I started the Atkins thing about 4 months ago. I was about 260. Now I am sitting on 203, and it couldn't be easier. My doc said he has some concerns that in the long run, it could negatively affect my cholestorol, but he also said that he wouldn't even be tewsting it until I hit 30, which is more than 5 years away. Besides, even if my cholesterol is slightly elevated, I must be healthier at 200 than 260. Oh yeah, my target weight is probably about 185.
I'm off atkins now well for a while now. My weight is stabilzed at 175-180 depending on time of day. I eat carbs everyday but only about 100-150g depending on if i'm working out that day or not. I just watch my calorie intake now. Keeping the carbs low still really helps though and if you're gonna eat your carbs do it all early in the day instead of at night. I started out at 240lbs and I'm doing fine with the decreased carb intake. I splurge on weekends and am able to keep the weight off. I'm just trying to become more lean. Even though my weight hasn't gone below 175, I can tell my body composition is changing for the better.
I have gone on and off of Atkins as I need to... the first time I went on it(when Dak first talked about it here), I was 287...I stayed on it for 4 months and stopped when I hit 240... then about 6 months later, I went back on it and dropped from 240-something to my current weight at around 220... Im currently off of it, but I will probably go back on it long enough to drop to around 200..Im a large framed 6'2"...so my target weight is around 195-200 I still take in a lot less carbs than I used to...I think I probably take in around 100-120 grams a day...depends on what I feel like eating...obviously, if Im feeling like some good Italian...that number rises... I havent felt as good as I do now since I was in my mid 20s...
I read somewhere there is an extensive study in the works related to low carb diets and cholesterol. The irony is that, from what I've read, it is starting to wane. Like most diet trends, it is hard to maintain with people for long periods of time because people don't stay with it.
It's not that hard to sustain. I think people try to hard to stay on induction phase for too long. They don't understand that eventually you do have to introduce carbs back into the system. The underlying purpose of the diet is to make you aware of what you are putting into your system. During induction phase you spend so much time reading labels that it becomes part of your daily routine and you are very aware of what you are putting into your body thus being more careful of your intake. AT least that's the way it worked for me.
I was doing Atkins when Atkins wasn't cool. I went from 260 to 210 back in 1998 or so. Since then, I've been hovering around the 220 range just trying to eat healthy instead of 'dieting' per se. A few months ago, I went back on Atkins for a few weeks to see if I could get back down close to 200 again. I didn't mind the diet but the side effects were brutal. First of all, my breath stunk. Pretty bad when you can smell your own breath. Secondly, and more brutally, I was constipated. Big time. I had some very unpleasant times on the pot. Very unpleasant. Needless to say, I scrapped Atkins and went back to my regular semi-healthy diet and the 'problems' disappeared. I've heard that these are common side effects for this diet. For you guys that are on it or have been on it, how do you combat them? I don't remember having these problems when I was on it 6 years ago.
I started Atkins in the summer of 2003. Weighed 293 then. 210 now. I don't even realize i'm on it anymore.
Well when I was on atkins, I tried not to increase my meat intake by that much. Instead I increased my vegetable intake or replaced what used to be pasta, bread, rice, or potatoes with vegetables as much as possible as compared to meat. That seemed to help the unusual bowel movements. You need to drink a lot more water as well as most of the weight you lose initially from atkins is water loss so you need to replenish that. The bad breath? hmm..I never experienced that so hard to say how to combat that. I know it's supposed to be one of the symptoms but maybe I wasn't experiencing it. Or maybe my g/f was just being nice hahaha
I lost 10 pounds over the summer, about a pound a week. My wife went on it before summer started and I followed her. She is still on it. I am now trying to do the low carb lifestyle. The best thing about the low carb diet is that you are not hungry 100% of the time like other diets. Previously when I need to lose weight, I just ate less, mostly cutting back hard at dinner and no food after 7 pm. This worked well enough but I was hungry too much of the time. With the low carb diet I am not even hungry in between meals, which is a significant difference compared to my old regualr diet. On my old diet I would eat a bowl of cereal for breakfast at 7 am (with its 75g of high GI carbs) and need a small snack to make lunch. At this point, I see myself staying on the low carb diet (with about 100g of carbs a day) for the foreseeable future. I am paying close attention to the carbs I am eating, avoiding high GI carbs like refined sugar and potatoes when possible.
