Healthy Diet at Home

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 »