I need advice about halting a low carb diet

My mom has been on a low carb diet for years. She lost a lot of weight but now she has plateaued for months. I've talked to her about switching to a calorie counting diet instead, and she is willing, but I'd like to know if anyone else has gone through the same thing-- and what happened? Do you think this is a good idea? Any information would be appreciated. =)

If mom is anorexic changing diets is not the answer. Is she still overweight. What is her bodymass index say? We need more information. Is mom still grossly overweight? The main concept in losing is simple in theory and difficult to always apply. If your body burns 2000 calories per day and you eat 1700, you will lose one pound every -3000 calories or in this example every 10 days. If you eat 2300 per day and only need 2000, you would gain a pound every 10 days. I hope this helps you and mom. cheers M

Do it, don't even think about anything weight related..

The longer she stays in her low-carb high-protein diet the less time she lives.
Atkins (I think that was his name), the protein-power no-carb dude, died at the age of fourty something because of his stupid diet.. Proteins with no carbs kill, people died water fasting while taking protein-only shakes.. It is toxic, it does bad for her liver, her stomach...

Why are people so stubborn and not just do it right.. Take her to do blood tests and send her to a nutritionist..

Thanks for the responses, but I was looking for information or experience directly related to low carb. I know the concept of calorie counting, iron-mike. I've been doing it for a while and been successful at it, which is why I want my mom to try it. She is an ex-binger and has been holding steady for a while at a 30.1 BMI. And ben_b, I agree that it isn't a healthy life style. Another reason why I want her off it.

I suppose the main things I am concerned about are:

-will switching back make her sick if done very quickly? Or should she gradually add the carbs back in?

-Will she gain initial weight even if she goes directly to a low calorie diet? She burns 1900 while sedentary and I was thinking of putting her on 15 to 1700 to start.

Need more responses, please. Thanks.

I would have her start counting calories now, just to see where she's at.  Once you've done that for a couple of weeks, then you can start gradually adding carbs back in.  Your body makes serious adjustments to that kind of diet esp when you've been doing it for a long period of time.  Like anything, a sudden change is always a shock to your system.  Ask any kid that went to an amusement park and pigged out on sweets all day how he feels later on. 

http://www.phord.com/cc/ ;

That will help her determine what she needs to be eating and get under it. That's hard to do on a high protien diet.  I suspect that she's plateaued because she's unable to restrict her caloric intake to a point below her expenditure w/o being seriously hungry. 

Dr. Atkins slipped on an icy sidewalk, fell into a coma and died from complications following the injuries sustained in the fall- at the age of 73.

 There's a lot of flat-out lies about Dr. Atkins floating around out there spread by PETA who don't give a flying fig for the truth as long as they can find a new vector for spreading their vegan propaganda.

 I'm not a fan of no-carb or low-carb dieting, I think it's based on very creative interpretations of some disjointed physiological facts, but don't go spreading PETA's lies for them.

 There's plenty of criticism that can be leveled at a high-protein diet without resorting to outright falsehoods like PETA does.

Low-carb dieting provides a slight metabolic advantage compared to regular dieting in the first 14 days or so of the diet before your metabolism readjusts itself. Thereafter, there's no metabolic advantage to high-protein/low-carb dieting compared to a regular calorie-reduced diet. Meaning that you only lose slightly more fat in the first 14 or so days of the low-carb diet compared to a standard calorie reduction, and thereafter both the low-carb and normal-carb dieter lose fat at the same rate, given the same calorie deficit. Considering how expensive a high-protein diet is compared to a standard reduced-calorie one, and the miniscule advantage it provides I don't see that it's worth it. But in the 35 years since Atkins wrote his first diet book there has yet to be any convincing and conclusive evidence that a high-protein diet is any more of a health risk than a high-carb one - no, the China Study isn't convicing, Campbells claims in the pop science book are not supported by the actual data in the study.

 As long as you manage the transition period using veggies and foods with a low glycemic load there shouldn't be much of a problem - you might want to look at using South Beach-style food as a stepping stone to a more normal diet, but the main problem people have with transitioning from low-carb to the SAD is that portion and calorie control go out the window. So as long as you count calories you shouldn't see any inexplicable rebound weight gain.

I was doing an atkins-style diet (Lyndora) before I found CC. I started counting my calories and was logging around 1000 a day. When I decided to switch it to calorie counting I was VERY sensitive to high glycemic foods. I got extremely lethargic. I suggest she add  low glycemic foods for carbs slowly over a period of time. If her calories have been seriously restricted on the low carb diet, she may gain a bit before losing. That is the hardest part because she will want to go back to the bad diet! Don't forget some kind of exercise-it will help boost her metabolism and help her stay awake (if she is like me!). Good luck

I was a strict Atkins dieter for about a year or so.  like others have said, slowly changing her diet to a low cal diet is a good idea.  i did well on atkins but just automatically, i gradually changed to a sort of south beach, sort of low cal way of eating (dont consider it a diet really, more just changing how i ate and used the info learned from atkins to help my new found eating style).  so now, i eat low fat foods, lots of veggies, small amounts of lean proteins.  i still limit my carbs, especially the hi GI ones..but have started to incorporate more whole wheat and whole grain carbs and more fruits. 

 

feanor, if mom has a history of binging, what kinds of foods triggered it? Keep that in mind. I'll hazard a guess it was more likely she binged on carbs than on, say, skinless chicken breasts . People differ! Mom's history is important in finding an approach that works for her long-term, regardless of what works for you (or for anyone else).

Plateaus occur under all approaches. If mom's best judgment is that low-carb has been a good approach for her, she should read up specifically on low-carb plateaus. For example, low-carb guru Dr. Eades blogged about this very recently (click that to see his post). Bottom line, according to him: too many calories, probably from too much dietary fat (e.g., from low-carb but very-high-fat nuts, cheeses, etc).

Will she gain initial weight even if she goes directly to a low calorie diet?

Hard to guess, because precisely what "low carb" means to you wasn't quantified. If mom was eating so few carbs that her glycogen stores were depleted, then she'll gain weight very rapidly at first after switching to a high-carb diet, as her glycogen stores are replenished. This isn't even mostly due to the glycogen itself, it's mostly due to that each gram of glycogen stored binds with 3-4 grams of water. This isn't fat weight, and has very little to do with number of calories consumed (so, no, "low calorie" eating won't prevent it). Here's a pretty readable, brief paper on the relevant biochemistry;

Glycogen storage: illusions of easy weight loss, excessive
weight regain, and distortions in estimates
of body composition

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/56/1/292S

Switching to a higher-carb diet gradually is the most effective way to limit (but not eliminate) this effect.