Have you recently started Atkins Induction or some other
low-carb program? If so, your motivation and excitement level is probably high.
Although the drastic weight loss experienced at the beginning of a low-carb
diet comes from draining glycogen stores and the water necessary to process it,
seeing the numbers on the scale drop easily can keep you going forward with the
diet’s restrictions and demanding lifestyle changes.
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| The Drastic Weight Loss On Atkins Induction Can Scare the Body (Photo by Twenty Four Students) |
If you have the Atkins Induction Blues and are wondering why
you aren’t losing weight anymore, take heart. You might not be doing anything
wrong.
Why Am I Not Losing Weight?
Fast weight loss is what draws many people towards a
low-carb diet. They hear about the diet’s promises or listen to others who have
changed to this way of life and found success, and they want that for
themselves too. But if you don’t understand how your body works, the tricks it
uses to protect you can mentally work against what you’re trying to do.
When the body loses its glycogen stores and the large amount
of water needed to process those stored carbohydrates, it can see those
imbalances as life threatening. In reaction, it will slow down your metabolic
rate, start stuffing the water it still has left into your fat cells, and begin
screaming for sugar. It’s out of glucose and dehydrated, so even though it’s
using amino acids and body fat for its immediate needs, it interprets your
current situation as a life-threatening emergency.
Weight loss stops, because the
body is trying to conserve whatever resources it has.
On the surface, that can look like your low-carb diet has stopped working, but the body is simply going through the process of adapting
to the types of foods you’re eating now. It doesn’t realize that it isn’t starving.
It doesn’t understand that you are not in a true famine situation. It simply
looks at what’s happening – the missing glycogen and semi-dehydration that has
been ongoing for the past two to four weeks – and assumes you’re in trouble.
Low Carb Diets are Dehydrating
The degree of alarm the body goes into depends on your dieting
history, whether you’ve restricted carbohydrates before, and just how much
water you lost during Induction. The larger the losses, the more disturbed
you’re body will be, especially if you aren’t drinking enough to replace those
losses on a daily basis.
Restricting carbohydrates to Induction levels is
dehydrating, even if you’re drinking enough water. That’s why weight scales
designed to measure your hydration and fat levels are not accurate when
following a low-carb diet. To make up for this dehydration, the body starts to
retain a certain amount of water it thinks it needs. While drinking more water
can certainly improve the situation if you’re water deficient, drinking more
won’t help if your body is spooked.
Weight Loss Isn’t Fat Loss
The first thing to keep in mind is that if you’re in a
calorie deficiency and your insulin levels are normal, fat loss will continue
despite the numbers showing on the scale. Just because you’re not seeing weight
loss, that doesn’t mean your body isn’t burning fat. To turn amino acids into
glucose for the brain or blood sugar level, the liver uses fat to fuel that
process. Since ketones are a by-product of breaking down fat, you can’t be in Ketosis without using fats either. But those fats can come from your diet,
visceral fat, or body fat.
When the body stuffs water into your fat cells to protect
you, that reaction keeps your fat cells from shrinking. It also keeps you from
losing weight, and sometimes even inches, so if you’re new or fairly new to
low-carb eating, a lack of weight loss on the scale or inches on the tape
measure doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not burning body fat. You very well can
be because weight loss isn’t fat loss. Weight loss can be muscle, glycogen, or
water, as well as fat. And if your body is stuffing your fat cells with water,
you might not see any loss of inches either.
What Can You Do If You Aren’t Losing Weight?
If your body has gone into panic mode due to the tremendous
amount of weight loss you experienced on the first two weeks of Atkins
Induction, all you can do is wait it out. Your body won’t continue stuffing
your fat cells full of water forever. Eventually, it will begin to feel safe,
come to understand that you are not in physical danger, and begin to eliminate
the water. At that time, the scale will begin to reflect your true fat loss. For
many individuals, this period of adaption can take as long as 6 to 8 weeks, or
even more.
If you’re returning to a low-carb diet, or have gone
on-and-off many previous diets, the body can move into this same type of preservation
mode even without the drastic weight loss during Induction. That’s one of the
reasons why returning to an Induction level of carbs won’t necessarily get you
the same rate of weight loss it did before. The body will recognize what’s
going on sooner and will move into self-preservation quicker.
In addition, if yo-yo dieting has become a personal pattern,
the body will prepare for you to return to your old eating style by holding
onto the water and refusing to shrink your fat cells even longer than is
typical. While that doesn’t hold true for everyone who isn’t losing weight – you
might be doing something wrong if you haven’t read the book and have a clear
understanding of what a low-carb diet is – most of the time when a stall
follows a good initial weight loss, it isn’t really a stall at all.
If you've traveled past Atkins Induction but are still not losing weight, check out these 21 reasons why.
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