Setting a Realistic Weight Loss Goal

Setting a Realistic Weight Loss Goal

Low Carb Styles

No matter which low carb diet program you choose, one of the first things most dieters do is set a weight loss goal. Most of the time, this goal involves a number on the scale. Sometimes, that number is realistic, but most of the time it's not.


Weight charts are sometimes used by medical professionals to tell you exactly what you should weigh. Many dieters use them to help them make a weight loss goal. These numbers are supposed to take your height, gender and sometimes age under consideration. The general rule is that a 5-foot individual such as myself should weigh about 100 pounds. A man should weigh around 110. For every inch taller, you would add an additional 5 or 6 pounds. These charts were designed for life insurance companies, not dieters. Hence, the numbers reflect life expectancy for the average individual and sit on the low side of reality – especially since our food supply has changed drastically since then.

Measuring body mass index (BMI) is similar. BMI looks at your height and weight, and then it attempts to discern from those two measurements if you’re too heavy or healthy.

Scale Weight Doesn’t Consider Lean Body Mass

Neither of these two ways of measuring health considers your lean body mass (LBM). LBM consists of everything that is not fat, so it includes muscle, organs and body tissues such as your hair or skin. It even includes water, blood and other body fluids. When it comes to weight loss goals, what matters most is how much body fat you have. Since the scale doesn’t tell you how much of your weight is fat, weight is the least reliable measure of a healthy body composition.

There are weight loss scales that measure water, body fat percentage and weight, but they are not reliable when it comes to low carb dieting because severely restricting carbs keeps your glycogen depleted. Since several pounds of water were attached to your lost glycogen, maintaining depleted glycogen leaves you too dehydrated for these scales to be of any use. Dehydration gives you a wrong body fat percentage.

In my own case, the scale measures far too low – even when I’m not low carbing. I have more body fat then a tanita-like scale tells me I do. I’m in my late 50s and sedentary due to my health issues. Even though I’m large boned, it would still be highly unlikely that I’m carrying around 120 pounds of lean body mass, but that’s what those types of scales tell me.

Think Size Rather Than Pounds

The best way that I have found to set a weight loss goal is to think more in terms of size than weight in pounds. Size is a much better indicator of where you’re at, even though it is still not 100 percent reliable. You can actually be normal weight and carry too much body fat. That occurs more often among those who don’t eat adequate protein. For a low carber, arriving at goal weight with too large of a body fat percentage would be extremely rare. However, LBM will affect the final number on the scale by as much as 10 or even 20 pounds. There are valid reasons for that, but these reasons are often misunderstood.

Does Muscle Weigh More Than Fat?

One of the popular notions among the low carb crowd is that muscle weighs more than fat. In fact, many low carbers often use this fallacy to support weight loss stutters and stalls. If you aren’t losing weight on the scale as quickly as you think you should be, the common blame for that is you might be putting on muscle. The reason given is that muscle weighs more than fat.

If you take a pound of muscle tissue and place it on a scale, and then you take a pound of body fat and place it on another scale, both will weigh exactly the same amount. A pound of one thing is always equal to a pound of another.

What you’ll discover, is that muscle tissue is denser than fat. It will be smaller in volume. Body fat takes up more room than muscle tissue does, so as you lose weight following a low carb diet, you will fit into a smaller size when compared to the average individual that is at that same weight. For example, when I reached 160 pounds after following the old weight watchers’ exchange program, I fit into a size 14. When I reached 160 pounds after doing hHCG, I wore a size 12, so many people who find their last 10 pounds to be extremely difficult are actually at a healthy weight already. The number they wanted to see on the scale is unrealistic for them.

Truth About Gaining Lean Muscle Mass

Along with the belief that muscle and fat weigh the same is the belief that putting on muscle mass is relatively easy if you just exercise. For those new to weight-bearing exercises, that’s true. Sedentary beginners do tend to put on more muscle mass initially than those who have been exercising for awhile. Beginners can put on muscle weight at the same time they are losing body fat. They will also lose more body fat anyways because they have so much of it. When that happens, less weight will be lost on the scale because the body is either adding to its muscle reserves, or it is using less of what you already have to repair other damaged body tissues.

