Guys, give me some comments on which of this stuff I can have: Peaches Apples Oranges Any other fruits I should especially know about Yoghurt Milk (Skimmed/Normal) Cream Cheese Butter Vegetables Sugar (how do I approach it?) I started off by cutting carbs, and I was very serious about it for a month, and I lost about 18lbs. But then when I started to get creative (try new things that I didn't THINK had carbs) it came to a sudden halt, haven't lost a lb. in a week and a half now. I need to lose around 18 more lbs EXACTLY, so this is the final push and I wanna get everything right. If you can tip me off on some meals/foods/snacks that are ok for me to eat (been struggling lately) thats great. Come on guys, I know you can help me out. Let me make this final push and get to my desired weight. ANY tips you learned along the way through experiece is great.
Atkins is not SUPPOSED to last for a year. If you stay on it, it will have long term effects. But why would you stay on it? I'm using it as a tool to get to a certain weight, at which point I'll switch to a healthy and practical diet (something I should've done before I got fat). My plan: - Lose 18 more lbs, then get off atkins - Start lifting weights to build muscle, speed up metabolism - Continue working out 9 hours a week, while mainting a smart diet I don't think anyone needs to be dedicated to Atkins for more than 6 months. If you do it properly, you could potentially lose 130lbs in 6 months. That's pretty darn good if you ask me.
Sane, you really sound like you need to read the book. If you can't get the book, go to www.atkinsdietbulletinboard.com I would really not recommend using Atkins as a crash diet - it may blow up in your face (literally). Atkins is best as a lifestyle change. Many people perceive it as extreme, but it is scientific and teaches you how your body reacts to certain foods and how to control food. In addition, it starts out as really restrictive, but gradually gives you a large healthy base of foods to eat from. Your limits will be defined by your metabolism and activity level. Now to your list - it really depends on what stage of Atkins you are on and is quite different from person to person, but I can try and rank those foods for you. There are two things to look at in this way of eating: net carbs in a food and glycemic index. The net carbs is the total grams of carbs minus grams of fiber, while the glycemic index refers to how fast your body will turn the food into blood sugar. Something with a high glycemic index is likely to give you cravings for more sweet foods and cause your blood sugar to rise and fall rapidly. The list: Peaches Apples Oranges Any other fruits I should especially know about Yoghurt Milk (Skimmed/Normal) Cream Cheese Butter Vegetables Sugar (how do I approach it?) I would rank the fruit in the order you have it, in order of increasing net carbs and glycemic index. Personally, I'm limiting myself to 1-2 pieces of fruit a day, as fruit is what got me fat. Berries tend to have less impact on your body, while things like grapes, watermelon, and pluots are high in sugar and glycemic indices. Yoghurt and milk are very high in carbs. I have removed them from my diet along with fruit juices. Cream and cheese are some of my staples. A basic guideline is that 1 ounce of cheese has one carb, so I don't eat too much of these - just enough for flavor and variety. Butter is fine, it's much better for you than margarine which has trans-fats. Vegetables - most are good, but stay away from starchy ones like potatoes and corn and lean towards salad veggies, dark green vegetables and cauliflower. Jicama is a great vegetable - it's tasty, a little sweet, and yet very high in fiber. Sugar - you should eliminate sugar and it's processed twin, high fructose corn syrup from your diet. These two evils have contributed greatly to the fattening of America. The best alternative if you must have a sweetener is Splenda. It has been proved in studies to have zero impact on your blood sugar and has about 1 carb per packet. Good luck!
Cohen, I think the problem you are having is not staying in Induction, but to continue weight loss, and fat loss, you have to stay in Lipolysis, and Ketosis.... Otherwise you are in maintanence. I have 5-9 pounds to go...then I hit maintanence. DD
Yeah, I know. But we just had a baby , so we have lots of family and friends visiting ... and my wife had a big birthday also. I'm happy right now just holding steady. I'll get back on it in another week or so and be at my target weight before the end of the year.
