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| Get My 5 Best Tips for Making Your First 3 Weeks the Best They Can Be |
The first three weeks of Atkins are extremely important.
So important, that if you don't stay on top of what's going on, and don't arm yourself with the truth about low-carb diets, you're likely to bail before the end of the month. Especially, if you don't see enough progress on the scale to make the food deprivation worth it.
The initial stages of a low-carb diet is the time when you move into the state of ketosis.
During the first few days, you are depriving your body of glucose, draining your glycogen stores (the storage form of carbohydrates), and switching from a glucose-fueled metabolism to one that predominantly burns fats for fuel instead of sugar.
Once you enter the state of ketosis, hormonal imbalances, such as elevated insulin, unstable blood sugars, or not enough pancreatic beta cells to produce the amount of insulin you need, begin to correct themselves.
High blood pressure, cholesterol issues, and other health abnormalities take longer than three weeks to correct. And significant fat loss does too.
That's the cold, hard, truth.
Keto is designed to fix hormonal imbalances. It is not a magic pill. Ditching most of the carbs in a typical American diet produces some very specific physical changes that might be standing in the way of fat loss, but if you don't have:
- elevated insulin
- pre-diabetes
- diabetes
- or PCOS
There is no advantage to going Keto over counting calories or points unless your glucose metabolism is defective.
But if it is, then you are in for a pleasant surprise.
Ditching the carbs can have a tremendous effect on your ability to lose those excess pounds. However, fast weight loss isn't the norm. Fast weight loss is the exception, rather than the rule.
When it comes to Keto, there is far more to unlearn than there is to learn, so if you're still with me, this Keto Bootcamp post will walk you through five of my best survival tips to make sure that your first three weeks are the best they can be.
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Survival Tip #1: Fast Weight Loss Isn't the Norm
Let's get the number one misconception about Atkins out of the way first.
The idea behind restricting carbs is to get your body from predominantly burning glucose to being fat adapted, which simply means that the body prefers to oxidize fats over sugars.
This is where the surge in energy comes from that many people talk about.
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| Many people feel so much better on Keto that they don't mind the restrictions. |
Since you're switching to a different metabolic pathway, one that isn't defective, as insulin levels drop and the body starts using ketones to maintain the brain, your hunger goes down, energy goes up, and you gain a tremendous sense of well being.
While pleasant, these physical changes are no guarantee that you are going to drop a massive amount of weight during the first two weeks. And you most certainly are not going to lose weight every day.
Once you get past the first couple of weeks, weight loss is going to slow down to a normal pace because most of what you lose during the first 14 to 21 days is glycogen and water. The speed at which the initial weight comes off depends on:
- your hormonal condition prior to going low carb
- whether you are protein deficient and retaining water
- if you're salt sensitive and retaining water
- how many carbs you were already eating
- how muscular you are (how much glycogen is stored)
It can't.
The body can only access and mobilize a set amount of body fat per day. Once your glycogen is used up, and excess sodium and water are shed, you're left with traditional fat loss.
Sorry folks. That's real life.
There are ways to lose weight faster, but I have no clue where people are getting the idea that if you lose five pounds the first week, you're supposed to keep losing five pounds a week thereafter. That isn't realistic.
During the first 21 days, the body travels through a series of adaptions that eventually leads to a better hormonal environment -- one that's more likely to result in fat burning. However, this chemical change may or may not include a drop on the scale.
If it doesn't, that doesn't mean you're doing something wrong. It more likely means that you are either not insulin resistant, don't have the genetics for eating high fat, or you have a history of yo-yo dieting.
Survival Tip #2: Keto Dieting Isn't Fun and Games
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| To maintain your losses, you have to seriously make some permanent changes in your diet and exercise programs. |
Low-carb dieting isn't the fun and games that some of the weight-loss books make it out to be. It's not something that you can go onto or off of, without suffering some consequences. Ignoring the consequences won't make them go away.
To ensure that your ketogenic diet results stick with you, you'll have to get your mind and heart into the evolutionary process, as well as your body.
Typical dieting motivation will only take you so far.
You have to be dead-serious that this is the lifestyle you want to live. Otherwise, you'll give up when the going gets rough and find yourself back where you started from.
Unlike low-calorie diets, it's easier to regain the weight once you go back to eating carbs because most people insist on taking their high-fat habits back with them.
High-fat coupled with high-carbs is a recipe for disaster, especially if you have insulin resistance or diabetes.
Survival Tip #3: Don't Go Hungry. Eat Lots of Fatty Foods
If you're coming to Atkins from a low-fat diet, this will be extremely difficult to unlearn.
When you ditch the carbs, you have to either up the protein or fat to cover the calories you're removing.
If you're protein deficit already, you'll need to up both.
While you want to be in a caloric deficit during the weight-loss phase, so your body has to use some of your fat stores to make up the difference, you really don't want to have a huge deficit.