If you are very overweight or obese, you will have more muscle and connective tissue to support that muscle because during weight gain, some proportion is lean body mass. You don’t just gain fat because it takes more strength to haul around your fat stores. That’s why many medical authorities believe some LBM loss is acceptable in obese individuals because the muscle mass was in excess of what is needed for an average person of healthy weight.

If you are not new to exercise, then you won’t gain LBM while dieting. That takes a specific weight gain regimen. What you’re doing instead is convincing the body that it needs to hang on to your current level of muscle mass because you need it. That’s also what’s happening when you cross the threshold between beginner and average exerciser. More body fat losses than lean tissue can result in those who exercise. The body won’t get rid of what it believes it needs. It will choose to adapt another way. What you’re left with is a higher number on the scale, but a smaller size.

Realistic Weight Loss Goals

So what’s realistic? The size you choose to stop at has got to be a size that you can maintain without a struggle. That’s the number one lesson I’ve learned about myself over the past year. If you have to spend the rest of your life hungry to maintain a smaller size, it probably isn’t going to happen. If you’ve been overweight or obese for any length of time, the body is hardwired to return to that level; it will fight against you to get back there.

For me, I thought a size 7 would be a good number. About 125 to 135 pounds is the goal I set for myself. That’s quite a bit higher than what weight charts tells me I should weigh. I’m not a young chicken, and with 160 pounds placing me at size 12, size 7 initially appeared to be realistic. I’m not so sure that’s true anymore.

When I first started reacting to the hidden corn in my diet, half the weight I’d lost while doing hHCG last year came back fairly quickly. Since then, the next-to-impossible reality of finding all of the hidden sources of corn in my current diet and replacing them with safer options has undone the rest of it. Today, I’m a size 14 again. It’s like hHCG never happened for me.

Granted, some of that weight gain has occurred because I can no longer use sugar substitutes. Some of it has come because a strict meat and vegetable diet such as Atkins’ recommends results in excessive vertigo. That means I’ll have to find another way, but at the moment, I have no clue what that other way will be.

A couple of years ago, I started another blog to separate low carb from my moderate carb research and experiments. It’s called Life After Low Carb, but I’ve been too sick since then to keep up with it. At that time, I didn’t know that dairy products made from cow’s cream and corn are major issues for me.

Now that I do, I have reclaimed a small portion of my health. It’s a catch-22 situation, though, but one I’ve come to accept – at least temporarily – until I figure out where to go next. That journey will not be recorded here. I want to keep this blog tightly focused on low carb dieting because I know that for most individuals, with only a few tweaks, it works well. Plus, the goal of this blog is to help as many folks as I can reach a healthy weight by following some type of a low carb diet.

Moderate carbs doesn’t fit into that mold, but for me, that’s a realistic weight loss goal.

Weight Loss, Low Carb Diets and Sustainability

Weight Loss, Low Carb Diets and Sustainability

Low Carb Diet Questions??

(This is part 8 of a multi-part series on How to Tweak a Low Carb Diet. It explains the path I have traveled in my weight loss journey so far. If you didn’t read part 1, you can do so by clicking on the how-to link. Part 1 also contains links to the rest of the series.)

The low carb road I have traveled towards thinness has been long and rugged. Many times along the way, I’ve been tempted to give up. Looking back now, I’ve made little progress in my weight loss attempts since I left my version of Kimkins behind. That’s the cold, hard truth for me. By following a variety of low carb diets, I’ve learned a lot about myself. My health has improved because I was able to discover many of the food categories I need to avoid (gluten, cow’s dairy and corn) but I am no closer to my weight loss goal than I was then.

This morning, I weighed in at 173 pounds, and all I could do was sigh. While that makes my before and after pictures still accurate, that glorious one-hundred pound marker I had at one time achieved was, unfortunately, not sustainable. I’ve never talked about how I managed to carve off those extra pounds because I did it with the help of hHCG drops at a calorie level I would never advocate on this blog.