Gutter Snipe, Thx a bunch, your tips were really helpful. I'm going to go ahead and make a final push (one month) to get to my target. I only have 2 questions left: - What can I drink (as in alcohol)? I'm not a big fan of beer, I can eliminate that. I've already eliminated Soda from my diet. Vodka, Gin, Tequila, basically straight drinks... Are they ok? I'm sure Breezers and Smirnoff Ice's are off limits, right? - Any recommendations on # of meals per day and any breakfast items? I know I should get the book, but I think I'm way over with the induction period, and I lost 18lbs from just what I knew. I figure I can lose 18 more from just a few more hints, since the weightloss is bound to slow down now, right?
goophers- check the user login. My boyfriend lost a lot of weight and is looking like a supreme hottie. I just did a little reading, and isn't the Atkins diet a modification of the Zone diet?
gs1998 - well, I reread part of my zone books and they would be aghast at hearing you say that, but they are definitely similar in that they believe the standard wisdom of high-carb, low-fat is incorrect. Sane, Atkins recommends slowing down weight loss as you approach your target, partly to reduce rebound and partly to ease you into the lifetime maintenance stage of Atkins. I would guess as you get closer to your ideal weight, your weight loss would slow down naturally as well (unless you are starving yourself and losing muscle tissue as well). The alcohol - straight liquor is fine in moderation - it's the mixers that can kill you in added carbs. Atkins doesn't make any recommendations on eating 5-6 times a day, they just note that you shouldn't go more than 6 waking hours without eating. From personal experience on Atkins and the Zone, eating 5-6 small meals works, but it's a lot of work to prepare wholesome food for 5-6 meals, and personally it was difficult not to overeat doing it. Breakfasts - my breakfasts are pretty repetitious - bacon and eggs, sausage, leftovers and veggies, and some nuts. That's the tough part about Atkins - the cold bowl of shredded wheat with honey doesn't cut it anymore. Happy eating everyone!
Btw Sane, I forgot to mention that you will hit plateaus on Atkins. Sometimes your body will want to hold onto the weight, especially after you just lost a bunch. Some of the biological reasons for this are mentioned in the book, but all you need to know is that if you are eating correctly and exercising, you just have to be patient. Sometimes the scale will lie and you are losing inches, but not pounds.
More the other way around. The Zone is really a high protein, moderate fat (but get them from monosaturated oil as much as possible) and lowcarb diet. Personally I really appreciate Atkins and his group for bursting the buddle about the carbs/sugor being the primary diet problem in America over fats But I think the Zone is overall is a healthier diet (glycemic index isn't the whole story for healthy foods, important yes, but you also have increased cancer risks associated with animal fat). That said, if you follow the Atkins and just get most of your fats from nuts (almonds especially), high monosaturated vege oils (oilve oil especially--it instead of butter and as the base for most salad dressings and cooking), avocados, and salmon (the one high fat animal food that has tons of benifits)--I think you are right in there with a very healthy diet. Making sure you get adequate dietary fiber is a good thing too. Last year I was on a diet kind of in between the zone and Atkins. I did drop my triglyicerides from 320 to 80 and improved by good cholesterol from 37 to 42 (still low though). I am hoping moving even closer to the zone (less high fat meats except salmon) further gets my HDL up and lowers my LDL (bad cholesterol)-- which did go a little up with an Atkins like diet (not too surprising given my huge drop in triglycerides/VLDL cholesterol though). So my advice would be getting weight down however--even if via strict Atkins approach--but long term maintaince with closer to a zone diet is better. BTW study came out just today which suggests fat/protein calories may not "count" as much in weigt loss as carb calories. This is what Atkins and Sears (Zone guy) have been saying all along. IMO probably 80% of what Atkins has been saying looks right on even when unpopular, and a ton of nutritionists who fought eveything he stood for are looking foolish.
Have any of you gotten gout from eating such rich, high fat foods that frequently? That seems like it would happen easily but I've never seen anyone mention it at all.
