Low carb help? Only lost 3 lbs?

3lbs in a week is good. In the long term you will likely average 1lb a week. You are also don't seem to be far from your ideal weight being in the 130s. You will likely see more results in changes to your body composition vs extreme weight loss. As long as you feel like your workouts are improving week to week you are making progress.

If you have been a yo yo dieter why would you do another diet? Why not learn how and what to eat to do this for a lift time. Also, an active 18 yr old has the ability to eat a lot more calories than what you are eating. One of the issues you are facing is you keep going back to low cal diets which arent good for you. Most of the women I know your age are eating 1800 + calories and losing weight. The issue with lcd's is you tend to lose more muscle which can hurt long term results and caus3 you to binge.

My best advice is drop aktins and start learning how to eat. Start with 1500 and eventually but it up a few hundred calories. Also, work on getting whole lean meats, fresh fruits and veggies. Also develop a good workout routine that consist of weught training and some cardio. If you see that success will come and stay.

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The effects of a low carb diet seem to show a speeding up of the metabolism and preservation of muscle.

It did neither of those things.

I want to change my body composition to lose fat and gain muscle.

You won't gain muscle eating at a deficit.

If I can't gain muscle then at least I'll lose fat... I don't want to be super skinny anymore, just slim enough to fit into my shorts and jeans. I'm a pear shape : /

You'll lose muscle, probably retain your body fat and feel crappy. What you are doing is very disordered eating and not healthy. I realize that you're 18 and indestructible. I also sense that you really don't want advice but affirmation that what you are doing is right. It's not.

You seriously need to educate yourself about diet and nutrition. No, fat will not just come off your hips, butt and thighs. Fat deposits are everywhere on your body. You may carry more in those spots than others but it's still everywhere. You won't gain or maintain muscle mass eating low calories. It just doesn't work that way and eating low carb for the rest of your life doesn't guarantee not gaining weight. Bread, sugar, desserts and crap are not evil, they don't make you fat. Eating too much makes you fat. Plain and simple.

It's totally in your head that you can't eat more. You can eat as many calories as you want, you just have to make different food choices. Eat calorie dense foods, peanut butter, avocado, full fat dairy, meat, eggs, nuts. You're young and have already developed some bad ideas about food, dieting and weight so in order to avoid a life time of yo yoing and the inherent health risks, take the time to listen to what people are telling you now. You keep making excuses for why you plan to continue doing what you're doing. Don't ask for advice if you aren't willing to listen and take it in.

I think when she said she loses off her hips and thighs, she meant that's where it goes from first. To be fair, I always say I lose like a melting candle - face, boobs, belly then legs last. Of course there are fat cells everywhere but my initial obvious places to lose are always upper body.

I hate that a lot of people on this site word their responses in an unnecessarily aggressive way - everyone has to start somewhere, maybe this thread is the thread that will help OP begin to consider changes to her routine. Your last line was just totally unnecessary.

OP, if I understand your comment correctly, I gather what you're saying is you want to lose fat and preserve muscle mass. With any weight loss there's going to be some loss of LBM along with the fat - my understanding of maximising fat loss and minimising LBM loss is to incorporate strength training into your routine, eat at a MODERATE deficit (so probably a few hundred higher than the 1200 your on - TDEE -20% might be a good place to start) and eat at least one gram of protein per lean pound of body weight. Atkins presumably covers the protein requirements, but you should definitely consider upping your calories and incorporating a strength training workout. Weight loss is a constant battle and I absolutely understand the desire to race to the finish line, but sometimes slow and steady really is the best approach. Good luck in meeting your goals!

I think you've lost just about what you were supposed to lose. Your diary seems to show that you're averaging 40-60 carbs per day. Atkins induction is supposed to be 0-20 carbs per day. You are probably not in full ketosis just yet, but the calorie deficit and reduced glycogen stores are where that 3 pounds went.

You can buy ketosis test strips from any pharmacy over-the-counter to see if you're in ketosis. If you keep doing what you're doing, you will probably continue to see 0.5-1.5 pounds per week. If you can cut the carbs a bit more, I think you'll see a more consistent 1.5-2.5 pounds per week. I wouldn't expect huge drops when you don't really have all that much to lose.

My first week of low-carb was through a medically-supervised very low calorie, low carb diet plan. I lost over 12 pounds in the first week but I was only eating 500-800 calories per day and no carbs (0-10 carbs/day). After that, I lost about 5 pounds a week for the 3 weeks I did it. I stopped because it wasn't a lifestyle change I could live with and I didn't want to pay $80 per week to see the doctor. I went back to 1200-1500 calories per day and kept that weight off and lost more on top of that. (Also, you won't have these results because I was about 320 pounds when I started low carb and 281 right now!)

I'm not telling you my experience to try and talk you out of it. I just wanted to qualify my statements and opinions so you can decide for yourself whether I'm full of $*** or not. Overall, I think low carb is a great way to trim some pounds so long as you realize that once you go back on carbs, you will gain 3-5 pounds of water weight back when your glycogen stores refill. Most people, without knowing that fact, will think they have ruined their diet and will go back to old (bad) habits and end up gaining the weight back (and then some). Having a plan for going to maintenance mode is a VITAL component to ANY weight loss plan, regardless of how you lose the weight in the first place!

Good luck to you!

Do you work out and if so, how often and what do you do?