Like all of the other low carb diets I’ve been involved in, I did not follow Dr. Simeon’s original protocol. Although low in carbs, it was far too low in protein, and after only two days, I felt absolutely terrible! So I tweaked it by dropping the fruit (except for strawberries when they were available in my area), doubling the protein, using mostly turkey breast, and increasing my variety of vegetables to match what was allowed on Lyle McDonald’s plan.

Even so, the 12-week experience was so traumatic for me that one diet round was all I could stand. I have never been able to talk myself into doing it again. I am an extremely inactive person due to the vertigo and ataxia, and I cannot imagine what it would be like to attempt that strict of a diet if you were working outside of the home or had to take care of little children. It just totally blows my mind!

The biggest problem for me in regards to sustainability has not been the calorie level I’ve used while dieting. It’s been my food sensitivities and the calorie level needed to sustain my new maintenance level. Food allergies and intolerances keep the intestines inflamed, and that causes all sorts of strange body reactions.

Unfortunately, when I started reacting to corn, my weight loss suddenly became unsustainable. Part of that has to do with an increase in appetite that occurs when you come in contact with an allergen, but I also believe that your metabolism slows down freeing up body resources needed to fight the perceived invader. The result? I’ve regained almost all of the weight I lost while using hHCG.

Now, when I reached about 165 pounds, I started to panic. It felt like I was losing ground, and I didn’t want to look at my hHCG experience as a waste. So what did I do? I joined Weight Watchers online out of a knee-jerk reaction to protect myself. I honestly didn’t know what else to do. I knew I couldn’t return to Atkins’ Induction. I knew that a very low carb diet would mess up my metabolism again. (I have a theory about that, which I’ll be doing a post on soon.)

So I did the next best thing: I turned to simple calorie control.

But I didn’t get very far before I realized that I was putting out a ton of cash for an extremely low fat diet plan that was creatively designed to hide the fact that all you are actually doing is counting calories. Today's program is nothing like the old Weight Watchers' exchange program at all.

Today, Weight Watchers has you keep track of points, and they claim that their new diet formula is not connected to calories. They claim that these points come from a formula that only takes fiber, protein, carbohydrates and fats into account. You can see that in their old formula that’s easily available online, but most of us already know that calories are easily determined if you know the grams of protein, fiber, carbohydrates and fat of any particular food. Protein and carbohydrates have four calories per gram, fiber has one or two, and dietary fats have nine.

It would be as easy as heck for their computer program to know exactly how many calories you’re eating. Plus, I was also plugging everything I ate into Fitday as well as their online program, and my calorie count for the day was fairly consistent: 1200 to 1300. I canceled my subscription because I realized that if I wanted to count calories, I could do that myself for free. I didn’t need to count fancy points.

At the moment, my weight loss road has come to a halt because I’ve been fighting to find some type of stabilization in my life. I’ve been trying to figure out all of the places where corn hides, what safe brands are, and what I can and cannot eat. Throughout this process, I’ve come to the shocking realization that a typical low carb diet is loaded with corn and corn derivatives.

Corn hides in almost everything, especially in the way that meat is processed and preserved. It hides in the waxes that coat fresh vegetables such as cucumbers, tomatoes and bell peppers. It hides in the gas that’s used on avocados, and in the way that eggs are washed and sometimes coated. It’s found in almost all cheeses, butter and other dairy products. Heck, it’s even used to make distilled vinegar and can be found in refined oils as a de-foamer, which makes mayonnaise also off limits. Citric acid and maltodextrin are generally made from corn (but not always) and can be found in catsup, canned tomatoes and most sugar substitutes, especially sugar alcohols such as erithritol or sorbitol.

To be intolerant of corn is basically a nightmare. So here I sit, not knowing where to turn to next. But one thing I do know is that I'm not so sure I can do what it would take to maintain 125 pounds. Most of the low carbers who have reached goal weight maintain that weight by eating very few calories. Of those I've investigated previously, their calorie count is somewhere between 1,000 and 1,200 calories. That's maintenance!

So, I've been thinking about that a lot over the past two weeks. Struggling with that actually. Because if I can't maintain 160 pounds at a size 12, maybe I should just call it quits and be content with my current size 14.

