Question about Atkins Induction

[Anonymous]

I should probably be asking this somewhere more appropriate, but it doesn't hurt to try.

My girlfriend is in a bad way to lose some poundage quickly. I've steered her away from crash diets like HCG, because I know that once you come off of a starvation diet, all that happens is your body immediately stores back up everything you've lost if you're lucky, and adds ten more pounds if you're not. Atkins seemed like a reasonable alternative, as it relies on ketosis versus starving yourself.

Anyway, I'm the cook of the house, so I need to make sure to prepare her food properly. I'm used to cooking things that taste great, with little regard for caloric content and the like, so while I'm used to cooking, I'm not used to cooking in the manner that I'm now required.

I understand the whole idea of Ketosis, and as I understand it, 65% of her daily caloric intake should be coming from fats in order to properly kick-start ketosis. I can handle that.

I also know that during induction, you're supposed to limit yourself to 20 grams of net carbs daily, with about 15 of those coming from recommended vegetables, however, what I can't seem to get a clear answer on is WHY?

Is this ~really~ necessary, or is it simply designed to help make it easier for people to achieve that 65%? If I could double the carb intake while maintaining the 65% fat calorie ratio, would that be acceptable, or is the total net carbs really that important?

She loves veggies, and it'd be a lot easier on her if I could allow her to eat more of them.

[Anonymous]

The basic reason why, is that carbohydrates are the type of food that your body will use first. They get broken down into tryglycerides, and from there into glucose and glycogen. Those are the preferred fuels your body will use.

If it has those available, it will never get around to breaking into the fat cells and releasing ketones.

By taking the carb intake WAY WAY down, you're providing your body with no immediate sources of fuel for the approx 2000 calories the average woman burns in a day. So her body will attack the fat cells and convert them to fuel (ketones).

That's the basic reasoning behind it in a nutshell. Making more carbs available in her daily diet will prevent the transition from a glucose fueled metabolism into a ketone fueled metabolism.

[kheserthorpe]

Its slightly beyond that as I understand it.

Normally your body uses glucose as fuel. In the absence of glucose, muscles convert to using fat for energy. If you're not eating fat they use stored body fat. Yay, right?

But your nervous system cannot use fat for energy. So your body converts PROTEIN to ketones, which can be used by the nervous system. If you're not eating protein, your body rips the protein from muscle (nooo) but if you are, that's what supports ketosis.

[kheserthorpe]

You don't need fat to kick-start ketosis, you need an absence of carbohydrate.

The fat is irrelevant, in fact you can do faster ketogenic diets with low fat.

Its the low carbs that is key.

[kheserthorpe]

As an aside, I highly recommend Lyle Macdonald's books on low carb. He's not strongly for or against but covers really well how to use them and how they work.

[kheserthorpe]

As a side note, I've done weight loss where on most days I'd guess under 15% of calories were from fat, and < 5% from carbohydrate. The rest was protein.

[Asker]

I see. I wish I could find the site I was looking at that was making the claim that Atkins is a high-fat diet, not a high-protein one, but in further investigating, I've found a seperate, non-atkins related study that concludes that high protein is superior to high fat, in terms of success. Good to know.

[WoIIie]

link

Notice the quick results most fad diets have show for the first two months. When stretched out to a year, the results shrink dramatically and most participants backed out.

[kheserthorpe]

Most diets that involve calorie restriction work, to some extent.

The problem is that no matter what you do to lose weight, you need to change how you eat after or it'll come back. Honestly, I don't think that's 'the diet's fault. A weight loss diet is a weight loss diet. A weight maintenance diet is a weight maintenance diet. They don't need to be the same.

[Asker]

I have absolutely no intention of keeping her on Atkins for longer than a month or two at best. I personally don't think it's healthy to cut so many vegetables and fruits out of one's diet completely. I'll be just long enough for her to lose the weight that she wants, and then I'll move her to a more reasonable weight maintenance plan.

I'm just hoping that switching back from ketosis to a standard low-calorie diet doesn't have the same ill effect that switching from a crash diet would.

[kheserthorpe]

You can have unlimited fibrous vegetables and maintain ketosis. It's starchy vegetables and fruit you have to keep very low.

Honestly there are similar diets I'd recommend more highly. If you send me a message I could pass a book along in PDF form.

[WoIIie]

If you want statistics, people who went through with the Atkins diet lost an average of 4lbs/year.

The real question is, why bother with the Atkins diet? Just eat healthy, consume a little less, and move a lot more. You cannot get better results naturally than doing high intensity cardio on a caloric deficit.

[Asker]

Yeah, not buying those stats without a link to the study, that goes into detail about the participants. I've known ~several~ people personally who tried this diet, and none of them failed to lose significant amounts of weight in a short amount of time.

[WoIIie]

link

You can fap to the science all you want. The fact is, any of these fad diets will give you some quick results out of the gate. By the end if the year, you will see why speed isn't everything. Come back in 6 months and let me know how awesome the Atkins diet is, tit for tat. No cheating ever!

[aMuse]

Different people enter ketosis at different carbohydrate levels. They shoot for that because everyone will enter ketosis at that level. You can test your urine if you really want to fine your personal carb limit, but that's messy.