompatable with low carbing. I eat meat, vegetables, fats, some fruits, nuts and berries. I avoid sugar, flour and any highly processed or refined foods.
As far as too much meat or protein diminishing thyroid function, define "too much". I really don't eat much more protein than I did before low carb (if I'm actually eating more at all). I just cut out all the other high carb junk I was eating with it. I've also had my thyroid function tested twice since I started and it's been normal both times.
I agree that many people are going to and do miss the foods that they have enjoyed for decades, but isn't it "enjoyment" of those very foods that brought them to the land of obesity in the first place? Is it a flaw of the diet that many crave those foods and sometimes binge on them or a flaw in metabolic order caused by eating those foods and then a human lack of willpower?

I didn't make up the meat/thyroid thing so I can't "define" what's too much for you and I can't remember now where I read it. I read all the time online and I don't bookmark everything.

I still can't agree with the "yo-yo" theory, especially because in the exercise forum Trainer Dan shares a plan he developed (and wrote a book about) called CKD which alternates low-carb with "mostly carbs" together with weight training and cardio. You can't get more "yo-yo" than that but many are swearing by it, so...

And I don't think I'm a "typical dieter". I was thin most of my life and like the majority of women had to lose some pounds after childbirth (2 kids) at which time in a way I was on a type of low-carb plan because I avoided most starches and all sugar (but also excess fat). After having my 2nd child in '84 I found out I was hypoglycemic and I struggled to stay away from sugar and refined flour ever since but had many relapses due to the strong cravings generated when one's unable to eat on schedule.

I never gained too much and it was easy to lose, never haviang to diet for long periods of time. I also only counted calories a couple of times. The time it became hardest was after I got swept by the low-fat tide and tried to apply that to my eating, which simply did not work and I started to gain. When I "discovered" Atkins in '94 I lost 14 lbs. and regained a figure I was very happy with. Afterwards I just tried to follow my hypoglycemia diet and only gained back a few lbs. because I ate too many starches. The story changed though when perimenopause and a lot of stress happened at the same time, I kept gaining a bit at a time. In '00 I was found hypothyroid and I'm presently within "normal" ranges and off meds, but on HRT which does have an impact on weight loss.

In view of the above, in my case it would not be reasonable to say a stall is due to "yo-yo" dieting. Other people may have other reasons, such as nutritional defficiencies and (the only point we agreed on) less than perfect health. Minor alterations to diet such as adding or subtracting a few carbs cannot really be called yo-yo dieting, and I don't care if Dr. Atkins himself said it. Like I said before, he's changed the story a few times already, if you don't believe me read the older books...

Raquel...

I think we may be working with different definitions of what yo-yo dieting is. Yo-yo dieting isn't just bouncing back and forth between induction levels of carb and maintainance levels of carb, although, as Dr. Atkins points out in his book, it can lead to that if you use it as a quick fix for weight gain when you go off the diet for a period of time over and over. One of the examples he gives as an abuse of induction is those that low carb during the week and then eat anything and everything they want to on the weekends only to go back on induction again when the weekend is over. Yo-yo dieting is repeatedly losing weight only to gain it back again when you go off the diet you used to lose weight hence the term "yo-yo"; your weight goes down, then it goes back up again, then it goes down, then it goes back up again, etc...

Lisa N;
 

If you had read the post above mine (by SlimShady) you'd see what I was really talking about. I think after all you and I are talking about the same thing, basically...