How to Know When to Return Carbs to Your Diet (Dr. Atkins' Advice)

 

It's been 9 weeks since I returned to a ketogenic level of carbs.

So far, that has worked nicely for me. 

Hunger is still down. I have no urges for afternoon snacking. Blood glucose has dropped to pre-diabetic levels. And pounds and inches have been slowly coming off.

I don't have lots of energy, like many ketogenic dieters report, but then low carb has never done that for me. I've always been extremely tired on Keto.

I also reacted badly to a high-fat, chicken-and-cauliflower casserole I made a couple of weeks ago. That got me thinking about maintenance on Keto and what maintenance will require of me once I get there.

Unlike Atkins, once you reach goal weight on Keto, you raise your fat intake to match your maintenance level of calories. Carbs stay just about as low on maintenance as they were during the weight-loss phases.

Maybe just a tad higher.  

What you do is close your caloric deficit with fat.

This is where the 75- to 80-percent fat comes in that is so often quoted within the low-carb community. It's what you eat on maintenance.

While I was recovering from that high-fat casserole, it dawned on me that there is no way I'll be able to handle eating 75- to 80-percent of my calories in fat. Now or in the future.

Without a gall bladder, I just can't.

So I've decided to make a mental shift – right now. Even though I'm extremely early in the game.

Instead of traveling the Keto path that the majority of the low-carb community is using these days, I've decided to switch to my own version of Old-School Atkins.

Right now.

This will allow me to bridge the gap in maintenance calories using a few extra carbs instead of fat.

How Do You Know When It's Time to Return Carbs to Your Diet?

My mindset is different this time around.

I returned to Keto to help my blood glucose get back to a safer level and wanted to make the dietary changes I was making permanent. Sort of like sliding into home base with my maintenance diet super close to what I was eating to drop the pounds. 

That way, I wouldn't have to make radical lifestyle changes once I reached goal weight.

This is why that high-fat ketogenic casserole had me so upset.

I don't want to adopt recipes, food ideas, and new traditions that I can't continue to use at maintenance on a regular basis. I want my weight-loss diet and my maintenance diet to be compatible, so it won't feel like I'm doing something different once I reach my weight-loss goals.

I just want to put the dietary changes in place right now, so maintenance will just be more of the same.

So I looked over my post on how to do Atkins 72, the original Atkins Diet, and noticed that I'd listed 5 tips that Dr. Atkins gave in his first book on how to know when it's time to return carbs to your diet. 

On Atkins 72, you do this reflection after only a single week. On Atkins 92 and Atkins 2002, you do this after two weeks.

“If you are answering yes to all of these questions, then you are ready for the second stage of your diet – what I have labeled the second level.” (Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution; page 145)

Since it's been over 9 weeks for me now, and I want to tailor my weight-loss diet to match what I'll be doing in maintenance, I decided to take a closer look at what Dr. Atkins recommended about returning carbs.

1. Are Your Ketostix Still Turning Purple?

From 1972 to 2002, using Ketostix to measure ketone concentration in the urine was a big deal.

Everyone doing low carb was using them.

Today, not so much.

We know that they cannot accurately tell you if you're in ketosis, nor if you're using body fat instead of dietary fat. However, at that time, seeing the sticks turn lavender was the best way to keep you motivated and on plan.

Many people use them for that reason, but they are not as popular as they were.

I don't use them anymore at all.

But then, I don't use a ketone blood meter either. I'm more concerned with what my blood sugar is doing than how many ketones I have backed up in my bloodstream.

Ketostix are designed to help diabetics test for ketoacidosis. Something that never happens unless you're a Type 1 Diabetic.

Low-carb dieters don't experience run-away ketones because the body will secrete insulin when your blood ketones get too high. The body's goal is to use those extra ketones for fuel until the excess ketones in your bloodstream come back down to a safe level.

Purple generally means you're dehydrated because the sticks measure ketone concentration and not an absolute number. Purple is highly concentrated and pink means you're well hydrated.

Any color on the stick other than tan means you're probably in ketosis. They don't have to be purple for the diet to work.

But keep in mind that the body doesn't consistently toss ketones into your urine. You can get a negative result on the sticks and still be in ketosis.

The body dumps ketones from time to time, once the kidneys get irritated with them, so the sticks can only tell you how concentrated the ketones are at the moment you're testing.

For further information, check out our Ketostix guide.

2. Are You Not-Hungry?

No hunger is the gold-standard for low-carb diets.

Out of all of the benefits you can receive from ketosis, no hunger and a lack of sugar cravings is what helps you to stay on plan. Most people cheat on their weight-loss diet because they are hungry or craving sweet treats.

For me, no-hunger has been so strong this time around that I've literally cut both my breakfast and lunch intake in half.

In the beginning, your cravings might escalate as the body tries to get you to shovel in the carbs. Especially, if the body figures out that you're not in a true famine situation.

But once your blood sugar stabilizes, and you switch to burning fatty acids for fuel, you'll have fewer urges and food distractions.

