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...

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...

I’ve received a few questions lately asking me how I managed to make a low carb diet work so well for me. These questions are coming from individuals who have tried The Atkins Diet, as written, but have not found it to work as promised. With all of the various Atkins' diets to choose from – Atkins ‘72, Atkins ‘92, Atkins ’99, Atkins 2002, and the latest version called A New Atkins for a New You – which one did I use? Which version worked best for me? Other questions have asked how to make a low carb diet work, period. What can people do when Atkins stops working or when it doesn’t work to begin with? How can you tweak a low carb diet to achieve success? So this first post is going to be an introduction to that topic, and then future posts will go more into detail of how I actually lost over 100 pounds following a low carb diet. The Atkins Diet as written is an attempt to reach the greatest majority of individuals. It is a general guideline that works for most people, but it does no...

(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...

My experience with low carb dieting began in the 70s when I ran into Dr. Atkins’ original diet book at the library. At the time, it made a lot of sense. I could relate to everything he shared – and when I tested it, the plan worked better than anything I’d tried. I was 19, weighed in at a hefty 160 pounds on a 5-foot frame, and with virtually no metabolic resistance, that one golden shot earned me maintenance within only 6 weeks. I realized the other day, that’s exactly where I’m sitting again today. I’m back to where I started from in 1975. A whole lot older, hopefully wiser, but despite finding out how to deal with my health issues, I’m still at the same starting line. Yes, I managed to shed a whopping 80 pounds in 2007; and another 30 pounds last year – but that was above where I first began my low carb journey. I’ve regained a good 10 pounds of that last 30 though. So what gives? WHY is weight loss so hard to maintain? Atkins 72: What was the Original Atkins Diet Like? I can tell y...

(This is part 3 of a multi-part series on How to Tweak a Low Carb Diet . It discusses my weight loss journey so far. If you didn’t read part 1, you can do so by clicking on the how-to link. There, you will also find links to the entire series.) In 2007, I was not gluten free, dairy free, or corn free. I didn’t know about the Celiac Disease or other food sensitivities back then, so I was working with what I did know. Looking back now, I can see why a very low carb or no carb diet did not work for me. Untreated Celiac Disease and food sensitivities keep your intestinal tract inflamed. An inflamed digestive system interferes with the way the body absorbs dietary fats and other nutrients. In addition, corn allergies and sensitivities can be especially problematic for low carb dieters because most of the meats, poultry, and fish at the supermarket are contaminated with corn. Plus, many fresh vegetables (including organic varieties) are waxed or gassed. Around this time, there was a rise in ...

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’ve been watching the Nutritional Ketosis movement for several weeks now, and I came to a serious “AHA moment” yesterday. I attempted a real Ketogenic diet several years ago – the type they put kids with seizures on – but I didn’t have much luck with it. In fact, I quickly gained about 10 to 15 pounds within the first week or two, so I haven’t been that interested in doing it myself, but I’ve been curious about it in case it worked well for others. A high-fat, low-carb diet isn’t new. Barry Groves has been recommending that type of weight-loss program for years! But what the low-carb community zeroed in on when presented with that type of diet was only the high fat. That’s where most people placed their focus because that’s what they wanted to eat. It didn’t matter that Dr. Atkins boldly claimed his diet was not a high-fat diet. Fat is what’s restricted on a standard low-calorie diet and doesn’t raise blood glucose levels, so that’s what makes low carbing attractive to many folks. For...