Healthy Diet at Home

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...

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...

It’s a myth that all overweight people have insulin resistance and/or metabolic syndrome. It’s also a myth that everyone’s insulin and blood glucose levels soar into the clouds when they eat carbohydrates. If you have normal blood glucose control, your body’s sensitivity to insulin will quickly take care of the small rise in glucose you get after you eat. In fact, typical folks never see a rise in blood sugar levels much above 120 mg/dl (6.6 mmol/L) – no matter how much starch and sugar they eat. The problem comes for those of us with an abnormal response to the carbohydrates we eat. Reasons for that vary, but taking the necessary steps to correct the problem can often make us feel ill. The Atkins’ Flu, Detoxing from Sugar, and Carbohydrate Withdrawal The first two weeks of a low carb diet can send the body into a tizzy. We’re restricting the body’s first-used fuel source, emptying out glycogen stores, dumping a lot of excess water, and coaxing our liver to begin breaking down stored b...

Many things can interfere with the success of a low carb diet. Gluten sensitivity or celiac disease, thyroid problems, portion control issues, and food addictions are just a few. Recently, I’ve been looking at food sensitivities and allergies, since inflammation and the resulting water retention factor heavily into the vertigo and ataxia I suffer with. Also, I started having severe itching problems and a rash on my arms, along with drastic weight gain, whenever I ate beef. Technically, the term “food allergy” describes an IgE antibody response launched by the immune system to a specific food protein. These antibodies interpret the offending protein molecule to be an invader and use mediators such as histamine – which cause the allergy symptoms. The skin, gastrointestinal tract, and respiratory system are the primary organs affected by food allergies. However, when I was younger, most allergists did not believe in food sensitivities or intolerances. They only believed in food allergies ...

(This is part 9 and the final installment 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. If you arrived here without reading part 1, you can do so by clicking on the how-to link. Part 1 also contains links to the other posts in this series.) When you begin to restrict carbohydrates to less than about 100 carbs per day, the body is forced to draw upon its liver glycogen to keep your blood glucose levels steady. That’s according to Dr. Michael Eades. I can also tell you from experience, that during those first few days, the brain doesn’t get the proper amount of fuel to function correctly. Or at least, I don’t. I know that because I start having severe vertigo attacks. Other people have talked about being tired or having brain fog. Now, the way it’s supposed to work is that the liver converts the protein you don’t need for immediate repair purposes to glucose to feed the brain. The brain can partially run on ketone...

You don’t have to be new to low-carb diets in order to make one of these 6 dieting mistakes . They are just as common among those who have been dieting for a while. That’s because as time goes on, we tend to become more relaxed in the way we implement our personal carb-restriction programs, and forget what’s most important. So whether you’re new to the low-carb lifestyle or have been journeying for months, here are the top 6 dieting mistakes you’ll want to avoid. 1. Not Eating Enough Salt Mistake #1: Not Eating Enough Salt (Photo by Casey Konstantin ) This mistake cannot be stressed highly enough, because it’s the foundation for the low-carb myth that the Induction Flu is about detoxing from carbohydrates or sugar. It’s not. When you begin a low-carb diet, the body loses most of its glycogen stores. Since there’s 3 or 4 grams of water attached to each gram of glycogen, you’re going to lose a ton of water in the first few days. That will throw your electrolytes out of balance. Electroly...

The masses within the low-carb community tend to stick to about 20 to 35 net carbohydrates per day. The current perspective on Ketosis is that it takes 50 grams or less for most people to maintain that metabolic state. You’d think that asking, “How low is low carb?” would be rather silly. Wouldn’t the obvious answer be less than 50 carbohydrates per day? How Low is Low Carb? Well, maybe…but maybe not. How low is low carb exactly? Like almost anything, it all depends on which low-carb expert you ask, and how much weight you place on their theory and belief. It wasn’t very long ago that the same people who are currently trying to talk us into converting to a low protein, low carb, high-fat lifestyle (for our own good, of course) were preaching something very different. Gluten Exposure Has Resulted in Weight Gain  Understanding where the line is between a low-carb diet and something else is particularly important to me because I’ve recently found myself in the unwelcomed position of...

I ran into a horde of regurgitated news release type articles the other day that pointed me towards a new study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition this month. It was a short-term study – just two weeks long – but it clearly showed how a low-carb diet burns more liver fat during Atkins Induction than a low-calorie diet does. I didn’t read all of those articles, because the first two were just copies of the original press release put out by UT Southwestern Medical Center – the sponsor of the study. So I took a trip over to PubMed where I actually found two studies published this month comparing how low-calorie diets and low-carb diets affect fatty liver disease. What is a Fatty Liver? Even though the researchers of the two-week study say fat in the liver “ is due, in part, to increased hepatic synthesis of fat from carbohydrates via lipogensis, ” The American Liver Foundation says a little bit of fat in the liver is normal. Maybe that’s because so many America...