Healthy Diet at Home

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...

Today, I'm going to give you a low-carb menu template that I use when doing the Atkins Diet. I have an Atkins menu planner for Atkins Induction, sometimes called Phase 1, and one for the Ongoing Weight Loss Phase (OWL), often called Phase 2. Since I'm not very fond of the current Atkins diets, these templates are designed to work with the Atkins 2002 version of the diet, but the Atkins menu planner can easily be adapted to fit prior diet plans as well. I find templates much easier to work with than a specific menu, as they give you lots of room to use up whatever you have in the house. They also allow you to purchase meats and vegetables that are marked down or on sale that week. That can be extremely helpful when trying to reduce your low-carb costs. Read more »

(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 ...