Is the Keto Diet Plan Failing You? What To Do Instead.
Today we are talking about the Keto Diet Plan, and more specifically, what to do if it is not working for you. Thank you to Noom, for partnering with me to help share healthy lifestyle tips this week. I'll be talking about our family's experience with a low carb diet and sharing my own opinions in this post. Affiliate links are used in this post.
The ketogenic diet has been around for ages and these days can easily be mixed up with a low carb diet, the atkins diet and other weight loss programs.
I am actually proud to know several friends and family members who have thrived on a keto diet for years. Some even see marked health benefits depending on their specific health needs (some studies show a keto diet can help manage type 2 diabetes, which is encouraging). There is no denying that living low carb or in ketosis can be a lifelong solution for some people.
If you are one of the people living low carb for the longterm, I am SO excited that you found what works best for you.
And, may I invite you to hang out with my best bloggy buddy Georgina, over at Step Away From the Carbs? She is a prime example of someone living and loving the low carb lifestyle, having been low carbing for over ten years!
But if you're not seeing the results you want from a Keto Diet, or any other diet for that matter, keep reading….
Is Keto Right For Everyone?
Sticking to foods that are high in fat, or at least low in carbs, is not for everyone. And that is okay. One diet can work for one person and not for the next. Me and Georgina are perfect examples of that.
While I have several shining examples to look at regarding how to low carb, my husband and I have never been able to make it work for us long term.
LalyDad actually has more experience with eating low carb and staying in ketosis than I do. He has gone low carb several times since I've known him.
He loves the black and white guidelines, and how easy it is to know what to eat and what not to eat. It's easier to make a healthy shopping list with those guidelines.
Even though I wasn't always low carbing with him, my own diet would start to tend more to the proteins and fats while he was low carbing. Which is great because we would cut way back on processed foods and added sugar.
However over time, life takes over and the carbs sneak back in. Business lunches, holiday parties, birthday parties and vacations are rarely keto friendly. They start to feel like hurdles to clear.
For him, eating low carb was more of a time to observe moderation, to really focus, to lose the weight, and then get back to life.
For others there also can be side effects. If you are not balancing your nutrition following a keto diet can contribute to vitamin deficiencies.
So now we know that keto diets works for some people and not others.
If a keto meal plan is not working for you, it's time to take a good look at your eating habits and find a long term plan that is going to help you meet your goals.
What To Do When Other Diets Don't Work?
Something I hear from friends, family and fans of my website, over and over again is, “I have tried every diet out there and I lose the weight and I just regain it after I stop.”
I have been in your shoes, and it is so frustrating to put in all that work, get results (or sometimes NOT get the results) and then gain weight after you stop.
But I finally realized why this happens.
I realized that whether you lose weight on a Keto diet or any other diet, is that none of them teach you to deal with your real bad habits.
- Keto doesn't help you stop stress eating. You can stress eat hard boiled eggs and string cheese…or whatever your favorite low carb foods are.
- You can mindlessly eat foods with healthy fats like olive oil and coconut oil.
- You can bring low carb foods to parties but you can still overeat on them. Social eating is a hard habit to break no matter what food groups you eat.
- If you are working out along with your diet, burning fat, toning up…it's to come home after exercise and ravage, looking for any foods to eat, and in that time of weakness it's easier to cave to cravings.
If you have ANY ingrained bad eating habits, none of the popular diets out there help you deal with them by simply cutting out food groups.
If you DON'T have any bad habits then you are probably one of those people who can maintain keto or another eating plan for life.
But if you do have bad habits, it really doesn't matter what diet you follow, unless you have a plan to break your bad habits and develop new, healthy habits, you will likely always finish a diet and go back to your old habits.
I know because I have been in those shoes.
Choose a Diet Plan To Break Your Lifelong Habits
Almost two years ago (WOW!) I was 1 pound away from the heaviest I've ever been (including my pregnancies).
I had tried to lose weight over the years but any weight I lost seemed to come right back.
Have you ever felt that way? It's maddening.
I needed something different. I had heard of Noom but I thought it was just another fad diet.
Turns out it really isn't. It's actually an easy-to-use app that give your little snippets to read each day (like the length or a facebook or instagram post) that help you identify your bad habits.
You read about common weight loss obstacles (hello there, stress eating!), you think about them in terms of your own life and then you come up with a PLAN to stop.
I actually have goose bumps even talking about it.
I mean. If you had told me before Noom that I could stop stress eating, stop the hulk rage as I rummage through the pantry, quit mindlessly shoving food in my mouth, or control my eating on a night out and still have fun….I mean. I would have looked at you like you're crazy.
But remember, I was one pound away. I didn't have time to doubt.
I was ready. I had to commit to myself and do the work to get my eating under control.
I did the two week trial but I knew I was going to do the paid version- If I gave myself an easy out I knew I'd see that one-more-pound soon.
The good news is that it's almost two years from the day I started on the Noom Weight Loss App, and I still haven't see that pound.
