Are You Abusing Atkins Induction?

Can you actually abuse Atkins Induction?
Dr. Atkins says yes, you can!

Atkins Induction is often the first introduction that many people have to a low-carb ketogenic diet.

It jump-starts your weight-loss program by getting you into ketosis quickly. It can help if you’re experiencing a weight-loss plateau, or it can get you back on track if you’ve been stumbling around and eating too many carbs.

Induction is also useful if you’re in pre-maintenance or maintenance and you’ve slipped and fallen out of the wagon. Induction can give you a leg up, and help you regain control of your appetite, drop those few pounds you’ve regained, and help you get your life back on track.

But Atkins Induction can also be abused.

Do You Run Back to Induction Every Time You Stray?

I hear this all the time.

• You went to a party
• it was a holiday
• your birthday
• or a family gathering

You planned to stay on program, stick to meat and salad. You ate a snack before you left and had a strawberry cheesecake waiting in the refrigerator for dessert when you got home.

But something went wrong.

You kept looking at the dessert table. You had to sit there and watch your friends or family eat things not allowed on Phase 2 of the Atkins program, and before you could stop yourself, you suddenly found yourself face down in the chocolate cake.

Atkins Induction isn't a tool
to help you cheat on your diet.

“That’s no problem,” you say. “The weight gain is water weight. I’ll just go back to Induction, and everything will be fine.”

Well, maybe . . . but then, maybe not.  

Theoretically, yes, everything will be fine. You didn’t get fat because you ate a large piece of chocolate cake on your birthday. It takes more than 600 calories on one special occasion to deposit a pound of fat inside your fat cells.

But, if you’re using Atkins Induction as a place to run to every time you stray, a tool to help you cheat whenever you want to, it can begin reinforcing a dangerous pattern.

Our minds are pretty clever.

If you accept the idea that you can keep returning to Atkins Induction every time you want to justify eating something you shouldn’t, the mind will find more and more excuses for doing so.

Before you know it, you’ll be back at your old way of eating and weighing what you did before you started keto, and maybe even more.

In fact, in the 2002 version of his diet, Dr. Atkins clearly stated:

“For a minor infraction or even a day of cheating, there is no need to go back to Induction.”

Dr. Atkins didn’t approve of that type of behavior at all. This wasn't what Atkins Induction was designed for.

Sure, it’s important that you embrace your low-carb lifestyle as a way of life, pick your self up, and climb back into the low-carb wagon, but that doesn’t mean it’s healthy to zigzag back and forth between Induction and Phase 2.

Do You Start Induction on Monday, Then Cheat On Weekends?

This one is a little less common, but I do hear about it several times throughout the year. People have told me they love doing Atkins because they can cheat on the weekends, and then make up for it come Monday.

For some people, it works.

In fact, the more you weigh, the more you can eat and still lose weight every week because your maintenance calories will be high enough that your weekly average will still produce a deficit.

At 256-1/2 pounds, my maintenance calories were over 3,000 calories a day, even in my physically disabled condition. This many calories gave me a lot of room for carbs.

But Dr. Atkins had a different concern.

Yes, calories are important. Yes, they will eventually catch up to you if you continue eating the same amount of food at 160 pounds that you ate at 260 pounds.

But Dr. Atkins’ concern was something I have never heard low-carb dieters talk about. In fact, I have breezed right by it without seeing it – every time I’ve read Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution myself.

Since I’ve only recently noticed Dr. Atkins’ opinion about waffling between Induction and cheating, I want to call your attention to the following:

“It’s likely that your metabolism will adapt at a certain point – in a sense, developing a tolerance.”

This quote came from Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution published in 2002, the chapter on Lifetime Maintenance. It was his explanation for what’s called the One Golden Shot Theory.

I've heard it stated by dozens of people that this theory isn’t true. They don’t believe it. A low-carb diet designed by Dr. Atkins could never have that boomerang.

Yet, Dr. Atkins clearly warned us in his diet book that in his own clinical experience, the One Golden Shot Theory is true!

“People who repeatedly regain weight and go back to Induction sometimes find that they do not experience the dramatic and easy weight loss they initially enjoyed.”

In addition, he also felt that the body pays a price when you “dramatically switch back and forth repeatedly from a fat-burning to a glucose-burning metabolism.”

He called this behavior yo-yo dieting. And cautioned readers about returning to Induction on a regular basis. He even went so far as to say that if you believe that Induction will always work the same way for you:

“You may be in for a nasty surprise.”

Metabolic Defects Are Never Cured

One of the main reasons why Atkins Induction gets abused is because people mistakenly believe that keto will cure their metabolic defects. It is these metabolic defects, such as insulin resistance or hyperinsulinemia, which make a low-carb, or lower-carb, diet necessary if you want to achieve and maintain a healthy weight.

Except: keto isn’t magic.

It isn’t the ultimate in nutrition.

It’s not even necessarily a healthier way to eat than other weight-loss diets. None of that is true.

What is true:

If you follow a low-carb diet, or a primal or paleo diet, and you choose to incorporate nutrient-dense foods as part of that plan, you can correct the metabolic defects that are interfering with achieving a healthy weight.

However, correcting metabolic issues through diet doesn’t cure you anymore than going gluten free can cure me of celiac disease.

If you have metabolic syndrome and go back to your old eating habits, your pancreas will begin over-secreting insulin again. This will bring all of the symptoms and suffering you experienced before going keto roaring back.

Dr. Atkins Saw the Problem as Random Eating

Dr. Atkins’ purpose in writing his diet books was to help readers learn good eating habits and build those habits into their lifestyles. It wasn’t to provide you with a way to keep each of your feet planted inside two different worlds.

The problem, as Dr. Atkins saw it, was random eating. When you eat unconsciously, that’s when you get into trouble.

“If you want to be healthy and free of surplus body fat, then you cannot return to a perfectly random and careless pattern of eating,” he wrote.

This holds true for Atkins Phase 2 (Ongoing Weight Loss), as well as maintenance.

He gave readers the Induction program as a tool to kick-start your weight loss. To give you:

• the motivation you need to keep going
• a way to recover when life interfered
• a way out when you really get stuck. 

But he didn’t give it so you could run back into its arms every time you want an excuse to indulge.

This doesn’t mean you can never have a piece of chocolate cake, but consciously choosing to eat that cake doesn’t give you the right to use Atkins Induction to make up for it. This type of zigzagging is what Dr. Atkins called abusing his program.

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t go back to Induction when you need it," he wrote. "I’m simply saying don’t do it regularly, in the belief that it will always work the same way for you.”

Because it won't.

While I wouldn’t go so far as to agree with him that doing Atkins your own way is abusing the Atkins Nutritional Approach, the key to permanent weight loss always circles back around to permanent change.

Bouncing between Atkins Induction and whatever you want to do isn’t a permanent solution.

That type of behavior can really mess up your metabolism. The body can adapt to what you’re doing, and once it adapts, the only choice you have left is to do something else.