What to Expect if You Cheat On Your Low-Carb Diet

Cheating always comes with consequences.
Are you willing to pay the price?

Low carb works by coaxing the body into taking a different metabolic pathway, one that predominantly burns fatty acids for fuel instead of glucose. When you cheat, you interfere with that fat adaption process. 

Your success on Atkins or Keto is directly connected to how well you follow the program.

For times when you accidentally ate too many carbs, went on vacation, or just needed a diet break, here's what to expect from your body and the scale when you cheat on low carb.

I've been digging into the archives here at Kickin' Carb Clutter and came across this old blog post about the various consequences you can expect to experience if you cheat on your low-carb diet.

I don't really like the word cheat.

If low carb is truly your way of life, if you have actually committed to a low-carb lifestyle, there really isn't any cheating going on. You might have days where you eat more carbohydrates than you planned, but plans are like that.

No matter how structured or detailed your low-carb intentions are, resistance of some kind is going to rise up to oppose what you really want to do. 

If you're like most folks, the pleasure of the moment often supersedes your long-term target, and if that's the way you habitually live your life, eventually, there will be consequences to pay.

Success on any ketogenic plan is tightly connected to how well you follow the program. 

While that might sound obvious, it's much more difficult to pull off, so take a few minutes and think about that. Success isn't about setting goals or having lots of willpower to push through temptation.

Nope.

Success is a mindset you develop over time.

What is the Typical Mindset of a Low-Carb Dieter? 

I've been blogging professionally since 2007.

And throughout all of these years, the comments I read in any of the low-carb forums haven't changed much:

1. “I was soooo bad this past weekend. I went to a party, (a wedding reception, family gathering, picnic, or other event), and I just couldn't stand looking at the [fill in the blank with a food you're craving].”
2. “I couldn't stand watching my hubby (wife, kids, or friend) eat [fill in the blank], so I just had one tiny serving.”
3. “I've been craving [fill in your favorite carby food here] all week, so I just couldn't help myself. I had to eat it.”
4. “I caved into what my wife, (husband, or roommate) was cooking. I didn't want to hurt their feelings.”

After confessing their high-carb sin and announcing how the food they wanted to eat had victimized them, a typical low-carb dieter will struggle to understand why just one indiscretion or weak moment has affected the way they are now losing weight.

“Here's my menu,” they say. “What am I doing wrong?”

What's the Real Problem Here?

From a distance, it's easy to see that the problem isn't your current menu. The problem isn't your ability to understand what a low-carb diet is. You definitely get that.

Most of the menus posted in low-carb forums are right on target. Naturally, there are a few exceptions to that, so I'm just talking in general here.

For the most part, the so-called enemy that rises up to oppose what you're trying to do isn't the food.

The enemy is OURSELVES!
We think that low carb is a temporary
inconvenience that comes with no consequences.

The enemy is the ignorance of human nature that we all share.

It is human nature that convinces us a temporary diversion from the plan won't affect what happens next. 

“Just go back to low carbing,” we're told by helpful forum participants, “and everything will be fine and dandy.”

Well, it will, but: NOT without consequences.

What Happens After You Cheat on Your Low-Carb Diet?

In 2007, I didn't really know very much about low-carb diets, other than what I'd learned from the online communities in 1999. Plus, what I'd read in Dr. Atkins' original diet book.

The whole mindset of an average low-carb dieter back in 1999 was completely different from the mindset that I was confronted with in 2007. 

The differences were mind-blowing for me, but I've come to understand them a bit better, due to my personal interest in psychology.

The mindset I saw in 2007 really hasn't evolved all that much, except that the urge of low carbers to eat higher and higher amounts of dietary fat has severely increased over the years.

I found that mind-blowing as well.

However, I ran into some whistle-blowing stuff about food industry practices that shed quite a bit of light on what's going on here.

In 1999, we saw a lot of time-delay stuff.

Without a clear understanding of water fluctuations and the starvation response that kicks in when you go on a diet, that was the best way I knew to describe the phenomenon in 2007.

Scale weight would jump up about 1 to 3 days after you cheated, and it would take anywhere from 5 to 7 days after that increase in glycogen and water weight to fully recover. 

Sometimes, more.

For example, after my weird experience at Cracker Barrel in the Spring of 2007, it took literally – 6 weeks – before the scale started going down again. And that was after eating only two slices of sourdough bread.

Many people eat far more than an extra 25 to 35 carbs when they choose to eat something not on plan! 

My carbs for that entire day were probably in the range of 60 to 70 carbs because I thought that Cracker Barrel meal was only worth 10.

So what gives?

My guess is that since I had celiac disease, and didn't know it, the resulting inflammation and autoimmune response I got from eating 2 slices of sourdough wheat bread came with severe consequences that lasted for a whopping 6 weeks.

I was totally helpless to do anything about that.

Yesterday Affects Today

Your low-carb diet's forward movement is like a group of dominoes that are standing upright. One domino stands proudly next to another, and as long as you stick to the program, everything moves along fine.