Not only will that make you extremely tired, since energy will be short, but as the body seeks to balance itself and begins to make adaptions toward that goal, if your calories are too low, you won't have anywhere to go once you reach equilibrium.
It's best to just lower your calories to the point where you're able to comfortably lose a pound or two a week, depending on what you weigh right now.
The smaller deficit will ensure that when you reach the dreaded plateau, and you will if you have more than just a few pounds to lose, you'll have space in your eating plan to lower your calories some more.
Plus, going hungry is one of the major reasons why weight-loss diets fail. Very few people can live the rest of their life hungry.
With Keto, you don't have to do that.
Just eat for the first month and worry about what the scale is doing once you adjust to the extremely different eating style.
You no longer have to shun the bacon to ditch the weight and you don't have to be stingy with the olive oil.
In fact, cream cheese is my new best friend.
I use it all the time.
It's not just for cheesecake anymore. When combined with a little real butter, it makes a great thickener and base for sauces.
While dietary fats is how you dial in your calorie deficit, you don't want to deprive yourself for at least the first month. Eat lots of fatty foods, so you aren't hungry and tempted to quit out of boredom or cravings for things you used to eat.
Survival Tip #4: Take Personal Responsibility for Your Choices
"Why am I not losing weight" is probably the number one question that I'm asked on a regular basis.
And it doesn't come from just newbies to low-carb diets.
Those who have lost a lot of weight before using Atkins or another ketogenic plan return to carbohydrate restriction, after weight regain, thinking that the weight is going to just fall off like it did before.
This is rarely the case -- due to the consequences and karma of returning to a heavy carb load. If you're insulin resistant and eating a huge amount of carbs on a daily basis, that imbalance is going to wreck your health and make your hormonal situation worse.
You have to be either extremely insulin sensitive or extremely active, no desk job, to be able to handle and deal with a huge amount of daily carbohydrate. This is because anything that overflows your glycogen stores will be stored as fat.
If this isn't the first time you've done low carb, you need to take some personal responsibility for having chosen to return to a higher-carb diet in the past.
Piling on the carbs when you're already insulin resistant is going make your insulin resistance worse, which means that the next time you try to do low carb, like now, it's going to take longer for the situation to reverse itself -- if it ever does.
Hopping on and off a low-carb diet won't end where you think it will.
At some point, the body will have undergone so many adaptions to dieting that Atkins just won't work anymore.
Short of drastically lowering your calorie intake and upping your activity, most likely to the point of hunger, the best you'll be able to hope for at that point is hormonal correction.
Fat loss won't be an option any more.
So don't play games with a low-carb diet. Take some personal responsibility and accountability and use it for the weight-loss tool it was designed for.
Survival Tip #5: Ditch the Fear
I'm not talking about respect. I'm talking about good, old-fashioned fear. Whether you tell people what you're doing, or not, you need to commit to the process 100 percent, no matter what other people say or do.
This means ditching the guilt trip or fear mongering that might come flying at you from family, close friends, or coworkers.
It also means you'll have to ignore what the media is saying because most of the time, they don't have a clue what they're talking about.
Media goals aren't about providing you with accurate information. The media is interested in ratings and advertising income, so take what you hear with a grain of salt.
Let your own personal experience be your guide when it comes to what is or isn't healthy to eat.
Most of the time, those complaining about what you're doing are chowing down on potato chips and cookies.
Where's the health in that?
People honestly don't eat whole grains.
LOOK at them.
People want quick, easy, and highly processed foods.
They are addicted to salt, sugar, and fat.
Watch what people put in their cart at the grocery store, and you'll learn that little lesson for yourself in no time at all.
Before I came back to restricted-carb living in 2007, I used to chow down on homemade white bread, cookies, pasta, rice, potatoes, and homemade pizza every single week. We ate very few vegetables, although hubby did enjoy fruit.
Yo-yo dieting isn't healthy and neither is cake and donuts, so evaluate who the information is coming from and then use your own experience and heart to decide what's best for you.
You Need an Eating Plan You can Live with Forever
This is the bottom line:
You need to discover or create an eating plan that you can live with forever, an eating plan that will allow you to weigh what you want to weigh and enjoy the degree of health you want to enjoy.
Anything less than that is a total lack of self-respect.
Anything less is going to ensure that your health condition deteriorates over the coming years.
Age doesn't make things better.
Putting it off until your blood glucose level is just shy of diabetes like mine was comes with a huge risk that the numbers won't come back down when you return to low-carb eating.
I happened to luck out, probably because I hadn't been eating that way for long and we caught it in time, but there is no guarantee that you'll be that lucky. Especially if you disappear from the low-carb community for several years before returning.
Look at your current routine and give it some honest, realistic thought:
Is what you're eating really going to take you where you want to go?
If not, then it's time to make some solid, permanent changes.
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