Part 9: Personalize Your Low Carb Diet with Atkins 72

What I Learned From Diet Breaks, Free Meals and Refeeds

What I Learned From Diet Breaks, Free Meals and Refeeds

(This is part 7 of a multi-part series on How to Tweak a Low Carb Diet. It explains the path I have traveled in my weight loss journey so far. If you didn’t read part 1, you can do so by clicking on the how-to link. Part 1 also includes links to the rest of the series.)

My diet break obviously refilled my glycogen stores, since I was eating more carbohydrates, but that wasn’t a surprise. I was okay with the eight-pound weight regain because everything happened exactly as Lyle McDonald said it would. Although each of us have the potential to hold different amounts of glycogen in our liver and muscles, there was no reason to believe those eight pounds were fat.

I was used to inputting everything I ate into Fitday, and that didn’t stop during my break, so it was easy to keep tabs on my daily calorie count. That helped to keep me zeroed into maintenance. Overall, my complete diet break went well, except that I took my husband’s suggestion and enjoyed a full month off from dieting that December rather than the two weeks I had originally planned.

What I learned during that time was that as long as I didn’t go over my maintenance level of calories – about 2300 calories per day to maintain 180 pounds – once my glycogen stores refilled, my weight stayed stable. I did not gain back my weight, even though I was not following a low carb protocol. Granted, this was only for a short period, one month, but I saw no reason why a lengthier diet break would have made a difference as far as weight regain. I was learning quickly that the bodybuilding community knew what they were talking about.

However, I was hesitant when it came to consistent free meals and refeeds. That went totally against low carb theory, but I wasn’t the only one at Low Carb Friends who was doing the Rapid Fat Loss Diet. There were several of us experimenting with those principles. I found that particularly helpful because as we each weighed ourselves daily and posted those numbers, we could see the water weight fluctuations that occurred from free meals and refeeds and how those fluctuations affected us similarly.

The diet was pretty much what I had done before: very lean meats, protein shakes and veggies. It did have some major differences though. Protein intake depended on the amount of lean body mass you have and the type of activity (aerobic vs weight lifting) you planned to do. Generally, for the average non-bodybuilder low carber, protein needs are about 1 gram per pound of lean body mass. That would place my protein consumption at around 100 grams of protein per day.

Bodybuilders generally use 1-1/2 grams of protein per pound of lean muscle mass. I was doing a small amount of weight lifting around that time, in addition to about 20 minutes of aerobics, and wanted to error on the side of caution – so I upped my protein to 120 grams. I took six extra-strength fish oil capsules per day for essential fatty acids and ate two servings of low-fat cottage cheese. One in my protein shake, and one just before going to bed.

I was also eating more calories and carbohydrates during this period than I was on my modified Kimkins plan, and more than most of the other women at Low Carb Friends were eating. I ate around 1200 calories and 35 grams of carbohydrates, mostly in the form of fibrous vegetables. I did use a little soy sauce, some sugar-free maple syrup, and fresh ginger for marinades to keep my chicken breast tolerable and I used sugar free catsup or mustard to top my burgers.

In addition, Lyle has a strict policy regarding how long you can stay on the plan. This was one of the most important aspects I learned about crash dieting. Taking a maintenance break was opposite to the way Kimmer did things, but my experience with that complete diet break taught me it was best.

I was still quite heavy for my five-foot frame, so I could stay on the program for as long as 12 weeks before I had to take a mandatory two-week diet break. However, about three or four weeks into the diet, I started having what appeared to be severe hypoglycemia attacks. Since I didn’t know what to do about them, I moved to maintenance sooner than I hoped and stayed there for several weeks – allowing my body to recover from whatever was going on.

I tried to return to a low carb diet several times, but my metabolism started crashing much quicker than before. My body wasn’t handling ketosis very well anymore, and I started to experience a reoccurrence of some intestinal issues and nerve inflammation I’d had before I first started the Atkins’ Diet in 2007. In addition, I started having heart palpitations and pain. Now, the easy explanation for all of this was increased insulin due to the refeeds, which many well-meaning low carbers threw at me, but that’s not what it turned out to be. Refeeds do not cause explosive diarrhea and intestinal inflammation.

