On today’s episode of Ask Prof Noakes Podcast we chat to Prof Noakes about a serious issue. We look at what to do if you have hit a weight loss plateau and what you should do to kick-start it.
Weight loss plateau on the LCHF Diet – What to do if you stop losing
Transcript:
A lot of people have gained interest in the LCHF diet in order to lose weight and I’m getting a lot of questions from people who have hit a weight loss plateau and are asking about set points and what can they do to kick-start it. This one in particular comes in from Sarita. She says she lost 3k’s in the first week and nothing until now. She has been doing it for 3 weeks. She doesn’t cheat, she doesn’t eat any carbs. She eats bacon, avo, egg, cream, nuts etc – is she doing something wrong?
I got another one in from Aiden, who said he’s a 47 year old type 2 diabetic who is on tablets as well as insulin. He’s been banting since September 2013, and he has managed to reduce his units from 66 units a day to 9 with his doctors guidance and approval.
Aiden says he feels wonderful and he has also managed to get rid of his costly multivitamin supplements. He has added juicing to his regime as well. The problem is he has hit a weight loss plateau and is not dropping weight beyond the 9 kg’s that he initially lost.
The LCHF Weight Loss Plateau Solution
Both of these are frequent issues found by people going on the diet. When it comes to weight loss it essentially boils down to the same thing; eating less calories. While the LCHF diet doesn’t advocate calorie counting, the bottom line is you need to reduce your calorie intake to lose weight.
The benefit of the LCHF diet here usually plays its part; as by going off carbohydrates and becoming more dependent on fat you are tending to eat less often. Not only are you cutting out a lot of calorie high processed foods from your diet, but you are now fuller for longer so eating less. This is what happens to most people, but every case is individual. The average person will continue to lose weight on this diet before they hit a plateau which is probably a more stable weight for your body.
Unfortunately this is not the case for everyone. People who tend to stop losing weight quite early on the diet generally are finding they are still hungry often. This forces you to eat too many calories still. There are plenty of cases where fat is just not filling people up so they are eating too much of it. Here you need to be not only conscious of the amount of carbohydrate you are eating, but also need to control the amount of fat you eat to see the benefits.