I have been on Atkins for almost 4 months. I'm so frustrated! I have been about the same weight now for the past 6 weeks or so. I checked the Ketostix yesterday, and was shocked to see I am still in Ketosis. I have been eating at Induction levels. I think part of the problem may have been that I was not exercising enough. The past few weeks I have really stepped up my exercise, and have actually gained weight. I'm strongly considering going on a sensible but not low carb diet. It would be cutting out white flour and sugar, but eating the things I love and miss: whole grains like real oatmeal, brown rice, beans, lots and lots of veggies, and not so much fat as I have been eating in Atkins. Don't get me wrong, I feel great, but I am not really getting any thinner.

Does anyone have any other suggestions for me?

Hi Sandylee!

I've been on this diet for one year three months now and have lost about 40lbs...but very very slowly and at times no loss for months. Nevertheless I'm sticking to it as it is the first time in my life I've ever been able to loose weight and not feel hungry.

You can bet your bottom dollar that if you go back to just a 'healthy' diet you'll put on the weight you've lost already.

Try all the things recommended for stalls. The following have helped me in the past:

Drink green tea - at least 4 times a day - it speeds up your metabolism.

Drink plenty of water and give up sweetened soft drinks.

Keep up the excercise (the weight you have gained is almost certainly muscle...and muscle burnd fat.)

Remember that being in ketosis just means you are burning fat...including dietary fat.

Being at the same weight for 6 weeks is nothing compared to a lifetime. I really think you should stick with it and see what happens.

Whatever I wish you well,

Robert

Sandy,

Many of us go for months sometimes without a loss in the scale. Have you been taking measurements all along?

Something you may want to take a look at is the Body-for-life workouts. I found with working out 6 times a week (3 lift days and 3 run days) I can actually handle more carbs. For breakfast on lift days I eat 4 oz of oatmeal. It makes a nice change but you do need to continue with an exercise program.

If you have stayed at induction levels this whole time your body has probably adapted to the low carb number. This is something we warn people about from the get go. Staying at induction levels for long periods of time leave you no where to go IF/WHEN your body becomes use to the low carb intake and stalls on the weight loss.

You may be at a point where you will need to bring up your carb level, increase exercise to include weight lifting to build up lean muscle tissue to help boost your metobolism.

In 18 months of Atkin's I have lost 51 pounds. That averages out to around 3 pounds a month. There are months I go without any movement on the scale but I know sooner or later it will move.

Good luck to you.

You might not be getting enough calories. You might be eating too much protein and not enough fat. These are things to tweak. Also, are you getting smaller? Sometimes after many low fat diets with not enough protein, out bodies take the extra protein on the first month or so of Atkins to recover from protein deficiency and rebuild starved muscles even when we are not exercising a lot. Muscle weighs more than fat and you can gain muscle at a higher or same rate as you are losing fat. That's why it's so important to take measurement or have fit pants handy.

One of the most impressive lessons of this to me are the articles in Let's Live magazine on health makeovers. Over a three month period, one of their dieters on Atkins, she was consistently and vigorously exercising three times a week, only lost 5 pounds! But she went down 4 dress sizes! During that same time she got off of two medications for high blood pressure and a drug for lowering cholesterol.

The health benefits from staying LC are enormous! Give Atkins time while you add exercise. If you haven't moved in another four weeks after adding exercise and maybe tweeking your calorie and protein/fat levels maybe this program isn't for you. But there are other LC programs that might fit you better.

How are you feeling, health and energy-wise? Are you taking a good multivitamin and supplements?

Sandylee,
From looking at your fitdays, I think you added back too many carbs and have stalled your weight loss. You are supposed to start at 20 and add back increments of 5 until you stop. If you stop when you are still trying to lose weight, you need to subtract back 5 until you start losing slowly again. The level of carbs you are at probably is too high for you and would work better in the maintenence phase.