LOW CARB DIETS ARE WORKING Low-Carb Diets Are Working, Study Says Mon Oct 13, 3:30 PM ET Add Health - AP to My Yahoo! By DANIEL Q. HANEY, AP Medical Editor FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - The dietary establishment has long argued it's impossible, but a new study offers intriguing evidence for the idea that people on low-carbohydrate diets can actually eat more than folks on standard lowfat plans and still lose weight. Perhaps no idea is more controversial in the diet world than the contention — long espoused by the late Dr. Robert Atkins — that people on low-carbohydrate diets can consume more calories without paying a price on the scales. Over the past year, several small studies have shown, to many experts' surprise, that the Atkins approach actually does work better, at least in the short run. Dieters lose more than those on a standard American Heart Association plan without driving up their cholesterol levels, as many feared would happen. Skeptics contend, however, that these dieters simply must be eating less. Maybe the low-carb diets are more satisfying, so they do not get so hungry. Or perhaps the food choices are just so limited that low-carb dieters are too bored to eat a lot. Now, a small but carefully controlled study offers a strong hint that maybe Atkins was right: People on low-carb, high-fat diets actually can eat more. The study, directed by Penelope Greene of the Harvard School of Public Health and presented at a meeting here this week of the American Association for the Study of Obesity, found that people eating an extra 300 calories a day on a very low-carb regimen lost just as much during a 12-week study as those on a standard lowfat diet. Over the course of the study, they consumed an extra 25,000 calories. That should have added up to about seven pounds. But for some reason, it did not. "There does indeed seem to be something about a low-carb diet that says you can eat more calories and lose a similar amount of weight," Greene said. That strikes at one of the most revered beliefs in nutrition: A calorie is a calorie is a calorie. It does not matter whether they come from bacon or mashed potatoes; they all go on the waistline in just the same way. Not even Greene says this settles the case, but some at the meeting found her report fascinating. "A lot of our assumptions about a calorie is a calorie are being challenged," said Marlene Schwartz of Yale. "As scientists, we need to be open-minded." Others, though, found the data hard to swallow. "It doesn't make sense, does it?" said Barbara Rolls of Pennsylvania State University. "It violates the laws of thermodynamics. No one has ever found any miraculous metabolic effects." In the study, 21 overweight volunteers were divided into three categories: Two groups were randomly assigned to either lowfat or low-carb diets with 1,500 calories for women and 1,800 for men; a third group was also low-carb but got an extra 300 calories a day. The study was unique because all the food was prepared at an upscale Italian restaurant in Cambridge, Mass., so researchers knew exactly what they ate. Most earlier studies simply sent people home with diet plans to follow as best they could. Each afternoon, the volunteers picked up that evening's dinner, a bedtime snack and the next day's breakfast and lunch. Instead of lots of red meat and saturated fat, which many find disturbing about low-carb diets, these people ate mostly fish, chicken, salads, vegetables and unsaturated oils. "This is not what people think of when they think about an Atkins diet," Greene said. Nevertheless, the Atkins organization agreed to pay for the research, though it had no input into the study's design, conduct or analysis. Everyone's food looked similar but was cooked to different recipes. The low-carb meals were 5 percent carbohydrate, 15 percent protein and 65 percent fat. The rest got 55 percent carbohydrate, 15 percent protein and 30 percent fat. In the end, everyone lost weight. Those on the lower-cal, low-carb regimen took off 23 pounds, while people who got the same calories on the lowfat approach lost 17 pounds. The big surprise, though, was that volunteers getting the extra 300 calories a day of low-carb food lost 20 pounds. "It's very intriguing, but it raises more questions than it answers," said Gary Foster of the University of Pennsylvania. "There is lots of data to suggest this shouldn't be true." Greene said she can only guess why the people getting the extra calories did so well. Maybe they burned up more calories digesting their food. Dr. Samuel Klein of Washington University, the obesity organization's president, called the results "hard to believe" and said perhaps the people eating more calories also got more exercise or they were less apt to cheat because they were less hungry. ___ EDITOR'S NOTE: Medical Editor Daniel Q. Haney is a special correspondent for The Associated Press.
I know this diet glorifies ketosis, but most people in the know(Doctors, teachers) regard it as a negative metabolic disorder. Seriously. Look it up.
For those interested in why Ketosis works for some you should check out www.charlespoliquin.net Charles is the world's most reknown physical trainer and he really advocates Low carbs... for some people. He has found that many of his clients simply cannot lose a certain percentage of body fat without going low carb and he surmises the reason is because some of us are still on Caveman diets genetically just like some people have 4 wisdom teeth and some have one or none. Cavemen would have eaten meat, nuts, some fruit and veggies, and that is about it. No major grain cultivation that dominates todays food consumption. The Caveman diet is the only way I can get under 10% body fat. Just don't over do Ketosis. Use fruit and Veggies as a fibrous sort or Carbs, they are digested differently and react as a base in the kidney, instead of an acid, like most carbohydrates.
Thx again for all the info Gutter Snipe. I think I've got the whole thing down. I dropped 2 lbs. since the first time I posted in this thread, so I have 16 more to go. Ramadan is in 10 days, so I'm HOPING to drop 6 or 7 of those lbs before Ramadan. There's no way in hell I can stay on Atkins while fasting and in Ramadan, so I'm hoping to maintain that weight all the way through the holy month, and then drop those final 9 or 10 lbs after Ramadan. Anyone going to be on Atkins and fasting in Ramadan?
Thanks for the link LeGrouper - that's a really cool site. Btw, someone on the Atkins board posted their 6 month blood work, so I thought I'd post it here: 3/03 10/03 Cholesterol 281 198 Triglycerides 197 65 HDL 42 46 LDL 200 139 VLDL 39 13 Risk Ratio 6.7 4.3 Amazing results and their doctor who was recommending cholesterol-lowering drugs now doesn't believe they will be necessary for this patient.
