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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

(This is part 7 of a multi-part series on How to Tweak a Low Carb Diet . It explains the path I have traveled in my weight loss journey so far. If you didn’t read part 1, you can do so by clicking on the how-to link. Part 1 also includes links to the rest of the series.) My diet break obviously refilled my glycogen stores, since I was eating more carbohydrates, but that wasn’t a surprise. I was okay with the eight-pound weight regain because everything happened exactly as Lyle McDonald said it would. Although each of us have the potential to hold different amounts of glycogen in our liver and muscles, there was no reason to believe those eight pounds were fat. I was used to inputting everything I ate into Fitday, and that didn’t stop during my break, so it was easy to keep tabs on my daily calorie count. That helped to keep me zeroed into maintenance. Overall, my complete diet break went well, except that I took my husband’s suggestion and enjoyed a full month off from dieting that Dec...