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| Want to know the SECRET to sticking to your low-carb diet? |
It never fails.
When January rolls around, each and every year, and sometimes the week just prior, the low-carb forums and egroups fill up quickly to overflowing with folks who are returning to the low-carb lifestyle.
Despite your good intentions and strong determination to eat low carb for the rest of your life, something causes you to stumble in your commitment to better health. Before you know what hit you, you slip back into your old eating habits and the pounds creep back on.
If this has happened a number of times, you might be asking yourself right about now if low-carb diets work.
It can sure feel like a losing battle if your journey to slimness has morphed into a continuous cycle of dieting, falling off the wagon, and then coming back.
Again and again.
Even if the detour was deliberate, such as a planned vacation or special night out, it's easy to lose sight of your ultimate goal, especially if you've discovered that weight loss isn't as easy as you expected it to be.
Consistency is an absolute requirement when it comes to eating the low carb way, due to the fact that you are using the alternative metabolic pathway. And it can be hard to embrace that kind of strictness.
For that reason, you might have gotten distracted in your efforts by an unforeseen accident or a sudden challenge in life blindsided your ambition to ditch the weight.
Maybe, a thought convinced you that sticking to low carb just wasn't possible under the circumstances, or you got frustrated because the pounds were not coming off as quickly as you thought they should.
The next thing you knew, you were 10 or 20 or even 50 pounds heavier and so frustrated with yourself that you decided to give it yet another try.
The question you need to ask yourself at this point isn't if low-carb diets work. The question is:
WHY do you believe reaching your goal weight by using low carb is possible?
Why is this year going to be different than any other?
If you came back with the attitude that:
Have you finally discovered the secret to keeping your New Year's promise to yourself?
Do you know HOW TO WIN THE WAR AGAINST FAT or are you just hoping and grasping at an ideal with no real direction to go in?
Low-carb diets are loaded with protein and fat. They ignore the pleas from professionals and government agencies to eat lots of whole grains and forbid almost all types of low-calorie fruits when you are still in weight-loss mode.
In fact, to most folks, low carb is almost sacrilegious.
Again and again.
Even if the detour was deliberate, such as a planned vacation or special night out, it's easy to lose sight of your ultimate goal, especially if you've discovered that weight loss isn't as easy as you expected it to be.
Consistency is an absolute requirement when it comes to eating the low carb way, due to the fact that you are using the alternative metabolic pathway. And it can be hard to embrace that kind of strictness.
For that reason, you might have gotten distracted in your efforts by an unforeseen accident or a sudden challenge in life blindsided your ambition to ditch the weight.
Maybe, a thought convinced you that sticking to low carb just wasn't possible under the circumstances, or you got frustrated because the pounds were not coming off as quickly as you thought they should.
The next thing you knew, you were 10 or 20 or even 50 pounds heavier and so frustrated with yourself that you decided to give it yet another try.
The question you need to ask yourself at this point isn't if low-carb diets work. The question is:
WHY do you believe reaching your goal weight by using low carb is possible?
Why is this year going to be different than any other?
If you came back with the attitude that:
- This time, you're sure you're going to succeed.
- This time you're going to make it.
Have you finally discovered the secret to keeping your New Year's promise to yourself?
Do you know HOW TO WIN THE WAR AGAINST FAT or are you just hoping and grasping at an ideal with no real direction to go in?
You Got to Face Reality
- Eating low carb is not easy!
- Eating low carb is hard!
In fact, to most folks, low carb is almost sacrilegious.
Those who enter into the low-carb world are deeply motivated to lose weight. Sure. You have to be to put up with all of the crap you put up with from the outside world.
Yet, all of those I-told-you-so taunts are not enough to keep you from putting the weight back on:
In many ways, I can relate to the problem of feeling closed in and horribly restricted enough to want to quit because my blood glucose problem just isn't correcting itself this time around. To date, I'm still eating at way below 20 carbs a day just to keep my blood sugar in a safe range.
Yet, all of those I-told-you-so taunts are not enough to keep you from putting the weight back on:
- “See, I told you: Low carb is not sustainable.”
- “A low-carb diet is dangerous.”
- “A low-carb way of life is boring.”
In many ways, I can relate to the problem of feeling closed in and horribly restricted enough to want to quit because my blood glucose problem just isn't correcting itself this time around. To date, I'm still eating at way below 20 carbs a day just to keep my blood sugar in a safe range.
I realize this is not low carb’s fault.
It’s mine.
If I had listened to Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution in the mid '70s and used Dr. Atkins’ advice in his original diet book to maintain the weight I had lost back then, I wouldn’t be where I am today.
But it’s hard for first-timers to believe that.
Is the One Golden Shot Theory True?
There is a lot of opinion going around concerning the One Golden Shot Theory.
Most low carbers don’t want to believe in it.
They can’t.
It would destroy their hope, and hope is essential if you're going to one day cross the finish line. Hope is the best weapon you have to use against the angry dragon that tells you that you are not good enough to win at weight loss.
