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| On Atkins Induction and still craving your favorite foods? Here's a 5-Step Plan to overcome your cravings. |
Atkins Induction is designed to last for two weeks, but many people decide to lose weight a bit faster and stick with Phase 1 for longer than recommended.
The extra time you may spend on Induction is supported by Atkins.com, the people who purchased the rights to the Atkins name after Dr. Atkins died, but it isn't always the best choice for everyone.
There was a specific reason for that. Since the first week is designed to clear out the glycogen from your liver and muscles, so you can enter into the state of Nutritional Ketosis, it helps to curb your cravings for sugar and starches.
Dr. Atkins thought it best to return a few carbs to your diet right away. This may or may not be the best move for you.
It does make it easier to stick with the plan, and the slowness of adding carbs back on the Atkins Diet allows the body to stay in ketosis and keep burning body fat at a faster rate than other, more balanced, weight-loss diets.
One week is how long Induction was when I first tried to do Atkins myself. This first diet was set at biologically zero carbs, even though it actually contained about 10 grams of total carbohydrates a day. Biologically zero means that the body reacts to those 10 grams as if you hadn't eaten any carbs at all.
But this was Dr. Atkins opinion, so I don't know how accurate that is.
Since the diet was so drastically low in carbs, it took your cravings away very fast. But the 1972 Induction diet was extreme, and if you stay at that greatly reduced level of carbohydrate for an extended period, it can backfire on you.
The 1972 Atkins Induction was never intended to be the Atkins Diet itself. It was just an introduction to a ketogenic lifestyle.
Today, Induction lasts for two weeks and it contains more carbohydrates than Atkins 72 did. However, for some individuals, the higher vegetable intake on the current Atkins 20 plan can keep your cravings alive.
This is because 20-net carbs, where you subtract the fiber count of a food from its total carbohydrate content, is actually closer to 35 total carbs. Thirty-five carbs is more than Dr. Atkins used to start off with when he was personally experimenting on himself.
In this post, we're going to help you find ways to deal with any cravings that you might have. We'll explain where cravings come from biologically and share how you can get rid of them quickly if you're struggling to stay on Atkins Induction.
Where Do Cravings Come From?
Let's start off with biology.
Biologically, cravings are a result of the physical condition of the mind and heart. Your mental and emotional condition can set you up to experience cravings for carby foods.
We talk so much about following a low-carb diet's protocol, that it's easy to forget that our physical condition also plays a large role in whether or not a keto diet will be able to reverse food cravings and calm down excess hunger.
On an emotional level, we often feed our emotions with food, but you can also easily begin to crave certain types of foods just from restricting yourself.
If you tell yourself that you are on a diet and that the diet is uncomfortable and temporary, when you can't have your favorite foods anymore, you'll begin to crave those foods just because you're telling yourself that you're miserable without them.
This is a distorted way to think about dieting because going on a diet is the first step toward making your weight-loss goal.
The motivation behind going on a weight-loss diet is to change your current food habits and lifestyle permanently, rather than temporarily. How you were eating and living before you went keto is what got you into your current physical condition.
So understanding the cravings, where they come from and what you can do, is necessary to be able to exchange them for something better.
However, deprivation isn't the only thing that triggers cravings.
A false reaction in the reward center of the brain can also ignite cravings for sugary foods or high-carb dishes. As we've discussed before, manufacturers pay scientists to find what's called a food's BLISS POINT.
Bliss point is the spot where you're feeling rewarded after eating a certain food, but still not satisfied, so you crave it even more. This is done by dialing in the amount of salt, sugar, and fat in a food product to produce that reaction deliberately.
If a manufacturer can keep you at just beneath bliss point, you'll keep buying their product.
Bliss point keeps you eating processed foods instead of reaching for a more natural diet because few people actually crave meat and vegetables. You're more likely to want to eat chocolate, donuts, ice cream, and even salty snacks like chips and pretzels.
However, cravings also result from seeking pleasurable experiences, such as the sense of taste. If you eat a particular food because it tastes good, rather than from hunger, you're more likely to overeat. And this includes low-carb foods.
Trigger foods also affect your cravings. These are foods you tend to go unconscious on before you realize just how much you've eaten. Popcorn, mixed nuts, potato chips, pork rinds, and even cheese can fall into this category.
What Happens to Cravings When You Go Keto?
But what happens when you go low carb?
When you go keto, most people find their cravings and excess hunger go away almost instantly, just as soon as they get into the state of ketosis.
