Healthy Diet at Home

This morning I was taking a stroll through some of the threads over at Low Carb Friends, and I ran into something that really disturbed me. A patient of Dr. Westman was there asking for help. She has been on the high-fat low-carb diet known as Nutritional Ketosis for 4 months now. She is eating 20 carbs or less, is losing about 1 to 2 pounds a week, but she feels horrible. For some reason, she is not adapting to the state of Ketosis. Despite a high salt intake, she's having excruciating foot and leg cramps, gets dizzy, and comes near to passing out during her gym activities. She says she has zero energy, so her gym routine has dropped from 5 days a week and 1 trainer session, to just the training. She is taking magnesium and potassium supplements, along with chicken broth every day, but nothing is helping. She's exhausted and feels horrible, and yet, they want her to continue with the regimen she's been on, even though it's not working for her. That doesn't make an...

Atkins Induction is often the first introduction that many people have to a low-carb diet. It jump-starts your weight-loss program, can help if you’re experiencing a weight-loss plateau, or get you back on track if you’ve been stumbling around and eating too many carbs. It’s also useful if you’re in pre-maintenance or maintenance and you’ve slipped and fallen out of the wagon. Induction can give you a leg up, and help you regain control of your appetite, drop those few pounds you’ve regained, and help you get your life back on track. But Atkins Induction can also be abused. Do You Run Back to Induction Every Time You Stray? I hear this all the time. You went to a party, it was a holiday, your birthday, or a family gathering. You planned to stay on program, stick to meat and salad, eat a snack before you left, and had a strawberry cheesecake waiting in the refrigerator for dessert when you got home. But something went wrong. You kept looking at the dessert table. You had to sit and watc...

Is a Low-Carb Diet Sustainable? (Photo by Alpha ) As most of you know, I’m extremely partial to the 1972 and the 1992 versions of The Atkins Diet. The ’72 version was based on Dr. Atkins own experiences following a low-carb diet and a few initial clinical observations. The original ’92 version (the first edition) was based on the feedback that he actually got from his patients. Many of them were cheating by adding a few vegetables to Induction along with the salad, which they eventually admitted to. Since Dr. Atkins patients still lost weight easily eating that way, Dr. Atkins decided it was okay to add 2/3 of a cup of cooked vegetables to his Induction Plan. Because of that addition, he lengthened Induction from one week to two. The second edition printed around 1999 was exactly the same as the first one except for a one-line comment he made about how he couldn’t find anything unreasonable about deducting soluble fiber grams from the total carbohydrate count – the type found in the ps...

Lately, I’ve had a few readers ask me, “What is Atkins 72?” Since I use that term quite often, I thought maybe more of you might have the same question. Most people think of the book, Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution , whenever they talk about a low-carb diet. But that became quite confusing over the years because every new edition Dr. Atkins put out carried the same name, even though the diet had changed. The basic principles of the Atkins program stayed fairly consistent, but the Rules of Induction, food quantities and types, how you add carbohydrates back into your diet, and even the way you count carbohydrates changed – depending on which edition you were following. That made it difficult to help someone who didn’t understand how to do the Atkins Diet correctly, or to give advice when someone was stumbling or had stalled. To make it easier, the low-carb community began using the year the edition was published attached to Dr. Atkins’ name in order to distinguish one plan from anothe...

I stopped by The Lighter Side of Low Carb’s Facebook fan page the other day, and noticed that Cleo had posted a picture showing what her personal USDA plate looks like. She had 3 strips of bacon, an egg, and 3 peas smiling up from the plate. While most of the comments shared how they would personally alter the foods in the graphic (I would have added another egg and more peas, myself), the one comment that caught my attention said - “Peas are evil.” There seems to be a common tendency within the low carb community to demonize foods not listed on the Atkins 2002 Induction menu chart. But I don’t know how or when that ever got started. I took a quick trip back to 1970 (one of the two Atkins’ books that survived the flea bombs that destroyed almost everything I owned last year), but Dr. Atkins’ advice didn't even insinuate that peas are evil. He said: “…additions are interchangeable and flexible. You can make any of these additions any week that you choose. I could be very arbitrary ...

I’ve recently had a few readers ask me about the potential cardiovascular risks that might be associated with the Atkins Diet . Since that seems to be a common question among those who are new to low carbing or those who haven’t had cholesterol problems before, I thought I’d address some of the issues surrounding High-Density Lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol that I didn’t talk about in my latest post on LDL Cholesterol and Blood Clots . If you haven’t read that post, you might want to do so. It discusses the coronary artery disease pathway, how getting your insulin levels under control can slow down the heart disease process, and how a low-carb diet can actually reverse plaque buildup in some individuals. In addition, blood clots and potential strokes have nothing to do with dietary fats, so you might want to check out that information too, especially if you have a family history of stroke or blood clots. Is the Atkins Diet Dangerous? For years, the prevailing view among medical authoriti...

