Hi everyone
I am looking for some advice for a friend who has been eating low carb for about 6 months, with minimal results. She has been following Dr. Atkins, and is very faithful - no cheating. She keeps her carb count to below 30 grams a day.
She lost about 10 pounds the first month and was encouraged by that. She has only lost 3-4 pounds in the following 5 months of being really faithful. She walks for 30 minutes everyday for exercise. Her carbs come from green vegetables and salads mostly. I am at a loss, as to what to advise her to do any differently.
Does anybody have any ideas about what might be going on with her Her goal is to lose about 50 pounds and she is trying hard to be patient.
We need ideas
Thanks

Hi Pat,

Nice of you to care for her.

Few things come to mind:

1. How does she know she has stalled? Lack of body fat changes, lack of measurement changes?

If she never took these measurements, she might be losing fat, gaining muscle without knowing, simply due to depending on the scale alone.

2. Is she taking any special medications?

3. Did she have a past of low-calorie dieting?

All the above can play a major part.

Wa'il

Can you find this out from her?

What are her stats?

Is she eating Atkins or any low-carb substitutes for high carb foods?

What about dairy, processed meats, nuts?

What is her water intake like?

Karen

I know what she is going through I have what I call stalls all the time. I don't ever cheat I have no more than 21g per day and have been doing this for 6 months. I have lost a total of 32 pounds and look at others and wonder why I'm going so slow.

There are lots of reasons why these stalls happen and your friend needs to reanalyze what she eats/drinks on a weekly basis. I'm not cheating when I make a LC cheesecake but I know it's going to slow my weightloss down for a week. If I don't drink enough water and I have more than 1 or 2 diet soda's during the week that's another thing that slows me down. None of this is cheating, its just things that slow my weightloss.

I don't think that its all food intake related, I do believe your body does need some time to readjust itself when you are losing weight.

Keep up the good support!

Shannon

Thanks for all the ideas. As for your questions, yes, my friend does eat low carb bars from Dr. Atkins, and she drinks diet drinks. I will mention these to her as possible concerns. She is also on very low doses of a medication that may cause her to retain weight, but she doesn't feel that she can give it up.
She used to drink lots of water, but I will check with her to see if she is keeping that up. She has recently started at a new and fairly high stress job, which I am sure makes things more difficult. In fact, she mentioned the other day that someone had brought a whole box of doughnuts into the coffee room and left them for anyone to help themselves. She resisted, but found it hard.
She does use nuts as a snack or filler, so I will also mention this to her.
She was not losing earlier, but did not feel stalled, because her clothes were fitting differently, and she felt that she was converting to muscle
She is not sure that this is continuing and is just curious as much as anything in terms of why she is not metabolizing her food as she would like to . She doesn't use any of the other Dr. Atkins "fake" food substitutes - is just really good about what she eats.
I will pass along your comments, and would be happy to have anymore suggestions.
Thanks

I just realized that I did not answer one of the questions. Yes, my friend has spent many years on and off low cal diets. She was a weight watcher for many years, would lose the weight, and as soon as she went off the diet, it would all load back on with a few addtional pounds. The old yo yo routine.
Does this impact how a low carb diet will work for her? In what way?
She is not entirely discouraged, because at least she has not put on any weight and she does recognize this as a way she can eat
for the rest of her life - she's happy about that.
I will pass on your ideas so far, and check back in a day or so.
Thanks again.

Just curious, what is Dr Platt's Metabolic solutions?
Thanks

Dr. Platt is a medical doctor in the Palm Springs area - he specializes in weight loss and hormonal balance. When I finally decided that I had to lose the extra weight that I had been carrying around for the past 15 years, I was holidaying in Palm Springs. His ad in the local newspaper caught my attention, as it was a metabolic answer to weight control, rather than just trying to go low cal (which I had been doing for 10 of the 15 years) or trying to reduce portions.
Anyway, when I got to see him, it turns out that it is a simple approach to low carb eating - I was very sceptical at first, but starting losing weight immediately, which made it easy for me to stick to it. I lost my weight in just over 3 months, and have kept it off for about 20 months now. I feel great and will never go back to eating the way I used to. I don't cheat at all - I have no desire to. I have increased my carbs to 50 - 60 grams a day, but have not had a single piece of bread, or potato or rice etc since I started.
Dr. Platt's diet is fairly well known in the Palm Springs area, where I happen to be (again) right now. In fact I was in his office last week delivering copies of my cookbook, and he advised me that he is currently writing a book with his version of a low carb diet. I am not sure when it will be published. I am sure that he hopes to have the kind of success that other low carb diet books have in the recent past.
I was in a large bookstore down here last week, and there were over 30 books in the low carb section of this store - with a big sign overhead so that customers could find the section easily - it was quite impressive.
Well I see to have wandered here quite a bit - I hope that I have answered your question.
Cheers

The result of long-term low-calorie and yo-yo dieting is muscle loss and metabolism slow-down.

Once you lose a lot-of muscle mass, it becomes extremely hard to lose further weight, as there's not much energy expenditure.

So, in addition to low-carbing, she might want to consider strength training to regain her muscle mass.

Wa'il

I noticed U said your friend eats usually 30 grams of carbs a day. It may be worth while for her to cut back to about 15 grams a day to kick start the weight loss again. She should also get her thyroid checked too.

Thanks for the ideas and suggestions. I will pass it all along to my friend to see if anything helps. This is a great place to get support - we all appreciate it
Cheers