Atkins Diet Creep: Why Atkins may have stopped working for you

The Atkins diet has helped many people, likely saving many lives. But when some people, advocating for a shiny new diet, list their old failed diets, they list Atkins among them.

Of course some of these people probably just ignored the fact that the Atkins diet is not meant to be temporary, but a way of life, and quit. But there are are other reasons why some people think of Atkins as just another diet failure.

The first is what I call ‘diet creep’ and it can happen on any eating plan. If the diet wants you to weigh or measure certain foods, you do it faithfully for a while, and then you eyeball it. You may start eating a little more of that limited food. And then, a month later, your ‘eyeballing’ adds a little more to the amount. So you are ‘cheating’ on the diet without being aware of it. Think of the Atkins restriction of only allowing 4 teaspoons of cream per day. If you stop measuring and start just pouring in a bit of cream, you exceed your total. Or you follow a low-carb recipe that has more cream in it than you are allowed, and perhaps you still put cream in your coffee.

Another source of ‘diet creep’ is built in to the Atkins diet: it’s the levels. You start off in Induction, which is about 10 grams of carbs (which you don’t have to count.) Then, level by level, you add 5 to 8 grams of carbohydrate per level, and you stay on the level a week (or more.) Dr. Atkins wants you to continue to test for ketosis with urine strips (the only ketone testing available at the time.) As long as you remained in ketosis, you would lose weight.

Then, when you hit your goal weight, you would add a little more carbs for your maintenance diet, so you got out of ketosis. And then you went on for years.

Only you would get older, and your body would need to revert to a lower carb level. Or else you went off the diet, went back on, but ate nuts and lower-carb fruits because you remembering eating that on Atkins, and so you were at too high a carb level and you weren’t in ketosis so you were hungry and had strong food cravings and were miserable, and so you either overate carbs and thought you were still doing Atkins, you cheated frequently, or you quit altogether.

A third reason is the fact that your body adapts to any weight loss diet, even a sound low-carb program like Atkins. If you were on Atkins and didn’t lose enough weight, there were things you could have done to make it work better:

1. Go back on strict Induction (of Original Atkins, ideally) with no Atkins bars or products and no ‘Net Carbs.’ Measure your salads. Be sure and eat meat with enough fat in it. Get back to the basic meat-plus-salad meals of the Atkins approach and don’t eat low-carb brownies and cakes, and foods full of almond and coconut flours or more cream or cheese than you are allowed in a day. Only gradually add back more carbs to go on higher levels.
2. Try the Atkins ‘fat fast’ diet. There are two cookbooks for this diet by Dana Carpender, ‘Fat Fast Cookbook’ and ‘Fat Fast Cookbook 2'. It’s only a temporary diet but it helps many. You can even go on and off the ‘fat fast’ diet— each week have a few days on it, and then eat your normal low-carb meals.
3. Try real fasting for longer or shorter periods. Jimmy Moore and Dr. Jason Fung have a book, ‘The Complete Guide to Fasting,’ that will help. Fasting has helped me with my weight and my blood sugars.
4. If you cheat regularly, quit. If you look forward to a weekly cheat every week, find a special low-carb recipe that will help. I like the Coco Cocoa Fat Bombs from the ‘Fat Fast Cookbook.’ You might also try those low-carb brownies and other low-carb goodies as a weekly not-quite-cheat.
5. What about trying the Carnivore diet— a meat only diet— for a while? We know humans can live by meat alone because some did, like the Eskimos of the past, and some Arctic explorers who adopted the Eskimo diet while exploring. Later, experiments were done in a controlled environment on a meat-only diet and the men involved not only survived but thrived. I haven't read any modern books on a Carnivore diet yet, I found 'The Carnivore's Manifesto' on Amazon and might buy it when I have money (after this winter. Home heating is an issue.)

Whether you call it the Atkins diet, or a low-carb diet, or ‘the’ ketogenic diet, these eating lifestyles won’t work for a lifetime of better health unless you actually follow them for a lifetime. Don’t give up the tried and true for a shiny new diet that may not be based on good science. Go back to basics, tweak your diet based on newer research and new knowledge, but stick with it. 

‘Required reading’ for Atkins & low carb dieters:

I used to read a chapter of the original Atkins book every morning to keep me inspired, until I knew the book’s whole contents. It’s what many recovering alcoholics do with their AA Blue Book. I also switch off to other sound low-carb books and listen to Jimmy Moore podcasts.