How to Cope with Slow Weight Loss on Keto or Atkins

Anxious about the speed the pounds are coming off?
Keep Calm and Keto On

The anxiety that comes with false expectations about how quickly you can lose weight doing Keto only makes you miserable. Getting upset doesn't change what's happening.

All you can change is your perspective.

Several years ago, there was a member of the Atkins Support group who started at over 500 pounds. Through the help of the Atkins Diet, she managed to carve off 70 of those excess pounds before she gave up trying, and walked away.

She eventually came back to the low-carb lifestyle, but she was extremely depressed when she did. Losing 70 pounds had taken her a full year and she still had such a long way to go.

Her frustration reminded me of a special on cable television that hubby and I watched a few years ago.

It dealt with several people who were morbidly obese and talked about their problems and trials trying to get the weight off by using a low-calorie diet.

Most of the people showcased had failed to reach their weight-loss goal, mostly due to hunger, and partly because they thought they were strong enough to go it alone.

It was such a disturbing show . . .

I could really relate to both the Atkins Support Member, as well as the dieters on television.

I know exactly how they all felt.

At the time, I thought it was a serious injustice to hide the option of a low-carb diet from those struggling dieters.

As time went on, I eventually had to face the fact that just because you choose a low-carb diet, that doesn't mean you'll be able to drop the weight and stay thin for good.

Many people do not lose more than a pound of body fat per week, and some people lose quite a bit less.

For that reason, this post will share with you how much weight I actually lost during the very first 6 months on Atkins (in 2007), before I started tweaking it to be more like Keto, and let you in on the secrets that helped me put that slow weight loss into perspective.

I know it will help you, too.

How Much Weight I Lost in the First 6 Months on the Atkins Diet

In 2007, I still believed in Atkins Magic.

To me, the obvious answer to save these obese individuals from their personal misery was to put them on a low-carb diet. But no one was giving them that option on the show.

Even in the face of failure, the show hosts kept insisting that a low-calorie diet was the only way to go.

I felt so helpless because there was no way to share the information about low carb that they needed to know. All I could do was just sit there and feel their helplessness, sorrow, and desire to be something different from what they currently were.

I really understood the pressure they were under, the way their inner critic spoke to them, and how inferior they felt because the weight just wouldn't come off like it did for others.

In fact, both the Atkins Support woman and the women on television caused those same ugly feelings to come to the surface for me.

I had been feeling the same kind of frustration, due to my own slow weight loss, but I had been trying to bury it.

In my heart, I knew that low carb was the only chance I had, but I wasn't just a snail at losing the weight. The weight was coming off much slower than that.

I was dangerously close to doing something desperate.

Why?

Because after 6 months of following the Atkins Diet, I had only lost a total of 35 pounds!

Low carb was the only chance I had to redeem myself,
but it's hard to remember that when frustrated
by slow weight loss.

Those 35 pounds came to about 5 pounds a month, which included all of the water weight and glycogen you lose on Atkins Induction.

Today, after a lot of self-experimentation, I know that initial glycogen and water loss comes to about 8 pounds for me. This means that within those first 6 months, I'd only managed to carve off around 27 pounds of body fat, and some of that weight was probably muscle.

The Secret to Coping with Slow Weight Loss

It can be very overwhelming to look at the path in front of you when the end of that path is no where in sight.

And yet . . .

As I sat in front of my computer that morning, the partial success these women had, and the beauty of that partial success, caused me to visualize a 70-pound wall of butter that the woman on the Atkins Support List had lost!

I honestly don't know where that image came from, but that was one heck of a wall I saw!

Consider that it takes 108 sticks of butter to make up 27 pounds!!! That's a lot of body fat I used over those months.

4 sticks of butter make up 1 pound of body fat!
So how many sticks of butter have you lost already?

At that moment, I realized that we all have something to be proud of. No matter how small our past accomplishment has been, it is still forward movement.

We are progressing toward our target weight or size.

Even now, after having circled back around to almost what I weighed in 2007, but not quite, thank goodness, I have still managed to carve off 25 pounds this past year just from:

• eating less
• paying attention to what I'm putting in my mouth
• controlling my carb intake
• and eating only when I'm actually hungry

I know that sounds like a small accomplishment, especially when you compare it to what I was losing on my own version of the Atkins Diet, but that's still a 25-pound wall of butter.

As such, it deserves to be recognized, embraced, accepted, and celebrated for what it is:

SUCCESS!

Stay Focused on the Present

For those who are morbidly obese, the world can be a desolating and hopeless place.

But if we can just learn to keep our attention firmly focused on what we are currently doing to change that fact and not obsess about the future, which may or may not happen, the longing desire for a better life has a very good chance of happening.

Nothing is guaranteed, of course, but if you give up and go back to your old mindless eating habits, just because the weight is coming off slower than you hoped it would, then failure IS guaranteed.

Because eating like we ate before created what we were.

If that's what you want, then fine. Go at it. I'll support you every step of the way.

However, if that's NOT what you want, then it's time to do what's necessary to hit the target you're aiming for.

Unlike those poor souls on television, who were similar to ships without any sails, you have the blessing of low carb in your hands. Even if you have to tweak your diet by:

• eating less fat and calories
• eating more fat and less protein
• lowering your carbohydrate intake
• upping your carbs and lowering your fat
• giving up all sugar substitutes and desserts
• staying away from your trigger foods

Or any other tweak that's necessary to make it work for you, it can still be the solid foundation upon which you can build a healthy eating style that you can live with for the rest of your life.

As a responsible adult, the ball is in your court, which sets up the following questions:

What are you going to do with the truth? 

Are you going to whine about the length of time it has taken you to get this far, and waste the precious time you have been given to make something different of your self?

Or, are you going to go out and do whatever it takes to set your self free from the bondage of overweight and obesity?"

Today, I understand that there truly is NO ONE ELSE who can do the work required to experience the freedom of being in charge of your inner being.

There is NO low-carb magic and NO low-carb savior that will save you from being fatter than you want to be.

Losing weight requires you to set up an energy deficit, peculiar to you, so it is something you have to DO for your self.

Others can offer advice, tips, ideas, and potential solutions, but they cannot do it for you. You have to do those n=1 experiments for yourself and find your own sweet spot for losing.

So, are you IN or OUT?