How Do I Get Back Into Ketosis Faster After Cheating?
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| Need to get back into ketosis after cheating? Here is the quickest way I know without having to FAST. |
Did you let go of Keto for the holidays? Have a free meal? Maybe a carb up? Or go out to dinner?
Restaurants are well known for hiding sugar in their salad dressings and putting other carby ingredients into their food that you might not know about. What you expect to be low carb isn't always as low as you think.
All it takes is a single teaspoon of sugar in the salad dressing or a light dusting of flour on that chicken breast, and you'll experience the consequences without even know why!
However, all is not lost!
You can recover from your setback and get back into ketosis almost as quickly as water fasting by following the Keto cheat recovery plan outlined below.
Tempting Christmas treats are the downfall of many.
Perhaps, you deliberately caved in to those delicious looking cupcakes or a soft, fluffy donut that your boss or co-worker brought into the office. The holidays are not the only time that your self discipline and love for low carb eating will be put to the test.
Maybe you went on vacation and decided to not bother with all of that carb counting stuff. If so, you might have gained a few pounds. You also might have decided to chuck the low-carb dieting game, kick back, eat what you consider a normal diet, and just enjoy your vacation.
All of that delicious food looked too good to pass up!
If you work out regularly and did a carb up to improve hormonal balance by bumping up your Leptin level, you might also be wondering if there's a way to get back into ketosis more quickly than water fasting. If so, this article will help you, too.
Recovery from a cheat or carb up isn't as difficult as you think. By following the Keto cheat and carb-up recovery agenda explained in this post, within no time at all you'll be back to burning fats and on your way to your goal.
(If you're merk new to Keto check out our article on How to Get Into Ketosis in Less than 3 Days for a more detailed look at ketosis. This article also includes a 3-day sajian to help you get started with low carb right away!)
Send Your Inner Critic to Her Room!
If you deliberately cheated, I have a little advice that will help you recover mentally and emotionally, as well as physically.Since you have now come to your senses, you know you blew it, but you're hoping that it won't harm your Keto Diet efforts too much. Right? You're hoping there's a way to not have to pay the consequences for eating off plan.
Well . . .
Whatever happened, it's over now. Don't beat yourself up about it.
Regardless of what your inner critic is telling you, all is not lost.
Low-carb living comes with a huge learning curve. Dr. Atkins always told his readers to expect to one day fall from grace. It's the setbacks and mistakes that teach us what we can and cannot do to reach and maintain goal weight.
Weight loss isn't a non-challenging, pleasant journey.
You need to be observant, learn about yourself, reevaluate your false beliefs, and deliberately decide to keep the pounds coming off.
Rocky moments and skinned knees are a part of the process of learning about yourself. And it's the learning that will help you be successful.
Whether you cheated on your diet, accidentally ate more carbs than you thought, took a diet break, or want to know the fastest way to recover after a carb up, this article will reveal the fastest way to get back into ketosis after going off your low-carb plan.
So, buckle up for the ride. Here's what you need to do now.
What's Your Emotional Mindset Like After Cheating?
Right about now, the Ketostix might be giving you a bad time.Instead of turning pink this morning, they stayed beige. The scale bounced up a pound or two, and now, you're craving those chocolate chip cookies you used to make for the kids before you went on Keto.
Your inner critic is giving you the riot act.
You're afraid that you aren't in ketosis anymore. You desperately want to fix the dilema – fast. But you don't know how.
You know that you gotta:
- get the sticks turning lavender again
- lose the excess water weight as quick as possible
- get your low-carb diet back on track
You really want to feel that upswing in energy, and you want to see the scale moving downward again.
RIGHT NOW!
So what’s the fastest way to get back into ketosis after you blew it?
The body has several options when it comes to fuel:
- liver glycogen
- extra-cellular glucose
- amino acids
- muscle glycogen
- dietary fatty acids
- adipose tissue (stored triglycerides)
- ketones
When you follow a low-carb diet, the body predominantly burns fatty acids for fuel because glucose is in very short supply, but when glucose becomes available, such as after a cheat or carb up, dietary fat stays stored temporarily and your body burns the glucose that you just gave it instead.