Atkins Induction is Not Zero Carb It Now Allows Vegetables Whether you're doing Atkins 72 or Atkins 2002, Atkins Induction is going to be the strictest phase you have to pass through on your journey to health. In 1972, the introductory phase allowed for less than 10 full grams of carbohydrates per day. Just: 2 cups of loosely packed greens couple of raw vegetables to make that salad tolerable couple of eggs and a few ounces of cheese was all the carbohydrate you got.  Today, the Atkins Diet allows 20 net grams for the initial 2-week period called Induction. Compared to the average American diet, which consists of 300 to 500 carbohydrates per day, your carbohydrate intake during this first phase of the Atkins Diet is going to be extremely restrictive.  There is no getting around that. Induction serves a specific purpose, and 20 net carbs per day has been found to be a highly reliable limit that accomplishes that purpose for most people. However, the restrictiveness does scare a lot ...

Almond Flour Pizza (Photo: Rusty Clark , CC BY 2.0 ) Are you ready to move beyond Atkins Induction to the real honest-to-goodness Atkins Diet?   Good! You've made a great decision. But first, congratulations on achieving and completing the first phase of the Atkins nutritional approach. I know how hard that was. Phase 2 will be much easier. It's the space where you start to create your own personalized low-carb diet. To do that, you need to know the best way to transition from a very low-carb diet to a plan that fits your special tastes, activity level, and carbohydrate tolerance but still allows you to lose body fat at an acceptable pace. What makes the Atkins Diet different from other low-carb programs is the way it builds on the success you experienced during the first 2 to 4 weeks of the diet. By now, you will be deeply into the state of ketosis and your physical appetite will have drastically changed, making it easier to eat at a calorie deficit. You'll also be predomi...

Not Losing Weight  After Atkins Induction? (Photo Twenty Four Students   CC BY-SA 2.0 ) Have you recently gone through Atkins Induction?  If so, then your motivation and excitement level is probably still quite high. Although most of the weight loss experienced at the beginning of a low-carb diet comes from using up your liver glycogen (the body's carbohydrate stores) and extra water needed to process that glycogen, seeing the numbers easily drop on the scale can encourage you to keep moving forward with the diet’s restrictions and demanding lifestyle changes. For some individuals, the weight loss experienced during the first few days of Atkins Induction can cause your body to put on the breaks.  When that happens: Weight loss can slow down or completely stop as you move past the initial two-week Induction period.  For newbies and returnees alike, that adaption can feel frustrating. I know. I've been there myself. I only lost 2 pounds the entire first month I spent on the Atkin...

There is a lot of confusion these days about metabolism. It seems to be a scapegoat that people like to blame when weight loss doesn’t happen easily. If they’re following a low carb diet and struggling to succeed, then they believe that all of those years of eating carbohydrates must have destroyed their metabolism and made them fat. On the other side of the argument are those who oppose low carb dieting. These people claim that carbohydrate restriction will permanently alter your metabolism, but what’s the truth? Will eating carbohydrates or following a low carb diet ruin your metabolism – or not? What is Metabolism? Low carb dieters generally do not like to hear about the energy equation. Dr. Atkins told us that we no longer need to worry about calories, so most people believe the energy equation isn’t applicable to them. Calories don’t matter, they say. Dr. Eades has tried to set the record straight, but far too many people still do not want to go outside and drag the equation bac...

Beef Sensitivity? I’ve wrestled with myself for the past couple of days about “where” to place this post. I didn’t want to discourage anyone from entering into, or sticking with, a typical low carb diet. Atkins and The Protein Power Lifeplan both work equally well for most individuals, though they do differ in application. Honesty finally won. But since the relevancy of this topic falls across several of my blogs, I’ve decided to focus here on how my current problem relates to general low carb diets. Recently, I decided that since my weight had reached the upper limits for a maintenance phase, I would enter into Atkins Induction to carve off the body fat I’d gained – knowing that the first week’s weight loss would be mostly glycogen and water. That held true; I weighed in at 158 pounds last Friday, down almost 5-1/2 pounds for the first week. But I didn’t expect what happened next. I have one more day to go to keep my Atkins Induction commitment, but…I’m seriously reconsidering that de...