[Rugger]

He's been on an atkins type diet along with my mom for 45 days according to him. He's also lost 30 pounds in those 45 days according to him. I keep telling him that that sort of loss is too fast and he'll have a difficult time keeping it off.

He was/is very overweight, though. He started at about 250 and he's only 6 ft tall. We agreed that his optimal weight would be 185-190, so he had/has a ton of body fat.

What, if anything could I help him out with, do or say?

[mrchristian]

Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn, thats a crap load of weight to lose that fast. I lost a lot of weight too a while back. I was a fat ****. The initial weight I lost flew off and then slowly leveled off. I just ate a well balanced diet and did lots of cardio. I should have def did strength training too, because im trying to build myself back up now. Anyways, is your dad working out at all? Atkins isnt exactly the healthiest diet. My friends kidney functions got all messed up when he did Atkins for a prolonged period, then when he got off he just gained the weight back.

What you really have to do is convince your dad to start eating healthy as a way of life, not just using a fad diet to lose weight as fast as possible, then start eating unhealthy again.

That is just my opinion from my personal experience, you or others may disagree, I dont see how you can go wrong with eating reasonably and working out regularly though.

[pushin40]

Its not uncommon to loose a bunch of weight on a low carb diet. It should start tapering off.. The first time I did low carb/Atkins I lost 17 lbs in 8 days then it started tapering off. You will loose a lot of water weight in the beggining

[TatCat]

I'm 52 and at 47 I was in the same boat as your dad, only worse. I'm 6'1" and weighed in at 298 pounds. Dropped a lot of weight once with a "fad diet" but soon after coming off it, the pounds just seemed to find thier way back home.(got up to 300) After that,i just changed to a healthier diet for a year and a half and got down to about 250, then hit the gym/treadmill. A year later, i was at 195(NO muscle to speak of). Have gone to weights since and have put on about 20 pounds. Bottom line, i've heard and found that the fad type diets can cause many problems and the weight you lose fast is harder to keep off. Doing it slow with life/diet changes over a longer time has seemed to work best for me.

[ozarkaBRAND]

Yeah, I'm with pushin.. It's not uncommon to lose A LOT at first; dude to glycogen depletion and water loss.

It should start to taper off, and then it should sound a bit more normal.