Healthy Diet at Home

Don't Have to Give Up Healthy Holiday Treats on Low Carb When you're on a low-carb diet, the holidays can be rough. Everywhere you turn, there is candy, cookies, quick breads, and other carby treats enticing you to go off plan. Whether it's an office party pot luck, hot cocoa and marshmallows, warm cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning, or the cookie plate the neighbor sent over on Christmas Eve, holiday traditions offer multiple temptations and opportunities to chuck your keto diet and go face down into those unhealthy treats. As habitual creatures who consistently seek out pleasurable experiences, tradition feels comforting and familiar. In past years, you've understood that the holidays only come around once a year, so there was nothing to feel guilty about if you ate a few too many treats. Moving into your first low-carb Christmas changes all of that. You can feel apprehensive and worried. Many past traditions have been disrupted. A low-carb diet is a massive lifestyl...

How to Roast a  Thanksgiving Turkey with Crispy Skin (Photo credit: Gerry , CC BY 2.0 ) No matter which low-carb diet you're following, the turkey is the center of attention on your Thanksgiving Table. High in protein, turkey meat is a nice source of zinc, iron, potassium, and B vitamins. It also has no carbohydrates, so unless you have a metabolic defect in processing proteins, you don't have to limit your portion size. At least, not for the holidays. Going back for seconds on turkey, or even thirds, won't throw you out of ketosis. For that reason, learning to make the perfect holiday turkey can make the difference between serving up a great holiday meal and one that's just so-so. However, most people have their own ideas about what makes a perfectly roasted bird. Ideas about baking it upside down or right-side up, soaking it in brine or injecting it with an herb-butter solution, sticking to organically grown versus a conventional turkey all fuel debates at turkey ti...

Are the Consequences Worth Going Off Plan? The holidays can be a difficult time to diet. Office parties, family gatherings, and social events, as well as the holiday itself, puts you around food. Lots of food. And usually, the type of food that isn't found on any low-carb plan. If you're new to a low-carb diet, it's hard enough trying to figure out how low carb works without having to add temptation into the mix, but newbies are not the only ones who might not understand the consequences that come when reaching for that Thanksgiving roll or small piece of pumpkin pie. If you're considering going off plan for Thanksgiving or Christmas this year, here's what you need to know in order to make a well-informed decision. Read more »

A Low-Carb Diet is Not Always Gluten Free (Photo Credit: Richard Masoner ,  CC BY-SA 2.0 ) The gluten-free community isn't very happy right now. As those in the entertainment world continue to announce that they are going gluten free, not because they have celiac disease or non-celiac gluten sensitivity, but because they want to shed a few pounds, we have a horde of groupies and those who have heard that gluten-free diets are great for weight loss deciding that ditching the gluten is an important way to gain better health. Typically, a low-carb dieter would have no problem with that, but since a lot of these people don't understand what a gluten-free diet actually is, they have put together a weight-loss plan based on their own ideas and incorporated these distorted dieting habits into that new gluten-free diet. Unfortunately, those habits often tell them it's okay to eat a little gluten once in a while. What has gluten-free folks riled up is that these so-called gluten-f...

How to Use the  Atkins Pre-Maintenance Plan When Times Get Rough Thinking about Atkins pre-maintenance might seem premature for many low-carb dieters, especially since it's usually saved until you've shrunk down to 5 or 10 pounds from goal. However, there are times when this plan can be quite useful, even today. Taking a moment to understand what the pre-maintenance phase of Atkins is, and isn't, as well as when it can be helpful to keep you on plan, will enable you to face important challenges in your life and empower you to make the best decisions when those challenges arise. You don't want to lose all of the hard work you've accomplished so far. And that can certainly happen if life interferes before you've gotten anywhere near your goal. Read more »

Low-Carb Diets Designed to Eliminate Hunger and Cravings In my low-carb travels lately, I've run into quite a few folks who are very frustrated about how slowly they are losing weight on the Atkins Diet. These people expected the Atkins Nutritional Approach to perform in a way it wasn't designed for. Internet myths and rumors, comparing yourself to others, and misunderstanding the science behind why carbohydrate restriction results in weight loss can bring about tons of needless struggle and pain. The more I read, the more I've realized that unrealistic expectations and misconceptions have reached epidemic proportions within the low-carb community. While some people do experience dramatic weight loss, that isn't the norm. Often, the people who find low carb easy are brand new to a low-carb diet and even dieting itself, so their body hasn't adapted to what they're doing yet. The idea behind restricting carbohydrates isn't fast weight loss. Low carb is about f...

