When you have stalled your weight loss..

[Back2Back]

I have seen alot of threads on this topic lately, about ppl who have suddenly stopped losing weight. I have not seen anyone responding to these queries and mentioning their level of activity, or their caloric intake. How come no one seems to be talking about this? I had stalled also and did further research. I have been too a few fitness boards and the census is clear. If you take in more calories than your body burns, you will gain weight, if you take in less calories than you burn, you will lose weight. If you are taking the calories needed to maintain your weight (which is 12 x your weight) then you will not lose or gain. The other side of this is if you are trying to lose weight and are doing alot of muscle building exercise, than your body needs more calories and thus it will stall any weight loss if you are not eating enough.

This is my understanding.

So how come no one talks about this?

[higgies]

I don't think it's that we're avoiding this topic. What you stated is correct, but the focus of induction is not only to lose weight, but to retrain your eating habits, focus on doing it correctly, and reducing your carb levels. Caloric intake is not a focus of the induction period. Typically, not in all cases, induction causes people to eat within their appropriate limits of calories. Ketosis causes the appetite loss which will naturally bring down calorie intake levels. Eating enough calories can be a common problem, but by eating your legal foods, no more than every 6 ohours or so you should be close to your BMR. So it's probably just that we're not trying to focus on calories.

[Back2Back]

Yes I understand what you are stating, however, alot of folks have been on extended induction (like myself) and the weight loss has stalled. In this regard, I think that talking about calories and activity are important...no?

[higgies]

Sure. Although let's make sure we're really talking about a stall and not a hiccup or short-term hiatus in weight loss. A stall is an extended period of time (like 2 months, not 2 weeks) of no weight loss or losing inches. Many times, I experienced this as well, after the initial induction your body needs to adjust to the sudden loss and may just take a little bit to get going again. During this period though you might continue losing inches.

Activity is always important and a required part of this WOL. So you're right that we should also be focusing on that as well.

[not2late]

Originally Posted by Back2Back

Yes I understand what you are stating, however, alot of folks have been on extended induction (like myself) and the weight loss has stalled. In this regard, I think that talking about calories and activity are important...no?

If you are on extended Induction and your weight loss stops, it has very little to do with your calories, based upon what I've seen on this board. We've had people who are not metabolically resistant to weight loss (per the book) who have stayed on Induction with the hopes that they will experience a steady and fast weight loss. Eventually they hit a snag and they up their exercise, lower their carbs, up their fat, stay above their BMRs and they still don't lose weight.

Then they move to OWL and their weight loss picks up.

I think that can be explained by what Fred Pescatore, MD (who worked with Dr. Atkins during the 1990s) says (http://www.healthology.com/main/arti...content_id=917):

When the body is placed into ketosis, for example, for an extended period of time, metabolism becomes less efficient. Ketosis is what happens to your body when it is starving and your body begins to break down muscle protein. Your body will adapt and the ketosis becomes less effective at helping the body to lose weight. You can only fool Mother Nature for so long. Look for a diet program that is low in carbohydrate, encourages eating healthy carbohydrates, and one where you don't enter ketosis.

Before you get panicky about this. Dr. Pescatore thinks that you leave ketosis if you eat 25-30 total grams carb daily. That's not quite true, because many of us on OWL are in ketosis at 40 - 100 grams net carbs. You might not register on the ketostix, but the physical signs are present.

But Dr. Pescatore's take home point is this: your body adapts to functioning at "Induction level" carbs and you stop losing weight. That's why the folks with moderate to low metabolic resistance stop losing weight when they stay on Induction too long and experience weight loss again, when they move to OWL.

As Dr. Atkins wrote in the last sentence of Chapter 13

People with high metabolic resistance ca benefit from doing Induction longer than two weeks because it gives them time to correct the metabolic imbalances they may have developed over time.

And until everyone gets used to looking up their weight loss on Day 14 of Induction and checking it with the charts in Chapter 12, we will continue to have people falsely beleive they have a high resistance to weight loss and waste their time by unnecessarily staying on Induction longer than the minimum 2 weeks.

[Bob M]

Well I am one of those stuck people. If I have to start counting calories again then I have no use for atkins! I have been dead stuck for three weeks no loss no gain just flat out stuck. I posted last week (brick wall) people suggested I move up to owl so I moved up 5 starting last wed. No difference. I am seriosly considering getting off atkins and going back to low-fat low-calorie. Three weeks of atkins for absolutely nothing is not my idea of fun. Oh yeah lets not forget exercise! Its really hard to exercise when you have no energy. Atkins sayes you'll find all this energy well I have none! Since my body is surviving on the fat its burning only from the fat i ingest for three weeks now I have no strength for anything. I am a strong willed person and I am determined to loose this fat but I also have limits to my patience. I am so frusterated. I don't know what to do and by the way the days I have counted calories just to see I get from 1450 to 1850 well even by that I should be loosing weight.