Hunger is often triggered by the speed at which your blood glucose level comes back down after eating. If blood sugar drops too fast, or gets too low, you'll feel hungry, regardless of how much you ate at your last meal or snack.

Stable blood sugar works to keep your hunger levels even and realistic.

Overeating carbs will drive your hunger and cravings up, so being not-hungry is a great way of telling if you're within your carbohydrate tolerance, or not.

Now, I'm not talking about being hungry before meals.

I'm talking about your appetite overall going down. You can't eat as much as you use to, so eating at a calorie deficit is easier and less painful.

3. Have You Stopped Snacking at Night?

A lack of appetite will cause your snacking habits to go down.

I don't have trouble getting through the afternoon without overeating carbs like I used to. I still snack at night on 2/3 cup of CarbSmart chocolate ice cream, or maybe some melon or diet gelatin, but that falls into the category of “what I miss the most.”

What I've noticed is that 2/3 cup of low-carb ice cream is more satisfying. I'm not trying to cram more and more ice cream into a small bowl and lie about the amount I'm eating, like I used to.

Notice that Dr. Atkins considered the urge to snack at night a sign of your blood glucose being out of whack.

In his professional opinion, overweight individuals generally have some form of hypoglycemia, which makes them hungry, so along with the no-hunger signal, he used to watch his patients' snacking habits.

4. Do You Have More Energy?

At Reddit, having more energy than before you started dieting is a typical sign of ketosis. It's just as prevalent as not being hungry. And while I've never experienced this up-kick in energy myself, it's one of the 5 things Dr. Atkins used to measure his patients' success.

5. Are You Losing Weight or Inches?

A majority of dieters tend to look at their weight-loss history more than any other stat. Mostly, because they don't understand the value of a tape measure or photo versus the scale. A tape measure or photo is more accurate because the scale measures more than just body fat.

Water fluctuations can be quite dramatic on Keto. Especially if you have a history of yo-yo dieting:

“In checking thousands of patients' measurements, we have found that a dramatic loss of inches is invariable on this diet. This is true even at times when temporarily no loss of pounds has occurred, so long as the patient has been true to the diet; this is due to the shrinking of fat cells that occurs as they are mobilized to supply the body's energy on the anticarbohydrate regime.” (Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution, page 147)

A stall is not a stall unless you've gone 6 weeks without dropping pounds or inches. So we're not talking about a lot of weight or inches being lost during the week. Just enough that you know you are not overeating carbs or calories.

This can be a bit trickier than it was when I did Atkins in 1975 and was turning the Ketostix dark purple. I was losing a ton of weight per week back then.

Today, the speed is much slower for me, so I can't necessarily up my carbs every single week using weight loss as a guide. It's probably more realistic for me to raise them once per month if everything else is okay.

How to Raise Your Carbs When Ready

In 1972, Dr. Atkins considered adding 5 to 8 full carbs a level. In 2002, he changed that to 5-net carbs per level. This is on top of the Atkins Induction Diet.

On Old-School Atkins, you eat the basic diet, without counting anything, what's generally referred to as Atkins Induction; then you counted the extra carbs you added daily, analyzing the results at the end of the week. 

He considered the basic diet to be your foundation, the carbs you normally eat; and the extra carbs for level 2 or higher to be what you used to dial in your preferred rate of fat loss.

“Just keep track of the grams of carbohydrate you're adding to the basic diet per day – keep them under eight – and take your choice. At the end of a week on the second level, check your progress. If you are still free of hunger, still losing, still “turning purple,” you're ready for the third level.” (Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution, page 148)

One thing to keep in mind is that Atkins didn't put vegetables on a pedestal like the modern-day Atkins Diet does. He used vegetables to keep his meals interesting.

“This is not the way other diets use vegetables because the low-calorie diets push vegetables to the hilt, to fool the stomach with bulk (at the expense of aggravating colitis or diverticulitis problems, for those who can't tolerate surplus roughage.)” (Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution, page 146)(D

Atkins preferred to use vegetables more cleverly. And didn't have a problem with you using other foods to make up your carb levels instead.

How Do You Feel? 

Just because your body can handle more carbs, when returned to your diet super slowly, that doesn't mean you need to eat them. First and foremost, Dr. Atkins asks you to ask yourself:

“How well do I feel? And how well suppressed is my appetite?”

Just because I have no gall bladder and need to exist on a lower fat, higher carb Atkins Diet to compensate, it doesn't mean a higher-carb lower-fat diet is right for everyone.

Nor does it mean that I need to eat to my full carbohydrate tolerance.

Measuring my blood glucose level by carbs is quite different from eating for weight loss. While I'm glad that the pounds and inches are coming back off, the ultimate marker for me is no-hunger and how I feel on a particular level of carbs.

That used to be 60 carbs a few years ago. But now? I won't know until I get there.

“This may not run constant through your life because, as I said before, when you lose weight your CCL may change – for better or worse.” (Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution, page 149)

This is definitely what I'm learning about myself this time around.