Going on a much higher carb/low fat diet will not incent weight loss but will make it much worse and you will probably GAIN weight on a scheme like that because the higher your carb intake, the less chance you have of burning fat. Your calories and you ratios all look good in my opinion.

Sandy I just noticed something. You say that you are eating at induction levels (20 carbs a day) yet your fitday journal shows you are eating 4 to 5 times that amount.

Dana is correct, it looks like you have added back in too many carbs for your system. If you want to eat at that level then you probably need to increase that exercise program into lifting weights to build up muscle.

Thanks for the advice, Agonycat. A lot of what you say makes sense about working out. I have only been working out 3 days a week, and would like to do more like what you are doing; 6 days a week. Last July, I had gotten up to 185 pounds , gaining 25 pounds from quitting smoking. I got back down to where I started here, 166 pounds, by exercise alone.

I'm not sure if you are subtracting out the fiber, but I have been doing so. Subtracting fiber, my carbs are from 15g - 28g per day. I don't see where that is equal to four times 20 grams!!!!!

Oh, now I see what you are seeing. For example, if you look at October 11, I have 24g effective carbs. But if you look at the chart on the bottom, it says 71. That is calories from carbs, not grams of carbs. I see where the misunderstanding cones from! But I am not kidding when I say I am eating at Induction levels.

Sandy,

Maybe thats the problem, that its not reflecting your fiber grams. Because I am looking at your carb GRAMS going back to 10-4 and they range from 28 to 50, with the average being 35.4.

The public fitday journals do not show the dietary fiber.

I think your body is just "recomposing" itself from fat to more muscle. I bet you need to monitor your progress by how your clothes are fitting - or measuring - in addition to weighing. More muscle is good though... raises your metabolism (helping you to lose fat) and also muscle is smaller... so you get the positive effect of fitting smaller clothes. Lots of folks suffer from this kind of a prolonged halt in weightloss... and if you just keep doing the right things... it WILL eventually resolve itself. Keep up the good work.

Thanks, everybody, for the encouragement! That helps a lot. I was so frustrated this afternoon that I walked for an hour! Which isn't a bad thing, actually

My clothes are slightly looser than when I started low carbing, 12 pounds ago. I am in the same size clothes, and my measurements reflect 1" lost all around.

For supplements I take the Atkins Basic 3 vitamins.

Robert said to add green tea. I love tea. There is green tea in the vitamins I take, but I never thought about drinking it throughout the day, but hey, whatever works, I'll try.

I saw the Body for Life Workout books in the bookstore. They must be popular, because there were a lot of them there. The plan seems a little complicated to me.

Hi sandylee,

My name is Sandi Lee and I was born in Chicago -- so, when I first saw a post of yours, I was immediately drawn to it :-)

Now, you're facing a problem that I have experience with!
I'm now on low carb for diabetes -- likely caused by my years on low fat.

Despite what people say, most people CAN lose weight on a strict low fat diet (just like, most people can lose weight on low carb!). HOWEVER, there are caveats, which I'll get to if you can bear with me.

About 8-9 years ago -- with no health problems other than uterine fibroids -- I went from about 175 to 108 on the Ornish extremely low fat (avg about 10 grams a day) diet. I did this in 5 months, during which time I was also going to the gym 3-4 times a week.

Then I had surgery (hysterectomy, kept ovaries). The doc told me afterwards that I had a severe lack of collagen and my organs and tissues appeared extremely protein deficient.

Basically, I just got demoralized, went off the diet and just ate what I wanted. A few years later, back to about 160, I quit smoking (yay), then learned I was hypothyroid (TSH of 104) and diabetic -- not to mention going through menopause. Weight then pushing 180.

Because of the diabetes, went low carb for five months -- after losing only 7 pounds near the beginning, weight loss stopped, then started climbing, but blood glucose was doing much better. Thyroid still was underactive.

Reasoning that if I could lose weight, I'd also have good blood glucose control, I decided to go back to the low fat diet for a short while. It worked for weight loss, I got down to about 152. BUT, my BG soared into the mid-200s and I began spilling glucose into my urine.

