Hi All

I'm doing a very low carb (prob low calorie too) way of eating - it is the *only* way that has helped with my PCOS. My plan is to live low carb/low GI for life, but when I get to goal, I'll very slowly add back in one whole grain at a time - in moderation and with careful attention to the scale. I have indulgent meals every once in a while, but I really believe I can maintain whatever lifestyle will help me to be healthy and able to have kids.

Here's my question - I've heard a million times that a low carb diet will help you lose weight, but then it comes back on plus some, guaranteed. This really scares me - I feel like I don't have any other options, and it really seems to be helping so far.

What exactly is happening when people talk about regaining after doing low carb? Don't you still have to eat the extra calories to gain back the weight - or is there some body chemistry thing I don't understand?

If I'm doing all this just for the pounds to come back on their own...well I don't know

I second this very good question.

Thanks, BNB - sometimes I feel totally clueless

When you go low carb, you tend to have less water weight and the glycogen in your cells is depleted. So if you start eating carbs, your glycogen stores will be filled causing the scale to go up quickly.

I have PCOS as well but what I find that works for me is focusing on GL and whole foods but I do eat a high carb diet.

It's not at all guaranteed, but if you stop watching what you're eating, no matter what plan you're on, the weight will always come back.

There are several reasons low-carbers may lose faster (and after abandoning the diet regain faster). One reason is that it takes more water to digest carbohydrates. So low-carb dieting acts as a diruetic - you lose extra water because you don't need it. If you return to high-carb eating, before you gain any fat, you'll likely add some water weight, because your body needs more water to digest the extra carbs.

If I eat high-carb, I gain about 3 to 5 lbs of water. I know it's only water because when I go back to eating low-carb those pounds disappear by day three of low-carb and there's no way I lost 5 lbs in two days.


Another reason low-carbers may regain faster when they abandon low-carb dieting is the carbohydrate hunger cycle. Low-carb curbs my hunger tremendously, while high-carb dieting fuels it. If I return to high-carb eating my hunger goes into massive overdrive.

Can you return to a high-carb diet ever again? Maybe, maybe not. For myself, I suspect probably not. I do have occasional high-carb days, but if I make it a habit, I regain, or I stop losing.

People will tell you that low-carb is unsustainable. I would have agreed, until I learned that it's the only way I can lose weight without being so miserable that I eventually give up. I'd better find a way to make it sustainable, because it's the only choice I have outside wls (and a high-protein, usually low-carb diet is prescribed after surgery anyway).

I know that if I stop dieting I will gain (and probably faster than if I weren't losing weight on mostly low-carb, but I see no other alternative. I feel less hunger on 1500 calories of low-carb than on 3,000 calories of high-carb. I lose better on 1800 calories of high-carb than on 1500 calories of low-carb. It makes more sense to make low-carb sustainable than to try to lose or maintain my weight on high-carb eating.

If you believe that low-carb is unhealthy and unsustainable for the long-term, and you have no intention of monitoring carb-content once you lose the weight, low-carb dieting may not be for you. Many low-carb diets, at suggest that people can increase carb levels once they reach goal, but if they gain weight, they're to reduce their carb intake to whichever carb-level allows them to maintain their weight.

I do think with any diet, you have to be willing to monitor your eating and your weight forever. How closely you have to monitor, will depend entirely upon you. As long as you're experimenting, watching the scale, and never giving up, large regains aren't inevitable, you just have to be willing to nip potential problems in the bud.

I'm willing to eat low-carb forever, so I'm not worried about regain this time. For me regain happened whenever I went off a diet, and I don't intend to ever go off an effective WOE. I might find that I can increase carbs when I'm at goal weight, I might not. I'm ok with either scenario.

Wow, thank you so much for your replies.

So does that mean that, after the carb-water weight, 30lbs lost on a low calorie diet will still be regained more slowly than 30lbs lost on low carb?

And if I understand correctly, regaining on both diets isn't something that happens all at once - either way, its a matter of going back to the previous unhealthy way of eating - I think that's what you're saying, which makes me feel a little better.

One of the only positive things about having PCOS is that, even though it took me years, I have finally accepted that my body is not normal - and though I'm so thankful that I'm generally healthy otherwise, PCOS is indeed an incurable syndrome that must be addressed. I absolutely intend on keeping up with this.

I'll expand on that because of my own PCOS and my WOE.