Why is the Atkins Diet Not Working this Time? Most of the comments or emails I get come from people not new to low carb. They've previously been on Atkins or some other form of low-carb diet and returned to carbohydrate restriction because it worked so well for them. Perhaps you feel the same way. Your expectations are high. You strongly believe that the diet should work as rapidly and easily as before. However, that isn't happening. You're frustrated because you aren't losing weight. Maybe you're struggling to cope because you have only dropped a pound or two all month. Perhaps, you're exercising, but your weight keeps bouncing rather than going down. You're upset. Didn't Dr. Atkins promise that if you gave up the carbs losing weight would be easy? Didn't he promise you that a low-carb diet would change your life once and for all? Yes, he did. The Atkins Diet claims to be the most effective diet out there, so what's going on? Why is the Atkins D...

Eating Low-Carb on a Budget Takes Creativity At first glance, a low-carb diet can look quite expensive. Especially, since the focus is on meat and other high-cost proteins like cheese. Vegetables and leafy salads make up the bulk of your meals, taking the place of lower priced potatoes, white rice, and pasta on your plate. Bread and tortillas are also gone unless you have enough room in your budget for a few low-carb products. However, many low carbers do not. The good news is that you can definitely eat low-carb on a budget. It just takes a little thought and planning. The key is to start with the cheapest basics available in your area, find recipes that make good use of those basics, and then branch out with whatever you can afford from there. That might sound easy, but it will take a bit of legwork and planning to pull it all together. Read more »

Cucumber and Tomato Salsa It's been really hot here in Utah for the past few days, over 100-degrees, so I've been experimenting with recipes that don't require a lot of cooking. On the days when hubby has to work out in the heat, I've also been serving food that can be eaten at room temperature. When you're on a low-carb diet, summer meals can be quite a challenge. Not only does meat speed up your metabolism, making you uncomfortable in the summer heat, but typical low-carb stir fries, roasted vegetables, soups, and stews will also heat up the kitchen. To solve the problem, you might want to try perking up the flavor of your crockpot chicken, lettuce wraps, and taco salads with a nice batch of fresh homemade salsa. Fresh salsas are made with assorted vegetables, using tomatoes, onions, and hot peppers as the base, but ingredients can vary widely depending on what you already have on hand and what rung of the carbohydrate ladder you're on. That's how this Fre...

Atkins 40 Friendly: Sausage and Cabbage Stew Atkins Nutritionals Inc. has come up with a brand new Atkins Diet. Unlike the traditional program, this new flexible low-carb diet plan allows you to pick and choose from all food groups. Breads and starchy carbohydrates are no longer off limits. The idea behind Atkins 40 is to curtail cravings and kick your feelings of deprivation to the curb while still keeping your daily carbohydrate level low enough to shed those unwanted pounds. Along with your typical: protein sources vegetables essential fatty acids and sugar-free condiments you can also enjoy bread, pasta, tortillas, and even potatoes during the weight-loss phase. You no longer have to wait until pre-maintenance to begin enjoying the carbohydrate foods you're missing when you use the new Atkins Diet. That change in concept has a lot of low-carb dieters worried. However, Atkins 40 isn't a free-for-all. It's not a well-balanced low-fat diet. It is still the Atkins Diet. Bu...

Confused About Atkins 20? This Guide will Clears Up your Misunderstandings! I was over at Low Carb Friends yesterday afternoon, and one of the members was seriously upset. She had just learned that Atkins Nutritionals Inc. has come out with a brand new set of Atkins diets. They have now dropped the New Atkins for a New You approach, and instead, they are offering two different versions of the Atkins diet plan: Atkins 20, which includes a modified Phase 1 Atkins 40, which is a more flexible, low-glycemic diet Atkins 20 is what many are calling the original Atkins diet. In reality, it is an spin off of what most of the low-carb community know as Atkins 2002, or DANDR. Since there are a lot of people over at Low Carb Friends who are very confused by this new diet being presented on the Atkins Nutritionals Inc. website, this post will clear up any misunderstandings you might have. For example, some people are under the impression that the new Phase 1 includes fruit, nuts, and whole grains....

