I see a lot of people here recommend that if you are stalled you should be eating more fat. I recognize that this will make the ketostix turn purple simply because you are digesting fat ( but not necessarily fat stores) but I am confused at how eating more fat will increase your fat burning.
Low carbs will lower insulin, keeping the protein up will prevent muscle loss, but I still don't get how eating more fat will help at all.
I have tried to find the answer in the book, and although Atkins talks about the positive effects of the fat fast, I cannot where he explains how it actually works.
Can anyone explain it to me or tell me where it is in the book?

The reason to have high fat is because fat has no effect on the blood gluclose level. Atkins does talk about how fat is the only neutral substance in his book. If you want a lot more scientific and detailed explination, I would recomend reading the Protien Power book which gets into the details far more. Diatary fat doesn't make you fat. It is the insulin produced by carbs and to a lesser extent protien, that tells the fat to store on the body. On Atkins you should be getting just enough protien for what your body needs, and not to much as this is converted to gluclose. You still have to have enough calories to meet your body's basic needs.

For me I need around 64g of protien. This provides 256 calories a day.
On induction you are only to have 20g net carbs. This provides 80 cals a day. There is no way that a person can live off of 336 calories a day, so additional calories must come from somewhere, the answer being fats. Any fats that aren't used are flushed from the body. It is high fat + high carb that causes weight gain.

Fats are also benificial because when you have a good fat intake your body doesn't see a need to hang on to the energy stores it has. Having a good fat intake tells your body that it is a ffeast time, and not a famine. The body will lose interest in storing extra energy, and instead put the energy to use rebuilding muscle and internal organs.

so can you tell me some high fat/low protein & carb food???
Cuz if I just eat pork or chicken meat for my meal, my protein level will be too high....
I know cheese is a good choice, but it's limited during induction period....

Pork and beef are both good for fats. So is chicken if you leave the skin on. Eggs are also a protien source that have a good deal of fat.You should also make sure to eat your veggies. Drizzle butter or olive oil over your veggies to raise the fat levels. Avacado and cream cheese are also good things to raise fat. Sign up for an account at www.fitday.com to track your fat/carb/protien ratios. It also helps to keep track of carbs. Find out how much protien you need personally. The basic math formula is .6-.9 times your lean weight. I was lazy and used the body fat calculator under resources on the web page www.zoneperfect.com I later read protien power and used thier guidlines instead which was lower. As long as you are getting adiquet for body, you can go over your required amount somewhat and not have much problem as protien only has a small effect on blood sugar. Some find though that in induction they get around 300 or more grams of protien a day, and that often can stall them.

If I am eating high fat, isn't my body going to use that for energy before it starts on my fat stores? It isn't hard to eat a lot of energy from fat and I am afraid that I am getting enough to supply all my daily needs and therefore not burning the fat that is already on my hips.
Thanks for your help.

Your body is going to use anything you eat before it starts on your fat stores. That is the way digestion works! But the idea that eating fat--in and of itself--will somehow keep you from burning your bodyfat, is just low-fat dogma and it is not true. As long as you take in fewer calories than you expend, you will burn bodyfat to make up the shortfall in your energy requirements. It does not matter what those calories are made up of.

Now, that said, a lot of lowcarbers find the most efficient and comfortable weight loss from monitoring their protein/fat ratio as LadyBelle has described.

Emily

Its not as simple as fewer calories in then out equals weight loss. That doesn't bother to take insuluin into account at all. Many people on LC started out on low calorie diets, but found they didn't lose weight, or even gained some. It was the bodies insulin reaction, not the calories in of themselves. I'd highly recomend you see if your library has the Protien Power book, as it goes into the science of how insulin plays a part in weight, blood pressure, and other health issues.

Atkins does state that calories are important. However on a moderate protien low carb diet you can consume more and lose then on a high carb diet because it takes more energy to burn fat for energy then to burn gluclose. For most people if they eat when hungry and stop when satisfies, not stuffed feeling, they probably won't be getting to many calories. Some do have to watch it though. If it was as simple as calories in and out though, there would be no need for an LC diet. We could eat the same number of calories from just carbs and still be losing.

I recognize that this can be a hot topic in LC circles, but I'm really not trying to start a flame war. I'm just presenting my current thinking on the matter.



I've read that, and a few other things. Since 1999, I've read almost every bit of low-carb information I could get my hands on. While there is much scientific proof that a disordered insulin system wreaks havoc on the body, there is--as far as I am aware--not a single piece of weight-loss research proving that insulin resistance causes people to gain weight even when they are taking in fewer calories than their maintenance level. (There is evidence that IR causes fat loss to go more slowly than it does for non-IR individuals, though.) There is also no scientific basis AFAIK for the assertion that dietary fat is ever "flushed" from the body at any point in the metabolic process, barring some kind of severe endocrine disorder.

The following is from Atkins' own site, regarding a 1960 study which was one of the bases of the original DADR:

"Controlling carbohydrate consumption restricts caloric intake. At lower levels of carbohydrate consumption, appetite and cravings are reduced. On the low-carbohydrate diet, subjects in this study ate until they were full. Ultimately, they still took in fewer calories, which resulted in weight loss. As Yudkin pointed out, "as much as you like" means as much as a person wants to take, and not vast and unlimited amounts."

and again, from the Atkins site, in a 2003 review of the literature on keto diets:

"Among the published studies, participant weight loss while using low-carbohydrate diets was principally associated with decreased caloric intake and increased diet duration but not with reduced carbohydrate content."

Or IOW, the researchers believed that LC'ing made it easier to eat less calories, and to do it for longer.



A ketosis-based metabolism only "wastes" about 100 calories per day maximum, compared to normal metabolism. That would account for a little less than one extra pound of weight loss per month. However, here is a tantalizing piece of info from the Cleveland Clinic Journal, also available on the Atkins site:

"They [LC diets] may also result in partitioning of
nutrients away from fat storage and toward
accumulation of lean tissue. The few studies
that have assessed body composition on a
very-low-carbohydrate diet suggest a preferential
loss of fat mass and preservation of lean
body mass."

Now this could potentially account for some of the difference. If an LC diet is protein-sparing (and the state of starvation-induced ketosis has been shown to be protein-sparing, so it stands to reason that LC-induced ketosis would be also), then you would end up burning more calories on LC. Each pound of muscle preserved on LC, but lost on LF, could potentially burn 50 calories per day or thereabouts...thus leading to the situation where the maintenance calorie level is higher than it would be on a LF diet at the same weight...and therefore it is possible that you could eat more on LC, while still losing. But no matter what people are eating, it seems that the calorie level still has to be under maintenance for them to lose.

In experiments where food is controlled (i.e., the food is provided by the experimenters), calorie levels have been shown to be the primary factor in weight loss...diet composition is secondary. The genius of LC diets, IMO, is that they make it relatively EASY for insulin-resistant people to adhere to a weight-loss regimen. I know that for myself, I could NEVER have stuck to a low-fat diet this long. The longest I ever managed was about 3 weeks.

I would love to see research pitting low-fat and low-carb diets against each other in controlled situations with insulin-resistant populations. If the LF group gained weight, and the LC group lost on the same amount of calories, I would be the first one to sing loud hosannas. But so far no such thing has happened.

Emily

I wasn't aware there was a limit on the amount of protein you can eat...what are the fat/protein ratios supposed to be?