When restricting carbohydrates, the easiest form of glucose for the body to use comes from vegetables or incidental carbs. If more energy is needed, certain amino acids can also be burned directly for fuel. This saves ketones for use by the brain.
Since glucose is limited, basal insulin level stays low. The flood of fatty acids keeps your hunger and cravings for sugar in check. As soon as those minimal vegetable carbs are used to feed the brain, the body gets right back to burning fatty acids for energy.
This is known as fat adaption.
When you're fat adapted, the body can easily switch back and forth between oxidizing fats and oxidizing glucose, depending on which fuel source is available.
Fat adapted folks have an easier time getting back into ketosis after a cheat because the body is efficient at burning all types of fuel sources. It doesn't have to be retrained.
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| As long as your glycogen stores are in a depleted state, the extra carbs you eat are not turned into body fat. They are stored in the liver as glycogen. |
The carbohydrates you overate are not turned into body fat unless your liver glycogen is already full.
Glycogen can be stored in the liver or your muscles. Having some amount of liver glycogen is essential for keeping blood glucose levels from falling too low in between meals or at night while you sleep.
Muscle glycogen cannot be converted back into glucose and dumped into the bloodstream because the muscles have their own energy system. Instead, this type of glycogen is utilized as fuel by the muscles and turned into ATP, which is burned directly by the muscles. The muscles do not share their fuel supply with the liver.
The ATP conversion can be extremely fast, making muscle glycogen useful for periods when extreme bursts of energy are necessary. This is why being fat adapted is so essential to a healthy metabolism.
Refilling your glycogen stores can help bump up Leptin, but it will also result in a weight gain of a pound or two because the body stores water along with glycogen for later processing. If you overate a lot of food, this sudden weight gain can be as much as 5 or even 10 pounds.
But that immediate weight gain isn't body fat.
Most of it is glycogen and water.
The amount of glycogen that the body can store isn't unlimited. The liver can store about 80 carbs worth of glycogen and your muscles hold about 200 to 300. To use muscle glycogen, you have to MOVE your muscles. Just eating less won't do it.
So, if you only fell off the wagon for a single meal or two, purposely carbed up for 5 hours, or you experienced a restaurant accident, the damage will only be a temporary setback -- even if you completely refilled your glycogen stores. In fact, that's the PURPOSE of a carb up. To refill glycogen.
On the other hand, if you chucked your Keto Diet for a one or two weeks' vacation, you might have to re-lose a few pounds of body fat. Once glycogen stores are full, the body has to either burn those extra calories in some type of metabolic upswing, or they have to be stored. In our desk-job society, most carbs over and above what your body can use are stored as fat. But not always.
Some people do have metabolisms that rev up to take care of the excess or they'll feel a strong urge to move more.
No matter which situation you're in, don't fret. There's a quick way to get back into ketosis after you cheat or carb up.
What is the Quickest Way to Get Into Ketosis After Cheating?
The body uses liver glycogen (the storage form of carbohydrates) to keep your blood glucose within a narrow, tight margin.
But within a few hours after restricting carbohydrates, the glycogen level drops so low that the body has to do something drastic. Since the brain can only use glucose or ketones for fuel, not fatty acids, the liver has to get its hands on some fuel for the brain -- fast!
At first, protein oxidation increases to cover the brain's immediate needs, but robbing your muscles for amino acids comes at a high cost, so within a few days, the liver begins to seriously ramp up its production of ketones, a by-product from breaking down triglycerides.
A small amount of glucose can be made from the glycerol attached to triglyceride, so the liver will sometimes pull a large amount of fat out of your fat stores. This is more common in newbies. More likely, the body will dismantle the dietary fat you eat, and use that to keep the brain going.
These ketones, glucogenic amino acids, and the small amount of glucose made from a variety of non-dietary sources can provide fuel for the brain as well as many other body functions, but as carbohydrate restriction continues throughout the week, the production of ketones and burning ketones for fuel will eventually reach a peak.
The brain can use ketones for up to 75% of its needs, so protein oxidation will go down after the first week. This saves your muscle mass, which is critical to sustain life.