Low-Carb Diet is Rich in Vitamin B Complex Sources Vitamin B is actually a group of different water-soluble vitamins that must be eaten daily since the body cannot store them. These vitamins are necessary to turn food into energy, create red blood cells, keep the nervous system and brain functioning normally, and even regulate appetite. Processing foods that contain natural B vitamins will destroy some of those nutrients, so grains and cereals are often enriched in order to replace the nutrients lost during processing. When nutritionists claim that we should eat plenty of grains to be healthy, it is this artificial form of vitamins and minerals that manufacturers add to their stripped bread and over cooked products that they are suggesting we eat. In order to verify or destroy that claim, I recently did a little research on grains and grain-free sources of Vitamin B. Here is what I found out . . . Read more »

Cal-Mex Cuisine Fresh Vegetables, Herbs, Whole Foods (Photo Credit: Armando Maynez , CC BY 2.0 ) Mexican food is very popular in the southwestern portion of the United States as well as other areas that have a large Mexican population. For us, Cinco de Mayo was a big deal. Mexican restaurants existed in every major city in Southern California, and they offered a large variety of Cal-Mex and Tex-Mex cuisine. Mexican traditions like flavorful tacos, spicy enchiladas, and wet burritos were found on the menu of even budget-minded folks like us every single week. It's culture there. It's how I grew up. In fact, when I was still married to my ex and funds were short, we simply got through the rough spots by eating tacos or enchiladas every single night. Mexican food was cheap, filling, and tasty. It worked much better when raising my sons than Kraft mac-and-cheese or Top Ramen soup. Although, we did eat those things too. Even when the current hubby and I first moved to Utah and we w...

Diet Pepsi is Switching from Aspartame to Sucralose (Photo credit: Ben Mason , CC BY 2.0 ) The Atkins Diet doesn't allow diet soda with aspartame. Dr. Atkins took it off the acceptable beverage list many years ago after doing personal research into aspartame's potential health dangers. At that time, he recommended sucralose sweetened beverages and products instead, but sucralose sweetened products are difficult to find. There are a few Erythritol and acesulfame potassium (ace-K) sweetened beverages available in limited areas of the U.S. or online, but a 6-pack is really expensive compared to aspartame-sweetened options. The one time I tried it (back before I started reacting to sugar substitutes) it didn't taste very good, so I never bought it again. For that reason, many low-carb dieters have simply opted to ignore Dr. Atkins advice and have reached for the Diet Pepsi or Diet Coke instead. If that describes you, then you might be interested to know that . . . Read more »

Back-Door Low-Carb Plan This morning, I received a comment from a reader who didn't like what I had to say about body memory and the body's biological instinct for survival. The comment was from an anonymous reader who reacted to something I said on a post I wrote in September of 2011. The title of the post was Stumbling on Your Low-Carb Eating Plan? Here's How to Find Success by Using the Back Door! if you want to read it. This post was designed to help those who might be having trouble making it through Atkins Induction, now called Atkins Phase 1, by offering a more gentle, alternative plan to drastically cutting carbs all at once. A year ago, someone found that post and thanked me for writing it. It was encouraging for them. In my reply, I shared how I was thinking of using the back door approach once I'd gotten my thyroid problems straightened out. What the anonymous commenter took offense to was . . . Read more »

Happy Eggs Are you new to the Atkins Diet? Getting through the first month or two can be a bit confusing or overwhelming, I know.  I get a good amount of email from people who are just beginning a low-carb diet plan and are confused about the way it works. Maybe, the diet isn't living up to your expectations. Maybe, you haven't actually read Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution . You're just trying to implement the Atkins Diet from what you've  read online. Unfortunately, there is a lot of misinformation about the Induction diet on the internet.  Everyone thinks they know what a low-carb diet plan is and what it can do to you. However, the Atkins Diet isn't just: bacon and eggs greasy cheeseburgers and T-bone steaks Fears vary from person to person, but can range from Atkins causing kidney problems and high cholesterol levels to being responsible for gallstones and heart attacks.  Did you buy into any of these myths? Are you feeling a bit hesitant right about now?  I...