I am a big believer that nothing happens by accident. Our journey takes us where we need to be at that moment. That’s why I have a more laid back attitude in regards to the whole Kimkins thing. Somewhere around this time, someone discovered that the photos Kimmer had posted of herself at Low Carb Friends and at her website were fake. They were not pictures of her at all. She had never used her own diet plan to lose any weight.

This was a big deal for many low carbers, and they felt angry about her deception, but since many of her dieting principles had saved me from a life of obesity and pain, I took a backseat approach to it all. Mostly, because her size and deception didn’t invalidate what I had learned about myself.

The other thing I was introduced to during this period was wheat intolerance. There were a handful of women doing refeeds at the Beyond Low Carb forum, who had to use carb sources other than wheat. Instead of loading up on breads and cereals, they ate brown rice and sweet potatoes because when they ate wheat, they became inflamed, sick and unable to lose weight. That really struck home with me, and I began investigating the potential for food intolerances and allergies to affect weight.

One of the first things I did was to begin checking my blood glucose levels myself, such as Dr. Bernstein recommends, because I’d been diagnosed with pre-diabetes many years ago. My glucose readings were not at diabetic levels, but high enough to cause Neuropathy. That pointed to metabolic problems, but the solution wasn’t as easy as most low carbers would think because even simple vegetables like zucchini or a meal with absolutely no carbohydrate content were sending my glucose levels high enough to cause nerve damage. Even a two-week return to the Atkins Induction Diet sent my blood sugar soaring.

For me, the problem turned out to be gluten, not carbohydrates, and strangely enough, I owe that discovery to Kimmer and my modified Kimkins Diet. That’s another reason why I’ve remained neutral throughout all of the Kimkins controversy. If I had not gone on that modified Kimkins Diet, I would never have figured out my health problems. I would still weigh over 200 pounds, and I would still be in pain and sick.

On the Kimkins plan, I was eating gluten and dairy free. I felt good. I experienced no hunger. I had no blood glucose issues. So I took that realization and implemented it into my maintenance diet. Surprisingly, when I eliminated all forms of gluten, my blood glucose levels corrected themselves provided I kept within a particular carbohydrate margin. That margin (when compared to low carb dieting) was high: 20 to 40 grams of carbohydrates per meal always resulted in normal blood glucose control.

Later on, that margin widened considerably when I also removed dairy. In fact, as long as I was eating absolutely no gluten or dairy (a GFCF Diet) I could even eat a piece of gluten free chocolate cake and see no rise in blood sugar levels above 95 mg/dl. So my experiences with low carb eating, diet breaks and refeeds have differed from the norm.

I don’t know how my body would respond to refeeds now that I’ve eliminated all of my food intolerances including corn. The refeeds were not what I was focused on then. While many low carbers turned to refeeds because it gave them an opportunity to eat many of the foods they had been missing, my focus has always been on my health and what works for me. However, I still had one more major lesson to learn about weight loss, low carb diets and sustainability.

Part 8: Weight Loss, Low Carb Diets and Sustainability

The K-E Diet: Latest Fad Diet Casts Shadow on Low Carb Diets

The K-E Diet: Latest Fad Diet Casts Shadow on Low Carb Diets

Low Carb Diet Questions??

Tracy Rose, the Topic Editor at Suite101 for the Weight Loss Section, posted a link on Facebook this morning to her latest diet article. This article deals with the latest trend being marketed to brides: the K-E Diet.

Now, we know that low carb diets in general are not new, and we know that when followed correctly, protein-sparing modified fasts are not dangerous. In fact, if you’re relatively free from additional food sensitivities, allergies and health issues, low carb programs are easy to implement and many varieties offer a luxurious living style.

The latest fad diet (the K-E method) casts a dark shadow over low carb and PSMF diets. It involves inserting a feeding tube through your nose and into your stomach. This feeding tube delivers a protein solution that totals about 800 calories per day, so in essence, this diet scheme is a low carbohydrate protein sparing modified fast. You don’t eat. You just take in this solution of protein and fat for 10 days and magically shed 20 pounds before the big day.

So why don’t dieters just drink the solution?

