You nailed the low-carb, keto, carnivore diet perfectly. Only to find out you’ve been carrying an extra 10lbs? In today’s NJroute22.com VLOG – we’ll talk about some ways you might gain weight without realizing.
WTF? Weight gain on low carb, keto, or carnivore? How?
For argument’s sake – let’s just say we were the same weight for the first 9 months of 2019 – 200lbs (+/- 2lbs).
We were so tired of seeing the same weight on the scale – we stopped weighing ourselves. We had about 15lbs to go for our goal – but were content.
Then one day at the end of the year – we tried the scale again, and what? 210lbs! Had to be a mistake!
A week later – 210lbs.
another week later – 210lbs.
and so on. We were “stuck” for lack of a better word.
Our weight plateau just increased by 5%! Even with exact same diet! How? And this was not muscle.
4 causes for weight fluctuations (gain) on low-carb, keto, and carnivore – our theories
We’re certainly not alarmed by a minor change. Because we know we’re still on the right path.
But we do want to understand what could be some of the causes? We can think of at least FOUR possible reasons.
- Minor cheats. We rarely, if ever “cheat” on our low-carb lifestyle. We’ve been there enough to know what we’re getting into. But we did have moderate amounts of popcorn two or three times.
- Low-carb ice cream. While not considered a “cheat” per se, we did eat between 10-20 pints of the low-carb ice cream within about three months. Perhaps the extra fuel was to blame since these didn’t replace other caloric intakes.
- End of summer. We’re very active during the summer, primarily with outdoor landscaping work. The reduction of physical “burn,” may play a minor role.
- Alcohol. While we do consume alcohol regularly all year with no weight gain – drinking, when combined with the other three possibilities above probably did not help whatsoever. And taking a day off here and there doesn’t help much either. We’re thinking that putting together “streaks” of non-consumption will benefit us. At least two days consecutively – the more the better. This likely applies to all phases of low-carb living, not just during fluctuations. Abstinence would be ideal – and we’re keeping that in the back of our head. Remember it’s nearly impossible to burn stored body fat while processing the alcohol from your system (i.e., overnight).
What kind of issues do you run into with your low-carb life? Besides cheats, of course!