When you cheat, however, it's like pushing the first domino over. From then on, each domino in the path falls into the domino standing behind it, and that momentum isn't something you can stop. 

There is nothing you can do until the last domino hits the ground.

Only then, can you begin to rebuild your weight-loss program by standing everything back up in its proper place again. And that takes TIME.

How to Catch Yourself Before You Cheat – Questions to Ask

If your decision to eat off plan isn't a conscious choice you made, you might want to try and catch yourself before you have to suffer the consequences.

If so, here are a few questions you can ask as you're moving through the urge to place temporary pleasure over your ultimate weight-loss success:

1. Is what you are about to put in your mouth worth setting your weight-loss efforts back by a week or two?

If so, then go ahead and eat it.

A low-carb diet is a lifestyle change, and part of a healthy mental state is to make conscious choices that fit in with our current emotional needs. Sometimes, that piece of birthday cake or a small popcorn at the movies is just what you need to move forward.

The trick is to understand the cost for eating off plan and be willing to pay that price without blaming your behavior on something or someone outside of yourself. 

Do, or don't do.

2. Is is worth getting sick over?

When you restrict carbohydrates, your body stops making the enzymes that are necessary to break down certain types of sugars and starches. 

Many people have severe indigestion when eating a boat load of carbs in a single meal or day. It takes 2 to 3 days for your body to start making those enzymes again, so cheating can make you very sick.

If you have celiac disease, and don't know it, or if you're gluten intolerant, reaching for wheat, barley, or rye-based foods will set off your immune system and cause your pre-low-carb, unnoticed symptoms to escalate.

The body will go into panic mode and the result can be:

• severe cramping
• diarrhea
• bloating
• gas
• vomiting

This doesn't happen to everyone, of course, but it happens enough times to make it a viable consideration before you decide to shove an extra-large piece of cake into your mouth.

It might be better to start with something very small or choose something that isn't wheat, barley, or rye-based for your first off-plan treat.

3. Is it worth starting all over from scratch?

If so, then eat up. Enjoy it, and then move back onto your chosen low-carb plan.

You didn't get fat by overeating at Thanksgiving or when on vacation. You got fat because of how you ate on a daily basis throughout the entire year.

If you decide that going off plan is
worth having to start over, then
own that choice and accept the consequences.

In 1999, the Atkins flu was a given. It was pretty much accepted as inevitable in 2007, as well.

Since we didn't know what was actually causing that phenomenon, many low carbers hypothesized (and continue to believe today) that it was due to some type of carbohydrate or sugar withdrawal.

Today, we know that the flu associated with starting a low-carb diet is a sign that your electrolytes are out of whack. It has nothing to do with carbohydrate withdrawal. 

It's caused from a sodium and potassium deficiency.

However, a massive cheat will result in refilling your glycogen stores completely, so you'll have to start all over from scratch. If you're following the Atkins plan, that doesn't mean you have to go on Induction again.

You're perfectly free to move into ketosis more slowly, which is how most low-carb plans are designed to do it.

Just know that once your glycogen stores are refilled, you will have to empty them again to get back into the state of ketosis where your appetite is more controllable.

Restarting is a very dangerous period of time, where a lot of low carbers give up and return to their old eating habits due to their inability to control their cravings.

Since you're basically starting over, it's best to not think about calories or what your weight is doing during the first few weeks. Eat to appetite until everything gets back to normal again.

That crazy ride could take a while.

What Can You DO After You Cheat?

No one is perfect.

Making the decision to not cheat isn't always an option.

I've been in plenty of situations like that, so I understand completely what you're going through.

Many people have asked me what they can do to cut down on the recovery time.

The truth?

The best that you can hope for is to get yourself back into ketosis as quickly as possible, so you don't have to fight your cravings when you are also having to cope with severe water fluctuations.

Take your carbs down
as low as you can
to recover faster.

Refilling your glycogen stores is not only going to cause you to gain weight from storing all of the excess carbs you ate, but your body is also going to store the water it needs to process them.

Scale weight can jump up dramatically during this period. It can also bounce up and down.

Your instinctive mind now knows that carbohydrates are available. It will assume that the famine we call dieting is over.

In consequence, it will prepare the body for your next cheat. It does that by stuffing water into your empty fat cells, so it doesn't have to shrink them.

Our instinct for survival is very strong. Instinct is how the human race has survived up to this point. Survival always takes precedence over what you want.

Survival techniques the body uses to keep you alive are not negotiable.

As long as you're eating at a calorie deficit, the instinctive mind will have to tap into your fat stores to supply the energy the body needs. However, until it figures out that it has no other option but to use some of its stored fat supplies, it will do everything it can to not do that.

Once you go off plan, getting back into that fluid forward motion of weight consistently coming off can be a waiting game. Complaining or demanding things be different than they are won't change the rules of the game.

While you can certainly implement a few tricks, such as going very low carb, zero carb, or fasting to get yourself back into ketosis, the trick is to relax about what your body is doing, so you don't send the brain any unrealistic emergency signals about what's going on.

The best technique is to just wait it out.

Weight loss isn't a sprint.

It's a marathon.