Everyone wants to get to their goal weight. They put their eyes on a number and go for it. That’s okay and dandy to set your goal that way If its what drives you. I would say that having an ideal range would be a better option. The reason being is on your weight journey down, you may like the way you feel at a certain point. Mark that down and keep trucking along. If you get really lean you may like the way you look, but you may not like how you feel. I know that may sound crazy to some of you, but it’s the truth. The body is built for survival, and doesn’t necessarily care about your beach look with shredded abs.
So what’s the point? There may be a way you can have close to both if you want. BUT when you go off of your diet, you will gain weight ( if you’re dropping carbs lower which everyone will because they’re dropping cals to lose weight).
Why will I gain weight? Will it be fat?
The answer is it depends. We’ll use a few scenarios.
Scenario 1. IF you stop dieting and exercising and go back to what you were doing before you started then yeah. You’ll gain it back and then some. This is the truth behind creating a lifestyle out of exercise and nutrition. The calorie deficit will go away but the habits stay.
Scenario 2. Someone on a ketogenic diet that reverts back to a moderate carbohydrate nutrient rich diet will have a significant rebound in water retention, but its water not fat.
This is the most common misconception with a ketogenic diet. The first few weeks of cutting out carbohydrates you drop a significant amount of weight which is water mostly and some fat depending upon your cal consumption. The avg Male around 175 pounds stores almost a pound of water in his liver alone in carbs (about .75lbs)
80 kg Male converted to pounds 176lb
Glycogen storage in liver: 100-125g
Glycogen water retention per gram:3g
100g to 125g x3 g of water retention = 300g-375g
300g-375g convert to pounds
1pd= 453.5g
300 to 375 ÷ 453.5g = .662 to .82 pds of water.
And that’s just the liver. Your muscles contain alot more glycogen than your liver.
Take my word for it . I don’t need to make this into a math equation article. The avg 175 pd male is going to have around 7-13 pounds of water weight on them depending on the type of exercise they involve themselves in. So if you’re 175 pds on keto, you may be around 182-188 lbs off of keto assuming the calories are equated the same. And thats okay! It’s still a successful weight loss.
Do not be surprised if you were keto adapted, and start having some flatulence when you add carbs back into your diet. Your body needs time to develop an adaption to eating carbohydrates again. If you are a healthy body weight (8-19 for men roughly) and (21-33 for women) then the body should be able to tolerate carbs as an energy source without an issue.
If you are ending a diet, I would consider adding in carbs slowly to get yourself adapted to the new energy source. start with 5-10% of a calorie increase for 2 weeks and slowly add in 50-100 every week to 3 weeks to adapt.
Adding in 400 calories from carbs all at once could cause some supercompensation and cause a great spike in water weight. If you’re okay with this, then go for it. If not take the gradual approach from above.
If you want to go to a more standard way of eating, consider your fats to be around 20-30% of your daily calorie intake carbs being 35-50% of calorie intake and protein intake 20-35% of percent of your daily calorie intake. include 2 fruits and 2 servings of vegetables per 1000 calories eaten. This will allow a freedom and a longer sustainable approach to keeping the weight off.
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