6 days on, 1 day off- still lose weight?

[curlyqmishee]

Hello Everyone. I hope everyone's week is going well. So far, so good here. I'm on my 8th day of a squeaky clean induction and have lost 5lbs so far!

My friend at work has been doing Atkins successfully and has about 30 lbs more to lose. She talks about staying on Induction 6 days a week and then 1 day eating "no-no" foods like pasta, bread, cake, etc...

Knowing one day a week she could indulge, she thinks it would make this WOE for life much more do-able, especially with special occasions popping up.

Aside from constant induction flu and cravings, would the body still get rid of the excess weight on 6 days on, 1 day off?

[Perry]

You would not have Induction flu constantly. You wouldn't build up enough glucose in your system in one day to experience withdrawl the next day. All you will do is continue to mess with your natural balance and force your body to adjust - and defeat the purpose of the 1 day cheat.

Of course, this is all opinion because I have never tried this method of weight loss. Didn't need to. Made goal (30lbs off) in 7 weeks following the plan as advertised.

Question back to you.. what if you have 2 special occasions in one week?

[cmcole]

When there are so many great choices of foods (once in Maintenance, the choice expands tremendously), my biggest question would be . . . WHY?

Why go back and feed your body crap when you know it's not good for your health or anything else?

[NowThatsPerfect]

thats just a really bad idea. Atkins discusses this in DANDR actually saying you would only actually be in ketosis about 3 days out of the week, so it really wouldnt be worth doing. Your weight loss (if you have any) would be really slow, and eventually you'r body would build up a tolerance to this and it would probably stop working.

[urprincess]

I would have to agree wit everyone else not worth the trouble

[Esdios]

thats just a really bad idea. Atkins discusses this in DANDR actually saying you would only actually be in ketosis about 3 days out of the week,

While the book says it, this is based on the assumption that it will always take you three days to get back to burning fat rather than glucose no matter how long you have been eating a higher carb diet, or how high your carb & calorie intake actually was. Not only does this defy common sense, I know for me and many others it just isn't/wasn't true. I think this is another worst case scenario statements dr atkins uses to try and frighten/discourage people from doing it their way, not to mention life, diet and weightloss don't work on 24 hour cycles, nothing changes for those at the stroke of midnight.

As for using a 6 days on 1 day off atkins approach, there are people whom this does work for and those that it doesn't. Trying this method with a 6 day induction diet, is nothing more than a crash diet that will make long term weight loss and weight maintenance hard to do, even though you lose the weight it can still cause long term problems with cholesterol and blood sugars. You would lose the weight much faster simply by doing induction, moving through OWL (at 5 to 20 carbs a week depending on how much weight you have to lose), exercising (both cardio and weight trining) and maintaining good hydration and then moving into an maitenance diet, which is much easier to have the reegular high carb day in.

The real problem with the above method is induction isn't meant for true weight loss, but rather changing your eating habbits and breaking cravings, and the longer you are on it the less effective it is. The big problem dieters can't seem to understand is the body recognize the artificial concept we call time. The body will burn calories based upon what ever activities you are doing and it will take the most efficient route to get them. If you feed it sugar or alcohol it uses them first and uses them until it is out which could be 30 minutes or 3 plus days. the only way to make your body burn fat is to feed it a good mixture of carbs, protein and fat. The body's metabolism works on an average of calories eaten at intervals, every time you throw a wrench into the machinery by changing diet composition you make it that much harder to keep the machinery running right over the long term.

The reason you can more easily add carbs to a higher carb level in the atkins diet with less problems is you are not changing the percentage of carbs as drasticly in your diet, and it that perccentage of calories and carbs you eat over time that actually effects true weight loss. If you regularly eat 2000 calories and 20 net carbs over 5 days you have 10k calories and 100 net carbs. Throw a cinnabun and some pasta into it and you have changed your diet totals to 13k and 600+ carbs this is a 600% increase in carbs. During OWL at 50 carbs you 300% incrrease to deal and a maiteneance diet of 100+ carbs you are looking at less than 100% increase, these are much easier to recover from. Also by the time you will have reached maintenance you should be doing more exercise and have more muscle than before which burns more calories during its rest periods than does fat.

[thegrinningdemon]

I sort of use this method of 6 days on and 1 day off but I still don't each sugar. If I eat sugar I find that I crave more sugar throughout the week. I might have a tortilla or some pizza but I would never indulge myself in a cake once a week. I think it would get too hard during the week. I use this method when its more convenient to each higher carb meals not as an excuse to eat whatever. Usually after a higher carb day I gain up to a pound but its usually all water and within a few days I will lose the pound and probably 1 more.

[timthenavyguy]

i must say that its a nice idea and i wouldnt mind doinng it but i think it would cancel out all your hard work.

[dzuspann]

After induction possibly. But not during. Never cheat!

Problem with one day off is not in the mechanics. If you could do that for ever it would be fine. Question is that a habit that would lead to other bad habits?

I mean surely if I can go 6 days and 1 off, then I could go 5.5 on and 1.5 off. That is not much difference. Well maybe 2 days off would not be a bad thing. And so on.

[CeeCee43]

A lot of hard core body builders use this method to cut fat. It's called a CKD (Cyclical Ketogenic Diet). I tired it for a while. It didn't work for me, and I never felt very good after carb loading (refeeding).

[AllieCat0817]

When there are so many great choices of foods (once in Maintenance, the choice expands tremendously), my biggest question would be . . . WHY?

Why go back and feed your body crap when you know it's not good for your health or anything else?

I'm with you on this...

[ttdriver]

That's NOT doing Atkins. If you want to DO ATKINS, then do it by the book. IT WORKS.

Not only is Atkins a great way to lose weight, its the HEALTHY thing to do for your body. Eating what I call CRAP FOODS wreaks havoc with your blood sugar, induces cravings, and is very unhealthy.

There are so many great low-carb recipes available, there is absolutely NO NEED to eat garbage foods any more.

For me, my opinion is its better to never have found Atkins than to have found it and not followed it.

Betty

[kokopuff]

This is how I've lost all my weight...going off and eating reasonably low cal but not counting carbs one day a week.

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