How to Turn Your Low Carb Diet into a Lifestyle

Make Low-Carb Lifestyle Changes One at a Time

Low carb isn’t a diet – it’s a lifestyle. We hear that all the time. In fact, even the latest Weight Watchers commercials are saying exactly the same thing: this isn’t a diet; it’s a lifestyle. We love the idea of not dieting. We love the idea of being able to eat to satisfaction. Plus, going into carb restriction with the perception that it’s for life helps to eliminate the dieting mindset that so many low-carb dieters fall into.

We truly believe we can eat this way for the rest of our lives with no problems. Who couldn’t? You get to eat fatty meats such as pork ribs and bacon, real butter and sour cream, put heavy whipping cream in your coffee or tea, and munch on mixed nuts, assorted cheeses, olives and deviled eggs – all without having to count the calories. There’s cheesecake for dessert, low-carb pancakes and muffins, jalapeno hot poppers and dozens of ways to enjoy chicken wings.

But then your birthday or anniversary rolls around or your best friend wants to go out to lunch at your favorite Italian restaurant or pizza joint, and before you know it, you’re missing many of the foods you had to give up in order to create your latest lifestyle. Social engagements, holidays, and parties don’t feel as fun as they used to, so you start feeling deprived, restricted, and left out.

If you have food allergies and sensitivities that make many standard low-carb foods off limits, it can be worse because you’ll lose the enthusiasm that helped you get over the initial hump of adaption even more quickly. With no comfort foods to fall back on, you suddenly find yourself falling head-first into a plate of homemade Christmas cookies, sneak a thick slice of pizza when no one’s looking, make excuses for why you need to eat that extra-large piece of chocolate cake for your birthday, or even give up totally.

So what happened? Where did all of that enthusiasm and motivation for your low-carb diet go? You know it works, so why is it so easy to go off plan? If you really want to lose weight and keep it off, why do we make up so many diet excuses for not doing it? Is there any way to prevent that from happening?

Enter the Small-Steps Low-Carb Diet Plan

In a previous post, I talked about using a back door approach to a low-carb diet if you’re having problems pairing your menus down to an Induction level of carbohydrates. Following a standard Atkins Diet, it can take weeks to find your Critical Carbohydrate Level for losing, and many people don’t have enough patience to do that. Although a back door approach that gently slips you into Ketosis takes even more time to discover your level of carbohydrate sensitivity, it’s far less restrictive than a typical low-carb diet plan, so many dieters find that way easier.

A Small-Steps Low-Carb Diet Plan is similar, but you make the changes from the vantage point of a carbohydrate-reduced eating plan. You don’t start backwards. You simply take a step back from what you’re currently doing and experiencing to examine exactly where you are, and then take the necessary steps to implement one single change that will help you convert your diet into a lifestyle you can live with.

For example, over this past weekend, I finally got around to experimenting with a recipe for low-carb crackers made with almond flour. Although I wasn’t happy enough with the results to take a picture of them and post the recipe yet, they were a hit with my husband. We travel up north quite a bit because many of the things we need, we can’t get here. So, I decided that my first change would be finding something that contained fewer carbs than potato salad and fruit that I could put with our baked chicken I always make to take with us. For me, finding comfort foods and making better low-carb choices is essential to getting myself back on track.

Take it Slow

If you have no food allergies, sensitivities or autoimmune problems, you might struggle with different problems and low-carb lifestyle issues than I have. Some people have problems drinking enough water. Others might use too many sugar substitutes, drink litres of diet soda every day, find themselves addicted to homemade, low-carb baked goods, or have no motivation to begin an exercise program. Some might have problems sticking to their plan because they don’t prepare ahead for emergencies, don’t have a well-stocked low-carb kitchen or refrigerator, or don’t know how to handle food temptations when they strike.

No matter what your particular issues are, take the time to examine your behavior and mindset. Self-examination is what will allow you to find the problems that are preventing your personal success with whatever low-carb or low-calorie program you’re following. But, those problems can also work against you if you try to make too many changes all at once. Switching from a typical, processed-foods American diet to a whole food, low-carb lifestyle can be overwhelming in the beginning. Even the basic rules for Atkins Induction might be far too drastic to implement all at once.

The body fights change, and so does the mind – especially when those changes aren’t comfortable, feel restrictive, or are perceived as being temporary. Be kind to yourself, and take it slow. Pick one single thing about your current behavior or lifestyle that is interfering with your weight-loss goals. Maybe it’s something you know you should do, or something you shouldn’t. Whichever issue you choose, focus on only making that one, single change because even when changes improve our outlook, health or energy levels, there is always a mental adjustment attached to that change.

Give yourself adequate time to make that adjustment. If low carb is a lifestyle, rather than a diet, there should be no pressure to rush the process.  

Changes Need to Be Permanent

Lasting change is the goal. Temporary change does very little for us except allow us to enjoy a little temporary success. I really learned that lesson when I did my single round of hHCG a year-and-a-half ago and ended up regaining everything I’d lost during that period over the past year. The changes I made then were not permanent. I saw that restriction as temporary. That diet mindset was accented by the fact that I don’t enjoy eating chicken breast, raw cucumbers and cabbage.

But I also failed to maintain those losses because I didn’t have anything solid to move into next. The parameters of the program simply tell you to do a sugar-free low-carb diet for 3 weeks, and then return foods to your diet slowly in order to keep on top of your maintenance. However, the cravings control center in our brain doesn’t always allow that type of return to a normal diet. As a result, when I returned to my typical way of doing maintenance, it didn’t work.

I couldn’t sustain the weight loss that time because to stay at that lower weight of 152 pounds (once my glycogen storage refilled itself) required my diet to be too restrictive for comfort. I realize that now. I couldn’t eat the high fat, moderate protein, low-carb diet required for three weeks after stopping the hHCG drops due to my fat malabsorption issues. I also didn’t think about my dietary restrictions before starting the diet. That’s the bottom line for me. For someone else, that bottom line might be different.

I have only come to this realization lately, after beginning to re-read Dr. Atkins original diet book. For low-carb to be sustainable, it has to be satisfying, eliminate hunger, and fit within your metabolic issues and health restrictions. Making changes in steps can help you to accomplish that. While even small steps can’t heal fat malaborption or reverse my celiac disease and corn intolerance, incorporating real-life changes a little at a time can certainly work to make your life better.

By incorporating changes slowly, you can move towards converting your current low-carb diet into a permanent lifestyle.