A long-time low carb dieter prepares you for the difficulties and results you’ll experience in week one of a low carb diet.
If you’re about to embark on a low carb diet, be ready to experience a new level of eating, living, and losing that you’ve never experienced with fad diets and the hungry torture known as “the low calorie diet.” The fact is, low carb dieting flies in the face of everything that the traditional weight loss and medical community will tell you: you have to cut out calories and fat and add in tons of exercise in order to lose any weight.
If this traditional system of weight loss is so effective, then why are two-thirds of the U.S. population overweight? The answer is simple: while cutting calories will help you lose weight, it’ll also leave you starving and much more likely to fall off the weight loss wagon before you reach your goals.
The low carb diet turns these traditional dieting rules on their head. And even though the medical community has tried to disparage Dr. Robert Atkins’ groundbreaking popularization of his famed low carb Diet Revolution, the fact remains that you can indeed eat as much fat and protein as you want on a low carb diet and still lose weight!
Millions of Americans have done it successfully, and so can you.
How Will I live Without Carbs?
Atkins’ books describe refined sugar as being tantamount to illegal drugs: it is highly addictive and highly destructive to the body. Because of this, the first phase of Atkins’ original low carb Diet Revolution plan reads more like a detox from heroin than the first week of a healthy diet. In a nutshell, he calls for a cold-turkey drop of no more than a few carbs a day.
Newer low carb diet models are more liberal in the first week of carb counting, allowing for as many as 12 grams of net carbs a day. But even a low carb diet such as this one will be a radical departure from what you are normally used to eating: most Americans eat between 250 and 750 grams of carbohydrates a day, many of which take the form of simple carbs and refined sugars. Even dropping down to 12 grams of complex carbs a day will be a radical departure from what you’re used to.
How will you feel?
From my own experiences (and I am not a licensed physician nor am I giving you medical advice here), within the first 24 to 48 hours, you will indeed experience a kind of detox from eating carbohydrates. This is particularly true if you use Atkins’ method of cutting out almost all carbs in the first week of your low carb diet.
Because your body is used to pumping out so much insulin to maintain a blood sugar for a high carb diet, the sudden drop may make you feel lethargic, hungry, and craving sweets. This is the true “danger zone” of a low carb diet, and the time that many people give up. Little do they know that holding out for the first day or two leads to a steady decrease in hunger and increase in weight loss!
What To Expect After Week One of Your Low Carb Diet
Provided you have stuck to your low carb diet and maintained a high level of ketosis, you’ll be amazed at the weight you’ve dropped. I tried the Atkins diet three separate times in my life, and all three times I averaged a loss of seven pounds in the first week! If you’re eating closer to 12 carbs a day in the first week, then you’ll probably lose less, but all in all, you’re bound to see a higher weight loss than you’ve even gotten from a low calorie diet.
Also, you’ll begin to notice that you aren’t nearly as hungry as you were on day one of the diet – or for your entire life before starting the diet! Hunger has everything to do with blood sugar, and because eating high protein and low carbohydrates puts your blood sugar into perfect balance, your body simply will not need as much food in order to satisfy your hunger.
Over time, you’ll find that the allure of sweets, sugar, and high carbohydrate foods will leave you; as you put more and more distance between yourself and the high carb eating lifestyle you left behind, you’ll look forward to meals that are more savory than sweet, and are helping you to reach your long-term weight goals.
Thanks for reading our article! Are you thinking about starting a low carb diet? If so, Linda’s Diet Delites is a leading online retailer of low carb foods. You’ll find hundreds of low carb products that are nowhere to be found in your local supermarket!