By the beginning of week 2, fat burning will be in full swing, so the muscles, organs, and other body systems that can use fat for energy will begin to use fatty acids, rather than ketones.
This saves the ketones and what little glucose is available for the brain.
As time goes on, the liver will get better at judging how many ketones to make, so fewer ketone fragments will be discarded without being used. Once the body adapts to the state of ketosis, fat loss will also slow down to a normal pace.
When you refill your glycogen stores after a cheat, lengthy vacation, or carb up, returning to your low-carb diet agenda simply starts this ketogenic process all over again.
The length of time it takes to return to an efficient state of predominantly burning fatty acids for fuel depends on how full your glycogen stores were at the time you went over on carbs, as well as how many carbohydrates you ate. Those carbing up will probably have consumed an enormous amount of carbs, while a single cupcake will provide relatively few.
The more glycogen you have stored, the longer it will take to get back into ketosis.
Therefore, the fastest way to get back into ketosis after you cheat or carb up is to eat a minimum amount of carbohydrate and up your activity level. The fewer carbohydrates you eat and the more active you are, the faster your glycogen stores will get depleted. And it is the initial depletion of glycogen that triggers the state of ketosis.
The length of time it takes to return to an efficient state of predominantly burning fatty acids for fuel depends on how full your glycogen stores were at the time you went over on carbs, as well as how many carbohydrates you ate. Those carbing up will probably have consumed an enormous amount of carbs, while a single cupcake will provide relatively few.
The more glycogen you have stored, the longer it will take to get back into ketosis.
Therefore, the fastest way to get back into ketosis after you cheat or carb up is to eat a minimum amount of carbohydrate and up your activity level. The fewer carbohydrates you eat and the more active you are, the faster your glycogen stores will get depleted. And it is the initial depletion of glycogen that triggers the state of ketosis.
How Many Carbs Should You Eat to Recover from a Cheat?
The amount of carbohydrate the Meat-and-Egg Diet or a Meat, Egg, and Cheese Diet contain is normally less than 5 grams, so you can get back into ketosis quite quickly by paring your carbs down to the bone.
In 1972, Dr. Atkins shared how eating a small 2-cup salad per day, along with the meat, eggs, and cheese, was acted on by the body as if you hadn't eaten the salad at all. He called it eating at biologically zero carb, which is a bit different from a true zero-carb diet.
True zero-carb diets contain no plant foods at all.
I always did an Atkins 72 Induction, rather than just meat and eggs, whenever I ate a free meal, needed to re-feed, or wanted to take my birthday or holiday off. I didn't have a good physical response to zero-carb diets. My body needs a higher carb intake.
Our Atkins 72 Induction Food List article explains everything you need to know to follow the original Atkins Induction. It's super low in carbs, but the salad and high-fat salad dressing allowed seems to provide a great deal of normalcy.
Need a Specific Low-Carb Menu to Follow?
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| If you need a sajian to help you get back into ketosis faster, try our Atkins 72 Menu for seven days. |
If you need a specific sajian to follow, rather than the Atkins 72 food list that I linked to above, check out our menu article for Atkins 72. It includes recipes and even a shopping list for 7 days, so you can get started right away.
Many low carbers choose to cut their carbohydrate level back to a bare minimum because sugar, wheat, and other food sensitivities can cause bloating and severe discomfort after eating off plan.
Eating a biologically zero-carb diet or a diet that contains less than 5 grams of carbohydrates per day will reverse those uncomfortable symptoms quickly since you aren't eating any low-carb products that are heavy on wheat protein.
Another way to get less than 5 or 10 carbs per day is to switch to using only weight-loss shakes for a couple of days, rather than eating whole foods. This method works quite well and can also be useful for breaking a stall.
In fact, Dr. Eades, author of the Protein Power Life Plan actually lost all of his weight by using high-protein meal-replacement shakes instead of low-carb foods.
If you need a faster correction, then a no-carb diet and lots of extra movement for a couple of days will get you there the quickest, but keep in mind that this is only a temporary fix.
Once you are solidly in ketosis, you need to return to whatever ketogenic diet you were following before you went off plan. That way, you can be sure that you're eating a healthy, nutrient-dense diet, while slowly moving toward your weight-loss goal.