However, I think it’s good to talk about it, rather than denying that the potential for low-carb failing exists because if you are new to low carb, you really need to understand the risk you are taking if you jump overboard and swim to shore one too many times.
A low-carb diet works.
It really does.
And it works exceptionally well for those who have never low carbed before.
I watched an uncle of mine go from being severely obese to normal weight the very first time he went low carb. He was able to easily maintain goal weight afterwards just by eating within reason.
He didn't have to count carbs and he didn't have to count calories. He simply put a normal amount of food on his plate and never went back for seconds.
In 1975, I lost all of my excess weight (about 40 pounds) within 2 months by using the original Atkins diet, but I didn’t understand how important learning to maintain and manage my weight was.
I was too caught up in vanity and pride to ever believe that maintenance was harder than losing the weight is.
It really does.
And it works exceptionally well for those who have never low carbed before.
I watched an uncle of mine go from being severely obese to normal weight the very first time he went low carb. He was able to easily maintain goal weight afterwards just by eating within reason.
He didn't have to count carbs and he didn't have to count calories. He simply put a normal amount of food on his plate and never went back for seconds.
In 1975, I lost all of my excess weight (about 40 pounds) within 2 months by using the original Atkins diet, but I didn’t understand how important learning to maintain and manage my weight was.
I was too caught up in vanity and pride to ever believe that maintenance was harder than losing the weight is.
This doesn’t mean that if this is your second or third attempt at a low-carb diet, you won’t do okay.
You most likely will.
Low carb works for second timers and third timers. But it will come off slower since your body already knows how many ketones to make, how to adapt to the carbohydrate restriction -- but it will still come off – provided your ability to burn fats for energy is still in good shape.
What threatens those returning to low carb over and over again is insulin resistance.
Each time you return to your old eating habits, the insulin resistance gets worse.
That's what I'm facing right now.
While the weight is still coming off this time, thank goodness, I'm not able to eat anywhere near the amount of carbs I could before.
What's the SECRET to Low-Carb Weight Loss?
A low-carb diet works for most people as written.
And as written is an important key to your success.
If you're depending on other people to tell you what Dr. Atkins meant by "Don't fear fat," then you might not do as well as others.
Making it all the way to goal weight requires you to think for yourself.
It requires you to put a low-carb diet above everything else in your life. And it requires your complete devotion to this unique way of eating and living.
To make low carb work, and work well, you need to make sticking with your current eating plan more valuable to you than that holiday cupcake or deep-chocolate brownie at your office luncheon.
You need to make your health a top priority in your life, far above chasing after pleasure and rewards. You'll also need to see the lack of value in eating something that will derail your forward progress.
Plus, you'll need a huge dash of patience.
A low-carb diet works if you want it to work.
It works if you do what is necessary to make your weight-loss goals happen.
It's not going to work if you consistently cheat and just tell yourself, "I only had a few Cheetos that the kids left behind or a couple of handfuls of popcorn at the movies."
Because that isn't devotion.
And it's not taking personal responsibility for your choices. It's not accepting the consequences for those choices.
This doesn't mean that you can't take a diet break and move to maintenance if you're having a rough stretch of challenges that make it impossible for you to make dietary choices that will allow the fat to come off.
In fact, that's the wisest solution when you find yourself in that situation.
But it does mean that you have to kick out the inner critic that says:
"You can't do this right now!"
That's a lie. You don't need to eat carbs. And:
You CAN do this!
To lose the weight and maintain the weight, you have to DO what's required to lose the weight.
You can't change the rules.
You can't hide your head in the sand and pretend that you didn't make the choices you did.
You have to make weight loss more important to you than any other thing in your life, but you also have to give the diet a good chance to work.
Low carb works by correcting hormonal imbalances and doing that isn't something that happens overnight.
- Decide to be successful.
- Decide to do this.
- Decide to make low carb a top priority.
If you keep jumping overboard, however, you never will!
Great post. I can relate to a lot of what you wrote!
ReplyDeleteInteresting post, I never thought that your body would already know how many ketones to create the second time you do the diet, I will really have to learn to maintain when i reach my target weight.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment, Anonymous.
ReplyDeleteLow carb recipes, the "trick" I've learned today, is to NEVER allow yourself to gain back more than 10 pounds or so. That goes for a break as well as maintenance. When I reach that limit, I always go back down to a dieting level of carbs and take it back off again.
The thing to remember though -- at the end of the dieting phase, you will put back on the glycogen and water you lost during the first week (adjusted for what your muscles and liver can currently hold at goal weight); so keep that in mind when you set your initial goal weight.
For example, at 180 pounds, my body held 8 pounds of glycogen and water. Today, it's only 5. So I've set my initial goal weight (the place where I'll stop dieting) at 5 pounds less than I want to weigh on a regular basis. Then, "expect" myself to gain that back when I transfer back to maintenance.
So, when I say set a 10 pound limit, I'm talking ABOVE the weight you put back on for glycogen and water. Dr. Atkins in his original diet book suggested 5. That would be a better figure to start lowering your carbs at, until you return to goal weight.