I recognize that I am low(er) carb than "normal" but I am not following a standard low carb diet like Atkinds or South Beach.

But the way that I am seeing my diet is as this is a way of eating for the rest of my life.

Because I have insulin resistance because of my PCOS, I will never be able to eat cookies and cake and Wonder bread and all those other refined carbs like I used to (or like other people can), period, the end. This is regardless of how much I may be weighing at the time.

Eating carbs, for someone who has IR, means that our bodies don't create the right amounts of insulin to manage the glucose that is in our blood and our bodies then convert that excess glucose into fat because it doesn't know what else to do with it. My understanding is that is why it's so hard for us to lose weight and why a lot of us find that removing the sugar spikes/crashes make us feel better and help us lose weight.

I don't plan on introducing cakes and cookies in my life except in special occasions. In other words, I won't be going back to the way that I was eating before. I can't, not for my health (or my weight loss!).

With low carb, you are creating a calorie deficit and you are generally maintaining a steady blood sugar level which is caused by refined carbs and other foods with a high GL.

If you break low carb, then you will see a quick regain of a few pounds due to the glycogen. If you break low carb and go for refined carbs, then your blood sugar becomes unstable causing you to have intense cravings for food. As a result, you eat a calorie surplus causing weight gain. Same goes for someone who uses calorie counting to lose weight, if they create a calorie surplus, they gain.

There is no real 'magic' in terms of losing weight on one plan and then having to stay on that plan or else. Someone on low carb, could switch to calorie counting and experience no regain, other than possibly the water weight caused by introducing a higher carb intake. Often people get stuck with the maintenance phase of low carb and may have difficulty keeping low carb but don't know how to switch to something like calorie counting. The maintenance phase of calorie counting is just basically keep calorie counting, no matter what combo of eating happens.

Having said that, there are others who do both low carb and calorie counting. I think calorie counting is useful or at least being calorie 'aware' in terms of what you eat.

I don't think there is a yes or no to this question, because I think there are too many variables that have to be factored in.

There's also not a lot of scientifically reliable evidence that low-carbers actually do regain faster. It's mostly anectdotal.

Even if low-carbers do regain faster, it's possible that they regain faster because they expect to regain faster (self-fulfilling prophecy is a powerful force).





That's been my experience exactly. I've been dieting since I was 5 years old, and I've lost and gained thousands of pounds, and I can tell you that the weight definitely never came back all at once, and never occured while I was still dieting and monitoring my food intake.

My normal pattern (regardless of the diet) was to get discouraged when the weight loss slowed or I experienced a couple small gains. Instead of seeing this as normal, or as a small setback, I saw it as a tragedy that proved I I was lazy, crazy, and stupid; that I would never make it to goal; that I was doomed to be fat, so it didn't matter what I ate. It was a rage and rebellion response more than anything else.

It sometimes seemed like "one day" I woke up fatter than before, but it wasn't one day. It was weeks or months. Now I can gain 10 lbs per week if I really put my mind to it (or more accurately if I shovel the food in, refusing to think about what I'm eating).

Personally, I never noticed a difference in speed between low-carb and high-carb, though to be fair, I only attempted low-carb dieting a few times, and never stuck with it for more than 3 or 4 weeks (I cut carbs and calories so low that I was constantly naueseos and fainting, rather than raising carbs/calories slightly or eating more often, I quit thinking that my problems were proof that the diet was unhealthy and unsustainable. I never tried moderately low-carb dieting
until my doctor recommended low-carb dieting for my insulin resistance but warned my not to go too low (admitting though that he didn't know how low that was).

I've never lost weight as slow as "this time," but almost from the start, I noticed that each diet was harder and slower than the last. If only I had learned these things on my first or even tenth diet, but I didn't, so that boat has sailed. I am finding that as my health gets better I can exercise more, and I'm sure that will help, but I know this time there will be no failure, because I've vowed that no matter what I've given up on giving up.

For me, the daily weigh-in is key. For some people it's a demotivator, but for me it helps alot, keeping me focused. It also helped me learn about normal weight fluctuations so that I don't get so freaked out when I gain weight for "no apparent reason" (it's even helped me identify some of the reasons PMS/TOM, high volume food/beverage days, high-carb days, exercise, constipation, sodium-related water retention). There are still some unexplained voodoo days, but I know there's no way for me to regain without my concent and cooperation.