Keto experts think this is because dairy products, lots of meat, and the high-fat diet that keto provides will trigger the reward center in the brain and calm down your cravings. In a very real sense, keto food takes the place of other rewards you might seek after.
But this doesn't happen for everyone.
Some people don't lose their cravings after going low carb. This is because you might already have a problem with your reward center before you begin restricting carbs, especially if you were eating a diet high in processed foods before you started restricting your carbohydrate intake.
Your reward center might already be malfunctioning if you ate a lot of junk food before going on Induction. And in those few cases where this is true, keto can actually make your condition worse, so you need to be honest with yourself about the type of diet you were eating before.
Keto is the extreme of all low-carb diets. It's super low in carbs. Generally, you'll eat 30-net carbs, or less a day. Keto is also very high in dietary fats, although it doesn't have to be.
Since Atkins is a personalized approach to nutrition, it's up to you to decide how much meat and fat is appropriate for you.
A few people do need to stay at extreme ketogenic levels to keep the cravings under control, especially if you're very insulin resistant. But this type of super-low carbohydrate intake should be a personal restriction.
Everyone doesn't have to eat a ketogenic diet to ditch the weight. The amount of carbohydrate you need depends on your:
- metabolic condition
- current weight
- age and gender
- heredity
- ability to burn dietary fat for fuel
- likes and dislikes
- activity level
In fact, the Atkins Diet doesn't require you to stay at Induction level of carbs at all. It has you slowly return carbs to your diet, as the weeks go by, in such a way that you find your personal carbohydrate tolerance.
This allows your body to continue to carve off the pounds without having to go hungry. You simply dial in your carbohydrate intake to match your health condition, appetite, personal cravings, and activity level.
The more active you are, the more carbohydrates you can eat and still lose weight.
Try Adding More Carbs
Before I give you 5 strategies for coping with the cravings, you might want to try adding a few more carbs to your meals.
The average ketogenic diet is heavy on protein foods, low in vegetables, and moderate in fats. But if you're having trouble sticking to your diet, and always cheating, even on Atkins Induction, you might want to rethink what you've been doing.
It's not true that you can eat all the meat and fat you want and still lose the weight. It's also not true that you can eat a lot of meat and fat and still control your cravings.
Getting your cravings under control depends on how a ketogenic diet affects the neurotransmitters in your brain and how your body reacts to eating lots of protein foods. It also depends on your mental state. Mostly, how you feel about dieting itself.
Too much meat and fat can throw the neurotransmitters out of balance, but in protein-sensitive people, it can also affect your blood sugar. In some people, protein foods can cause a higher secretion of insulin, which will make it more difficult to lose the weight.
So, while most people will experience a sharp reduction in cravings and appetite by turning to a ketogenic diet, where they don't have to count calories or worry about exercise, other people will have to move to a more moderate-carb diet in order to control themselves and bump up their activity.
If you're having trouble controlling your appetite on a standard low-carb diet, you can try switching to a different low-carb plan. Not all low-carb programs are ketogenic and not all low-carb eating plans require you to drastically cut back on carbohydrates.
Some plans, like the one I use, are more moderate in intake and allow up to 120 carbs a day.
To use higher carb plans, you do have to watch your food intake and activity level, but in my opinion, it's a better trade off. I'd rather eat a few more carbs, feel good, and cut back on how much food I can eat, than gorge on meat and fat.
Other people who are severely insulin resistant might have to actually move to a zero-carb diet where they eat mostly meat or only a minor amount of vegetables.
One way to tell is to test yourself with cheese.
Cheese raises insulin by a significant amount. If just a little bit satisfies you, then you are probably not very insulin resistant. You might have a slight resistance, which is contributing to the overweight you're experiencing, but most likely will do better with a higher carb intake.
The wisest way to dial in your carbohydrate level is to let your appetite and cravings be your guide.
How to Get Rid of Cravings Quickly
If you're experiencing binge behaviors, you'll need to do something that will curb your appetite as quickly as possible.
You don't want to keep on eating. Overeating isn't healthy for anyone. But stopping the cravings quickly will require you to move to a severely restrictive diet until the cravings stop.
For most people, this means moving to a zero-carb diet for three or four days, and then going back to a normal Atkins Induction. On zero carb, you can get into ketosis in as little as 24 hours, but a slower approach can also get you into ketosis in less than three days.