That scared me big time, and I immediately went back to low carb. This was about 2 months ago. And of course, it was no better weight-wise, I even gained a couple of pounds, but my BG dropped dramatically -- to near normal numbers.

What to do????
Well, I got mad -- something had to work.
I remembered Dr. Stillman's Quick Weightloss Diet from the '60s and decided to try it -- it's stricter than Atkins' induction. Unbelievably, after a week, I went from 154 to 147. I was thrilled, but I knew I couldn't keep it up. Dairy is low carb's saving grace for me :-)

I added back dairy after that week, and a mere 4 days later -- back to 152.

So, next step was to look at the original Atkins Diet Revolution from 1972 where he limited dairy to certain amounts daily. I started that 3 days ago with the hope that by allowing at least a small amount of cream and cheese, I'd be able to stick to it.

So far, so good, and I'm down 2 pounds. Even if limiting dairy works, it may only be a temporary fix. As others mentioned, your body adapts. I may need to juggle things around when the next plateau hits, but, to me, the health benefits of low carb are nothing short of staggering.

I hope something in this long-winded account sparks an idea in you (and/or someone else) that helps. I wish you the best!

Sandi

Just want to clarify the "old" vs. "new" Atkins dairy recommendations. In the original version he allowed 4 ounces of "hard" cheese only -- no cream cheese, ricotta, or other soft cheeses.

He also only allowed 4 TEASPOONS of cream, whereas now he allows 2-3 TABLESPOONS (about twice as much).

The difference doesn't seem that great, but for some reason, it's helping me :-)

Wow, another Sandi Lee from Chicago!!! How cool is that!

I sat there with my mouth open reading what you wrote. So much of that rang true for me too. I have never read the original Atkins book, but maybe it's time I did. I have heard that in his original book you didn't subtract out the fiber from the carbs.

Like you, I am hypothyroid. But I am surprised that you couldn't lose weigt on the Atkins diet; but hey, if it gets your blood sugar to normal, that's a wonderful result.

I am going through a turning point with this now. It has been so frustrating that I feel like I am following the diet and not really getting anywhere. I haven't had a piece of bread or a potato or anything with sugar in it for over 3 months.

What I have decided is that I am going to give the Atkins diet one more month, but really stepping up the exercise too.

Hey to both Sandy (i) Lee's!

I am also hypothryroid and had gained 30 pounds after being put on thyroid medication (levoxyl). I really never had weight issues until the thyroid started playing out on me. I had tried the low fat/high exercise approach and only lost 4 pounds in 3 months. I started doing a lot of reading about hypothyroid and weight loss. It seems that a new study suggests that TSH needs to be between 1 and 2. That is what they are finding in populations with no thyroid issues. The "normal" ranges in lab values aren't really all that normal. Also, some of us don't convert the T4 to T3 correctly so that we are T3 deficient. T3 is the hormone that truly affects cellular metabolism.

So, I went armed with information to my doctor and told him I wanted to lower my TSH and talk about adding a T3 suppliment. He agreed to up my medication and suggested a low carb diet, but wanted to hold off on the T3 until we saw what happened with my weight. The combination of upping my meds and the low carb resulted in 8 pounds of weight loss in a month. I am still exercising (that is VITALLY important for hypothyroids!) and am slowly losing the excess poundage. The doctor told me that hypos don't process carbs like normal people-they go directly into fat storage. Mine went all to my butt and stomach. Gotta hate those butt carbs. They really ought to label those.

My cholesterol also dropped like a rock. I went from 211 to 148 in three weeks. My LDL also went from 137 to 87. Even more interestingly, my TSH is now TOO LOW! I had to reduce the medication.

Why don't you think about going to your doctor and discussing lowering your TSH or having your T3 levels checked? Apparently, my metabolism needed the boost. Even with the lowered TSH and the low carb WOE, the doc warned me I wouldn't lose weight at the same speed as other people and I probably would never get over 40-50 g of carbs a day.

Paleo