[Lyssie]

People do talk about the calories and they *DO* talk about exercise. It's why there's an exercise challenge board. Obviously you cannot sit around and eat 5000 calories of butter and steak and think that you're going to lose weight.

Bob - If I remember correctly, you lost 20 pounds the first 4 weeks, and have been stalled for 3. You also lost 20 pounds before that. 40 pounds is a great deal of weight for a person to lose, 3 weeks isn't really a long time considering that your body readjusts. Also, I'm not really sure how much cardio you do since you said you rode a bike until your legs gave out, but that's not really specific as to how often this happens or how long that actually is. I also have not seen your current weight/goal weight/height/etc, or any posts of your menu. All of these things are factors.

[irlandes]

I definitely had a calorie problem, and just this morning posted that information on more than one thread. Twice, I realized I had a problem and just once each problem, figured out how many calories I was eating. I do this for a one time coarse diet adjustment. (I have a great capacity to do really stupid things.)

The first time I discovered I was eating nearly 4000 calories a day, it had to do with no-carb cream in large quantities.

The second time I hit a brick wall, and realized I had ALWAYS been eating around 2500 calories a day. I made a coarse adjustment of food eaten, from like 5 eggs for breakfast, to 2 eggs, and was not hungry, which indicated I had been eating much more than I needed to avoid hunger.

I agree that counting calories every day is doomed to failure. Boring! And, it is not necessary on Atkins, except to one-time making sure your version of the diet is in the correct range.

I don't even think you need to count carbs every day. Atkins is like when I learned electronics 40 years ago. We had to learn all the tricky electronics math, but only so we had the capacity to understand circuit explanations. Once we learned how the circuits worked, we didn't need that math anymore.

Once you learn carb basics, and learn roughly how much of each type food you can eat, you will learn to eat within the range of carbs you need. The only time you will need to count every carb is when you eat something new.

Ditto for calories. At least once, after you are on the diet long enough to sort of stablize, check your calories just once, and if it is reasonable, don't think again about calories.

Atkins is complex enough you don't need a lot more nonsense on your mind. If the ketone strips indicate you are burning fat UNLESS YOU ARE A NUMBERS PERSON don't be constantly fussing about calories, or even every single gram of carbs. Whether you take 18 0r 20 grams a day doesn't matter. If you are taking 90, that is a problem, but 90 v. 92 also doesn't matter.

[sadie147]

Bob have you tried posting a few days menu's in the 'review my menu' forum? It's a good idea to have someone take a look and see if there are any issues.

Also, after your initial losses, it's normal for your body to plateau. If you are using Atkins as a quick fix crash diet in order to quickly lose weight, you are doing it for the wrong reasons. You didn't put the weight on overnight, it will not come off overnight.

Three weeks of atkins for absolutely nothing is not my idea of fun.

If you are misreable on this woe, and not enjoying the foods you are eating which is what it sounds like above, rememberthis is a lifetime way of eating. Perhaps that you are correct and atkins is not for you? I have done low cal/low fat inthe past and it worked for me, but i was misreable and did not enjoy the foods i was eating. This is why Atkins works for me...I can live withthis way of eating, for life.

[Bob M]

My goal is between 170 and 180 I do not know for sure untill I get there and see. I am 5'11.5" tall I am 52 years old. I am and have been for three weeks at 200 pounds. I started at 242 and went to atkins at 220. Here is what I ate yesterday....2 cups decaf coffee, 2 scrambled eggs and 4 slices of oscar meyer natural uncured bacon. A good breakfast for sure. For lunch I had 2 grilled hambuger patties about 4 0z each. 2 cups of salad with 3 olives 1 oz of blue cheese crumbles, I use olive oil and red wine vinegar for salad dressing. I also had 3 really small valasic pickled hot peppers (8=1carb) for dinner I had 4 small slices of roast beef with gravy made from the drippings a beef boulion water and thick n thin. I had a cup of steamed fresh broccoli with cheese sauce made from 1/4 cup of cream, 2.4 oz of cheddar cheese, water and thick n thin. I ate about half of the cheese sauce. I take metamucil every day and I have for about 20 some years now under advice from my doctor for difficulties with hard stools that I have had forever. I take two sugar free doses of one teaspoon 1 morning and 1 evening each has 2g carbs. Oh yeah I almost forgot I had a cup of decaf tea with about a third of a packet of splenda.