Once you enter into the state of ketosis, if you're insulin resistant, your hunger and cravings for junk food will drop very fast. This allows you to eat at a calorie deficit easily and comfortably. In fact, most people don't have to count calories on a ketogenic diet.
You naturally eat less.
But if it doesn't happen, then you'll need to take a different approach to dieting. The following 5-step plan can help you overcome your cravings and get on top of your ketogenic food intake:
Step 1: Be More Aware of Your Urges
The first step is almost always awareness of what's going on. Without awareness, you can't make decent decisions that are in your own best interest. You need to understand what you're doing, so you can make the best choice for you.
In this case, this means becoming aware of your urges to eat.
- How often do the urges occur?
- When do your cravings occur?
- What are you doing just before you start craving carby foods?
- How do you feel while the urge is driving you to eat?
- What types of thoughts are running through your mind?
With awareness of how you are eating, you gain more information, and the extra information enables you to zero in on a personalized treatment plan for overcoming food cravings.
Step 2: Stop Blaming Carbs for Your Decision to Cheat
Typical of low-carb dieters is the practice of blaming carbohydrates for driving them to cheat. However, the truth is that with awareness of your eating patterns, your decision to give into the urge to cheat is totally yours. The carbs do not make you do it.
YOU DO.
Accept that the decision to cheat is due to your mental and emotional state. Take full responsibility for your decision to cheat, or not. We are totally responsible for how we respond to cravings for food.
Step 3: Write Down What's Going On
This is known as personal journaling, but it can be a huge help. When you write down:
- what you ate
- what you felt like while you ate the food
- what you felt like after you ate the food
- what was happening when you gave in
You'll be more likely to see certain patterns of behavior that will crop up again and again. Pattern really matters. You'll be able to see your particular trigger foods.
Mixed nuts are one of my own trigger foods. I absolutely can't have them in the house or I will eat them within only a few days. Hubby used to eat cashews, but recently, they popped up with a warning about potential gluten, so we no longer buy that kind. Don't have the same temptation with cashews as I had with mixed nuts, though.
Same goes for Cheetos.
I can't just curb my carbohydrate intake. I have tried, and came to the realization that it just doesn't work. I'm better off limiting myself to a small bag at a time, so when it's gone, there is no more to tempt me into overeating.
But triggers aren't just food.
Sometimes they can be certain emotional states like anger or boredom. They can be special people like family, where family gatherings always center on food. They can also be special events like holidays.
This is why writing it down can help you know when to expect the cravings, so you can come up with strategies to help you cope ahead of time.
Step 4: Get as Much Food Visibility Out of Your Life
Advertising is not your friend. It will keep you looking at food all day, so try to get as much food visibility out of your life as you can. This means:
- limit the number of cooking shows you watch
- limit the time you spend reading blogs
- try to keep food out of your mind
- make cooking not so special anymore
In its place, find non-food things to do. Instead of going out to eat all the time, do something active instead. Instead of thumbing through cook books or looking at pictures of food, try to do something that doesn't include food at all.
This will help you put your mind elsewhere.
Step 5: Cut Down on Stress
Stress can drive your cravings for salty foods, fatty foods, and even sugar through the roof.
This is because stress hormones are released. These stress hormones are designed to be used intermittently, but when they are constantly high, you'll have more energy than you can use. The excess energy makes you anxious and nervous because cortisol controls how the body utilizes fuel.
When cortisol is high, all fats and sources of energy in the bloodstream are immediately stored. Once stored, the body uses glycogen, the storage form of carbohydrate instead. This provides quick energy.
But if you don't have full glycogen stores, like you don't on a low-carb diet, then the body pulls the fat back out of your fat cells and burns that instead. This is what you want when you go low carb.
However, if you don't burn fat very well, like I don't, this can be extremely problematic. The body won't be able to utilize energy properly, so you'll start to carve sugary foods, and foods that high in carbs and fat.
Those who can't adapt to a high-fat diet need to keep your stress level down as much as possible to keep your cravings under control.
Back Door Approach
For some of us, the only option we have is to add more carbs.
While Induction limits you to 20-net carbs, or less, per day, you don't really have to complete Atkins Induction. Those doing the Atkins 40 plan start off with 40 carbs and do not ever go down to 20, or less, at all, so Atkins Induction is optional.
I also created a Back Door Approach to dieting that makes moving to low carb simple and easier, but it won't get rid of cravings because you just slightly cut back on the carbs you're already eating.