What is the Truth  About Sugar Substitutes? (photo frankleleon , CC BY 2.0 ) I get a lot of questions about sugar substitutes. In general, artificial sweeteners are allowed and even encouraged on low-carb diets. Low-carb diets claim that sugar substitutes don't raise blood glucose levels, and therefore, can't interfere with fat mobilization. The only caution I've heard over the years is to not use aspartame and count the little packets as 1 carb each. On Atkins Induction , the packets are also limited to 3 per day. But is any of that true? Are low-carb advocates telling us the truth about sugar substitutes? Or are they just trying to sell us something? I'm a follow-the-money type of person. I'm always wary when it comes to people trying to sell me on an idea that is to their financial interest for me to swallow and believe. Because of that, and because it's been years since I wrote about the truth of sugar alcohols on this blog, I did a little more research int...

Need to Eat More Veggies? Get Loads of Low-Carb Ideas! If you listen to the media and other anti low-carb advocates, you're going to think that the Atkins Diet is nothing but greasy burgers, T-bone steaks, tons of full-fat cheeses and piles of bacon. While the foundation of a low-carb diet is an adequate amount of protein and plenty of healthy fats, the greatest volume of food you eat on a low-carb diet is vegetables. That fact is usually ignored by those who believe low-carb diets are unhealthy. Mostly, because the Atkins Induction Diet originally used very few vegetables to get you into the state of ketosis quickly, and also because a lot of people who do low carb don't follow the diet protocol correctly. In addition to staying at an Induction level of carbs, instead of getting most of their carbohydrates from vegetables, low-carb dieters often eat an abundance of other low-carb foods, such as: nuts and seeds (including nut flours and ground flaxseeds) low-glycemic fruits ton...

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 »

Egg Salad Sandwich  Made with Revolution Rolls (photo  SG , CC BY-ND 2.0 Generic ) In the 1970s, when I first ran across the Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution book at the library, I didn't have enough courage to make the Diet Revolution Rolls. Although they are extremely popular today, I couldn't understand how beating egg whites into meringue could take the place of bread. The egg yolks are folded into the beaten egg whites, along with cottage cheese, mayo, or cream cheese, but that still didn't make sense to me. Angel food cake and other sponge cakes are made in a similar way as Oopsies or Cloud Bread, but for cake, you have to add a little all-purpose flour or cake flour to the beaten egg whites to hold the cake together. For cake, the yolks are not used. The original 1972 Revolution Rolls didn't have anything added to them to hold them together, except for cottage cheese, and that's probably more about moisture retention from baking the rolls so long, than improvi...

Atkins Induction Breakfast: Bacon and Eggs, Salad, and Salsa I'm going to be honest here. I have never sat down and mapped out a complete ketogenic diet menu for Atkins Induction or even the Ongoing Weight Loss phase (OWL).  When it comes to planning ketogenic meals, I've always just shot from the hip.  At times, I did have to start with dinner and then travel backward from there to get a daily menu to fit into certain parameters, but that was back when I needed to lower my fat and reduce the number of calories in my low-carb meals. For Atkins Induction, that isn't necessary.  The goal of Atkins Induction isn't weight loss.  The aim you are trying to achieve is to get yourself into the state of ketosis. You don't count fat grams, and you most certainly don't count calories. You never go hungry. If you're hungry, eat until you're satisfied.  In fact, in the 2002 version of the Atkins Diet, Dr. Atkins clearly stated that you should never go more than 6 hou...

How to Get Into Ketosis  in Less Than 3 Days Ketogenic diets work by reducing basal insulin levels and setting up conditions that will move you into a state of ketosis. Getting into ketosis quickly is important because when the body produces ketones, your hunger level goes down, your energy goes up, and you experience a state of well-being. These benefits will make it easier for you to stick to your diet plan. Ordinarily, on a typical keto diet, it takes 3 to 5 days to enter into the state of ketosis, depending on how many carbohydrates per day you were eating before you started restricting carbs. But there are much faster methods.  While nutrition should never be sacrificed at the expense of your health, here is how you can get into ketosis in less than 3 days. Read more »