I also look at my first job as being weight maintenance. Of course I want to lose more weight, but in the past when weight loss felt impossible, I felt like giving up. But giving up on weight loss isn't just giving up on weight loss, it's accepting weight gain. I've never heard of anyone who quit a diet that maintained the losses they'd already acheived. They always regained at least as much as they lost, and usually more.

I have to remind myself that every pound matters (because diet "tradition" tells us to feel that only getting to goal matters. When that seems impossible we think "what's the use, I might as well eat whatever I want, because I'll always be fat."

I have to remind myself almost daily that every pound, every ounce matters. I may not lose another pound, but I can at least keep off what I've got, and now (finally) I see the value in that - and that's the only reason "this time" is different, because weight mainteance comes first. I will not let myself think that regaining even a single opound doesn't matter. As long as I remember that it matters, I don't fear regaining.

I started at the end of Oct. on a low-calorie and very low carb medically supervised diet-lost slowly but steadily. 2 weeks ago the Dr. I see insisted that I add 2 fruits and a small amount of starch each day. I was supposed to do it sooner but was afraid that i would either stop losing, gain back some weight or get out of control hunger from these additions.

Surprisingly -none of these things happened! I lost at the exact same pace I've been losing and haven't experienced additional feelings of hunger. The important thing to do is to eat the fruit and/or starch along with the protein.

This way of eating is so "doable" that I can see it as a way of life and am beginning to be hopeful about keeping my weight off this time. Hope this helps -L.

If the diet (whatever type it is) makes you feel great, there is (in my mind anyways) no reason to every consider another diet after weight loss.

Only Atkins does the carb climb, and it is not for everyone. Those of us with other health issues (I use low carb to manage diabetes) or obesity (raises hand) may not ever really be able to climb the carb ladder and be successful at stopping there. Whenever anyone gets to goal, there are many factors to maintaining weight and the tendency to think one will never regain all of the loss taints the idea of sticking close to the very plan that one lost weight on and felt great on. The behaviours, the triggers, all of the things that were the links that got us to the point of deciding to lose weight, those things just don't disappear with weight loss.

Having been there, done that way too many times, I finally get it, that I will always have to always be on my "diet" if i want to avoid the complications of diabetes and regain the weight I lost. A worthwhile venture to me. So, yes, some weight gain is common, as we learn to adjust our eating to maintenance level, but usually it is in finding the right calorie balance, and not by adding more carbs. Even on Atkins, once that carb level is found to maintain weight, it can't go above that. That is a permanent maintenance number.

Lots to consider, but the most important one to consider now, is whether what you are eating now is sustainable in the future, with a few minor adjustments?

I'm on Atkins, and this very thing has worried me, too. I'm only 18 and I know that I'll have to eat like this for the rest of my life. It doesn't really sound as scary as it used to. Once I get to goal I'm excited about adding in more fruits, veggies, and grains, and never eating an appetizer-sized plate of nachos ever again is a small price to pay for health, fitness, and confidence (which I only briefly had when I was the "proper" weight and height for about a year in middle school).

You're going to gain the weight back if you go off-plan for any diet. You have to think of it like this:

Say you lose weight on a 1400-calorie diet and then meet goal. You start adding foods back in and it gets out of control, and you go up to 2500 calories a day. You'll gain the weight back.

Say you lose weight on a 35 carb diet a day. You start adding foods back in and it gets out of control, and your carbs spike up to the 200-300s. You'll gain the weight back.

It will happen on any diet as long as you don't monitor your food intake. If low-carb makes you feel good, then great! I love it too, and this is a great WOE for me. As long as you think you can eat this way for life you won't gain the weight back.

Add 5-10 carbs per week, and slowly add in foods one at a time to find out how your body reacts to them and how many carbs you can eat without gaining. Cut out foods that trigger cravings, and you're golden. People who say you gain the weight back plus some are people who lose weight, think they're "done" and then start eating all of the crap they ate before.

Good luck! I know you can do it.

I've been low carb since August. My trainer is having me introduce a little bit of carbs at a time. Right now just two times a week. He says this will help not gain back weight from the carbs... just add back a little at a time.

The key (I hope) for successful maintenance following a low carb weight reduction diet is gliding in for a soft landing on your goal. By the time you get there you should know in some detail what it takes to keep your weight stable.

Calorie counters and fat counters could say the same thing about their diets, of course. However you get the weight off, there's a learning curve you have to get through before you have much chance of keeping it off.