This is how I've managed to lose 50 pounds over the past couple of years. You move into a low-carb diet backwards. Instead of starting at a very low level of carbs, you trim the carbs a little at a time, until you find the right level for you.
My Own Experience with the Back Door Approach
Some of you who have been reading my posts over the years know that I backslid a few years back and had to start over. My body didn't like that at all. But it didn't like trying to move back to low carb either.
To overcome the extreme cravings I had, every time I tried to go back on Atkins Induction, I decided not to do a typical Induction.
Instead, I decided to slowly move into a low-carb diet -- backwards.
I started out by just moving from regular soda back to diet soda. That decision took 10 pounds off rather quickly, but once those 10 pounds were gone, the weight loss stopped cold.
By watching myself, I realized that I was making high-fat choices for dinner at night. The higher fat was replacing the calories that were missing from switching to diet soda, so the weight loss just stopped for me.
Once I realized that, I knew I had to do something different.
I started out by just focusing on breakfast. I ignored everything else and just worked on eating a low-carb breakfast. This wasn't so difficult, so it was the easiest place to start for me.
Once I got my cravings under control for breakfast, and could make it all the way to lunch without snacking, I then worked on lunch.
But that was way more difficult because the afternoon always got the better of me. So, I decided to just be patient with myself and I kept on trying and trying until the body was okay with a low-carb breakfast and lunch.
Since I can't eat very low carb, I just slightly altered dinner.
On the weekends, I limited my calories and just cut back on calories instead of eating a low-carb lunch. I ate about 350 calories for lunch on the weekends, so I could eat what hubby was eating too.
During this time, the weight started to come off very slowly. I lost about 2 or 3 pounds a month, but since it was very consistent, those 2 pounds added up to almost 40 pounds in a year. I had already lost a few pounds when I started doing this, so I don't know exactly how much I lost that year.
I was down 40 pounds before we moved to Texas.
This enabled me to get my cravings under control, as well as change my life for the better. I had more energy and felt a whole lot better. My right knee didn't bother me as much as it did before losing the weight.
And while I still have problems with my knee and need to lose about 30 more pounds, so I can sit on the floor or scrub out the shower without being in a lot of pain, it's not as bad as it was, so I'm very grateful for the amount of weight I've been able to lose so far.
Once I got that much figured out, I started to make more low-carb dinners than I was making before. But somehow, I let things slip away, and I started eating things I wasn't eating before.
My blood sugar went very wacky, even though I did manage to maintain the weight I'd lost.
Weight loss stalled.
But the odd thing was, that returning to Atkins Induction for several weeks before we moved into our new home, in order to get my blood sugar back under controlm did not help my weight at all.
I think this is because a ketogenic diet isn't the best diet for me. It contains too much meat and fat. So, today, I'm eating mostly low carb with a few occasional treats like a baked potato now and then or a cup of real ice cream.
These carby foods do not affect my appetite, and I account for them by watching my calorie intake.
My appetite is affected by severe stress and anxiety, so I use a lower carb diet to control that. If I restrict carbs to 120 or less, then stress no longer produces cravings like it did before.
In fact, I'm more satisfied with a couple of ounces of cheese in the afternoon than a huge meat-filled meal. My favorite lunch today is 2 ounces of cheese and a cup of low-carb yogurt.
I like my meat. I do like my meat. But I don't need near as much as I used to think I did to be satisfied. On some days, I don't eat meat until dinner. And yes, vegetarian low carb is a thing.
How much meat I eat depends on what I have for breakfast and lunch.
Find the Best Solution for You
The bottom line is that you have to find the best solution for you. I can't really tell you how to lose the weight because your body won't react to keto the same way mine does. My body doesn't like keto, but it does like low carb.
I feel best at 60 to 120 carbs a day, so that's what I'm eating now, and I'm cutting back on the portion size to make up for the extra carbs.
But if you're struggling with cravings, you might not be able to do that, so the best solution and the wisest way to do this is to fine-tune your carb intake to your cravings and activity level.
Cravings usually mean you're eating too many carbs, but that isn't always the case. Some people need fewer carbs, but others need more.
If you're insulin sensitive instead of resistant, you need extra carbs! Not less.
The bottom line:
Don't use low carb as an exact model to follow. Use it as the foundation from which to build a healthy diet and exercise plan that fits your personal tastes, desires, and goals.
Because only you can say what's best for you.
For additional strategies to help get your cravings under control, you can visit our prior post on cravings.
Great post. Thanks for sharing
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