The creators of the K-E plan believe that a continuous infusion of the solution throughout the day will prevent the hunger you would have were you to take the feeding orally. They also believe that tube feedings will cause the body to break down more fat stores and protect more muscle tissue. They claim that their diet plan has been shown to be more effective than a liquid PSMF Diet, and because the solution contains no carbohydrates, it works faster than Atkins or South Beach.

Okay – so it’s a high-priced crash dieting scheme to help these women fit into a smaller wedding dress that must be overseen by a physician. They know that going in. They know this is a temporary fix because they have to take their feeding tube with them everywhere they go throughout those 10 days. They know their eating habits haven’t changed, so they might realistically regain that excess body fat.

So what’s the problem? It puts these women into ketosis, it allows them to drop some excess body fat and it gives them peace of mind that they will be able to fit into their wedding dress. The program only lasts for 10 days, and since we know that ketosis isn’t dangerous, what’s the harm?

Oddly enough, it isn’t the diet itself that’s casting a shadow over low carb programs, although it certainly is a drastic way to go. The problem for low carb diet plans is those who oppose the K-E diet. They are playing to the myths surrounding dietary ketosis that the low carb communities have been trying to correct since Dr. Atkins first published his low carb diet book back in the early 70s.

Those who oppose this K-E dieting style are justifying their position by claiming that ketosis is unhealthy and dangerous. Most of these opponents are pointing to potential kidney and liver problems, potential side effects and secondary conditions that can come from wearing a feeding tube, the dangers of losing weight too quickly and are even going so far as to call ketosis starvation mode.

Ketosis isn’t starvation and it doesn’t create kidney or liver problems unless you already have kidney or liver issues before you go onto a low carb diet plan. Ketosis is an alternative metabolic pathway to glucose metabolism, and it occurs naturally as a life survival mechanism. It keeps blood glucose levels steady. The body turns to its stored body fat for fuel even on standard low calorie diets whenever glucose or calories are in short supply.

But as the warnings against this latest diet fad grows, and we know they will, so will the misconceptions surrounding standard or slightly tweaked low carb diets. Everything we have fought so hard to overcome will be reversed. I can’t help but wonder how far back this is going to push us now.

So, what do you think?

Lyle McDonald’s Rapid Fat Loss Diet – Taking a Full Diet Break

Lyle McDonald’s Rapid Fat Loss Diet – Taking a Full Diet Break

Low Carb Diet Questions??

(This is part 6 of a multi-part series on How to Tweak a Low Carb Diet. It discusses my weight loss journey so far. If you didn’t read part 1, you can do so by clicking on the how-to link. Part 1 also includes links to the rest of this series.)

At one time or another, most dieters get caught up in the desire of wanting to lose weight fast. That actually worked to my advantage because Lyle McDonald originally created his Rapid Fat Loss Plan (a whole foods PSMF Diet) to deal with crash diets safely. While McDonald’s focus is on bodybuilding, muscle retention, and metabolism, maintaining muscle mass during dieting is to everyone’s benefit – quick weight loss or not.

The Kimkins fiasco brought the protein content of a low carb diet into the limelight. Dr. Eades’ did have recommendations for low carbers to shoot for. He talked about large, medium, and small servings of protein (five, four or three ounces) at each meal depending upon how much you currently weigh, getting 35 grams of carbohydrates per day, and keeping your fat intake under control until you reached goal weight – which most people ignored.

Contrary to all of the controversy going on about protein intake, Lyle McDonald uses a more individualized approach. His diet bases protein content on the amount of lean muscle mass you have, plus the amount of activity you plan to do during the diet phase of the program, as well as the type of activity. Weight lifters needed more protein than those doing just aerobics, and both of those categories need more protein than those not exercising at all.

This made much more sense to me, rather than a blanket type of protein intake that was set according to your current body weight because even though I’m only five feet tall, I have a large build. That means I’m carrying around at least 10 to 15 pounds more muscle and bone than the average person. So McDonald’s diet interested me for its individuality as well as its unique angle.

Now, if you just looked at the diet itself, it is very similar to Kimkins. Very lean meat and poultry, fibrous vegetables and little else. However, Lyle McDonald built safety precautions into the diet to keep adequate protein and essential fatty acids in front of each person. The more muscle mass you have, the more very lean protein you eat. The more lean meat you eat, the more calories your diet will have. There is no set calorie limit for Lyle’s plan.

