Why Am I Not Losing Weight?

Whether you’re new to low carb or a well-seasoned dieter, starting a low carb diet can be exciting. Watching the pounds drop that very first week or two can put you in a better frame of mind to keep going, but if you expect that weight loss to continue, you’ll soon be in for a surprise. For those who have used carbohydrate restriction before, the slow-down isn’t discouraging. For a newbie to the low carb way of eating, however, it can be confusing. Questions begin to build up:

• Am I following the diet wrong?
• Has my low carb diet stopped working?
• If I’m exercising and eating correctly, why am I not losing weight?
• How can I be in ketosis and not lose weight?
• What can I do to break my stall?

When your weight loss slows to a crawl or you hit a wall, it’s common to want to know what’s happening. Although there’s no way to know for sure, there are several possibilities.

Dehydration

One of the main reasons you might not be losing weight is due to dehydration or electrolyte imbalances. When you first begin to restrict carbohydrates, that restriction forces the body to use its glycogen stores for fuel. For every molecule of glycogen you have stored, the body also stores four molecules of water. That’s the amount of water needed to process the glycogen. As the glycogen is used, the body drops the water, so initial weight loss can be large and fast. If you experience large drops in weight and water loss, it can cause the body to believe it’s dehydrated.

When that happens, the body will conserve the water it has. That water conservation can mask the fat loss and make it appear that you are not losing weight or inches. The body starts stuffing water into your emptied-out fat cells for storage, and you soon begin to think that your low carb diet isn’t working. This is why losing weight can be an erratic process. While the body must draw upon fat stores if you’re not eating at your maintenance level of calories, water retention can mask what’s actually happening.

In addition to dehydration, water retention can also occur if you are prone to yo-yo dieting. The body will assume that you are going to go off your diet again, and it will prepare for that influx of carbohydrates it believes will be coming soon. When the body chooses to stuff water into your fat cells, you have no alternative other than to wait it out. It can literally take weeks for the body to feel comfortable enough or secure enough to drop the water.

Deep Ketosis Safety Precautions

In a person who does not have Type 1 Diabetes, the body has built-in safety precautions to protect itself from going into a state called ketoacidosis. This is a very serious, life-threatening condition. One of my two nephews who have Type 1 Diabetes died from going into ketoacidosis. It makes the body extremely acidic and occurs when an excessive amount of ketones build up in the blood. If you don’t have Type 1 Diabetes, the body will secrete insulin when your ketone level rises too high. That insulin shuts down ketone production, but it also makes it more difficult for the body to mobilize its fat stores. If that didn’t happen, a low carb diet would not be safe.

Low Carb Metabolic Advantage Stops

Many people throw around the idea that there is a low carb metabolic advantage, but it isn’t as large or as long lasting as most people think. When you begin restricting carbohydrates, your stress hormones come to bat. Their purpose is to help the body find and use alternative methods of fuel that enable you to handle the famine conditions you have created. Initially, the body sees a low carb diet as a metabolic emergency. You are setting up the same pathway the body uses when it goes into starvation.

Initially, that causes the body to pull more fat out of its fat stores than needed to fuel the body. It uses the glycerol backbone along with dietary protein to get the amount of glucose the brain, liver, kidneys, red blood cells and a couple of others need to function. As time processes and some of your brain functions convert to using ketones – somewhere in the neighborhood of three to eight weeks – the body learns how many ketones, fatty acids and glucose molecules you need to keep every system in the body running smoothly.

That shuts down the metabolic advantage.

Although you do experience the benefits that breaking down proteins into amino acids can give you, that’s only slightly higher or equal to the amount of calories it takes to break down carbohydrates into glucose – depending on which carbs you choose.

Cardio Can Slow Down Weight Loss

The idea at the heart of a low carb diet is to correct metabolic imbalances. That happens quickly when you begin to restrict carbohydrates. Basal insulin levels can drop to a more normal level within a few days making it easier for the body to tap into its fat stores, but diet isn’t the only thing that affects insulin levels. Using the alternative metabolic pathway places the body in a stressful situation because it thinks you are starving or caught in a famine situation.

Exercise can contribute to the problem because cardio is fueled by glucose. As your blood sugar level drops, cortisol is released to prod the liver into using your glycogen stores for fuel. If your liver doesn’t have enough glycogen, which is what happens on a very low carb diet, the presence of cortisol alerts the liver that immediate glucose is needed.

Although fatty acids can be burned for fuel after the body has adapted to your low carb diet, for many people, fat stores cannot be converted quick enough to fuel the body’s immediate needs during cardio. That can cause gluconeogenesis to go into high production, and as long as cortisol is around, it won’t shut off. That higher production causes higher insulin levels and less fat store availability. Make sure you are not doing too much exercise, especially when your carbs are very low because a very low carb diet keeps your blood glucose level a little higher than normal.

The Bottom Line

The science behind a low carb diet has evolved over the years because initially when Dr. Atkins came forward with his clinical findings, many things involved in the metabolic weight loss process were unknown. Dr. Atkins saw his diet creation work, but he didn’t always understand why that was. His goal wasn’t to nail down the science behind his work. His goal was to help people lose weight who hadn’t been able to do so by using a standard low calorie diet. He made assumptions and guesses that have turned out not to be true, but that doesn’t make the diet less valuable.

Scientific studies to date have found low carb diets to be comparable to low calorie programs – comparable, but not better. Weight loss between the various dieting groups has been about the same. That means the initial large drop in weight that you experience on a low carb diet will eventually move into a similar rate of loss as those who have chosen to lower their portion sizes instead. That’s because the body always adapts to diet, exercise and environmental conditions.

Although there’s no magic pill that enables you to lose your fat stores overnight, a low carb diet offers many metabolic advantages over a low calorie diet for certain individuals. Those advantages have nothing to do with the speed of fat loss. These advantages include lower insulin levels, stable blood glucose, less hunger and the physical benefits that follow eliminating foods you’re intolerant to. For many individuals, those metabolic advantages can make the difference between failure and weight loss success.