Healthy Diet at Home

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...