He also drastically cut carbohydrates, allowing only vegetable carbs. Limiting yourself to just vegetable carbs keeps the diet as low in calories as is save for each individual because added fats were also not allowed. Essential fatty acids come from 10 grams of fish oil capsules per day. In addition, two servings of non-fat or low-fat dairy for calcium content is also recommended. We were also cautioned to heavily use what’s known as light salt due to low carb’s tendency towards dehydration. That’s a potassium and salt combination to season your food; but, herbs and spices are also okay. Some people step over the line a little bit and use things like soy sauce as well.

At that time, I still didn’t know I was a celiac. So I was still eating gluten, dairy and corn. That fact is important to the results because Lyle’s diet also incorporates free meals and refeeds. For my size, I wasn’t supposed to do refeeds. I was still too fat. I was supposed to do two free meals a week instead, but I’d been on a low carb diet for so long and was struggling with extreme hunger and mental issues in regards to food, that I KNEW my Leptin levels had crashed.

After reading everything on Lyle’s forum, and three of his books several times, I decided to take the plunge. However, looking back now, I can see that was a mistake. Initially, I totally missed the part about crashed Leptin and HOW to fix it.

I was coming to this new table from a low carb diet point of view – the point of view that believes a diet is a lifestyle – and that totally skewed my thought process and understanding of the principles behind dieting. I hate to say that, but it’s true. We low carbers have a particular mindset when it comes to dieting and switching gears is difficult.

So it took two weeks of following The Rapid Fat Loss Diet before I accepted defeat. Now, I don’t mean defeat in terms of giving up on dieting. What I mean is that by going from Atkins 92 to The Protein Power Lifeplan, to Atkins 72, to Kimkins, to Atkins 2002, to Dr. Eades' liquid protein shake diet, to Lyle’s Rapid Fat Loss program with no diet break in between any of that, I was setting myself up to fail. Why? Because a low carb diet lowers thyroid output for many individuals. A low carb diet can lower your metabolism. A low carb diet can also cause your Leptin levels to crash.

A low carb diet can essentially stop working if you don’t take a break from dieting long enough to reset your hormone levels. That’s the truth that few low carb dieters are willing to face. What hardly anyone ever sees is that Dr. Atkins himself KNEW that. He would personally place his patients on thyroid medication temporarily to get them the rest of the way to goal. Since we don't have that luxury, we have to tweak our low carb diets to make them continue working for us.

I admit, that before I started that two-week diet session, I did take a weekend off from low carb dieting, and I indulged in a weekend-long refeed. I went out for pizza. I ate brownies and homemade bread. I ate things I’d been missing over the prior two years. I did that because I wanted to test Lyle McDonald’s theories. They were different from what I’m been hearing within the low carb community because the low carb folks believe carbohydrates is ALL that matters. Lyle believes calories are all that matters.

Even though Lyle’s ideas sounded logical to me (low carb was failing me, afterall), I didn’t know if what Lyle and his friends believed would hold true for me. So I dove into the deep end of the refeed pool, and I suddenly discovered I could swim -- easily, in fact. So easily, that water weight gain from returning to carbohydrates didn’t even show up on the scale until Monday morning. Plus, I actually felt good for the first time in months!

My downfall was moving from that single weekend refeed into the Rapid Fat Loss Diet on Monday morning because my body had not had enough time to reset my hormone levels. Leptin needs a minimum of a two-week diet break to reset. That means two weeks and sometimes more of eating over 100 carbohydrates per day. During those first two weeks, eating one free meal and refeeding for a five hour period on the weekends, I lost a total of four additional pounds (not counting the water weight I gained from that weekend refeed, which came back off quickly).

So it was enough to know that the diet worked. It was enough to know that something was wrong with a typical low carb diet as written. It was enough to convince me that I needed to take a two-week diet break before returning to the Rapid Fat Loss Plan. So that is what I did. I returned carbohydrates to my diet all at once and ate anything I wanted for a two-week period.

Part 7: What I Learned from Diet Breaks, Free Meals, and Refeeds