Yes, I learned something new yesterday.  With carbs or high carb diets, your body turns some or parts of the carbs into glycogen.  When one gram of glycogen gets stored in the body, the body retains 2.7 grams of water.

I thought that was interesting.

I could probably poke around the internet some more to see if there is some conversion factor for carbs turning  into glycogen.

So this explains the first amount of weight I lost on the Atkins diet.

The Atkins induction phase is 2 weeks long.

For me, this was back in 2003/2004.

IIRC, I lost either 12 pounds or 18 pounds in the first 2 weeks.  I can't remember exactly.  I was just shocked by how much dropped in such a little time.

That was water weight I am guessing, since I wasn't eating any carbs.  I am also guessing my body used up whatever glycogen was stored up in the muscles.  So there went the accompanying water that was retained.

No it doesn't.  An average sized man can store about 2000 calories (500g) of muscle glycogen and maybe another 100g in the liver.  2400 grams (2.4 Kg) or 5 pounds of glycogen and water and it's not like you go to zero muscle and liver glycogen on a low carb diet.

Okay, thanks for the reply.

So once that glycogen is used up, then the body has to rely on whatever it ingests for energy or it starts feeding on its own muscle or fat?

Serious question...

As a side note, with the Lard-topia thread in GD, my interest was piqued and I found this video on YouTube, "Sugar: the bitter truth":



It is an hour and a half long.

It seems that high fructose corn syrup like side steps or short circuits the body's release of a hormone called gherlin.  Gherlin is what tells your brain to stop eating.

Most of the water weight lost when transitioning to keto comes from the kidneys retaining less.

Same reason you need to up your electrolyte intake -- kidneys hold on to less.

Your body will make more glycogen from carbs or from protiens or ketones from fat for energy.

Carbs are the easiest to convert to glycogen through insulin. Proteins are more difficult and harder on your liver. Typically when fasting your body will first start producing ketones from bodyfat before using muscle proteins.

People tend to do well losing weight with adkins/keto becausr it gets your body primed to burn dietary fat. It takes some intermittent fasting to get your body to burn body fat instead of dietary fat.