Atkins diet

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Unbeknownst to the rest of the office, my boss has been on the Atkins diet since Memorial Day. It was very noticable in the break room on Thursday. He’s lost 25 or 30 pounds. I’ve read some reviews of the Atkins book at Amazon, and my sister told me that she lost 80 pounds on the Atkins plan in the early 1970s. What the heck? I’ll give it a try. Although I had had Mexican food for lunch, I had mussels in garlic sauce for dinner (no carbs).

Friday I ate two burger patties with two slices of cheese from the catering truck at work. For lunch a co-worker and I went to Fatburger. I got a Double Fat with lettuce, tomato, pickles and mayo – but no bun – and an iced tea (unsweetened, as always). Last night I didn’t know what to eat. I certainly couldn’t have cheese and crackers! I ended up, disgustingly, eating deviled ham and deviled chicken sandwiches without bread. In other words, right out of the can. (Hey, I was hungry; but I couldn’t have bread!)

This morning I weighed 2-1/2 pounds less than I did Friday morning. That’s got to be some sort of abberation, as it’s impossible to lose that much in about 36 hours just by avoiding carbs. Still, it was nice to see.

Today I had two hardboiled eggs and a couple of small turkey drumsticks. I went to the store and stocked up on cow carcass (steaks and ground), salmon, whiting, cod, and frozen spinach and frozen broccoli.

My sister said that her diet was a steak and a can of spinach (Yuk! Canned spinach!) and that she suffered from diarrhea. But better the runs than the weight!

TMI WARNING

I found today that while I don’t have diarrhea per se, things are a bit looser than normal.

I haven’t had a chance to buy the books yet, but I understand the basic concept. I’ll see how it goes for the next couple of weeks. I know (and I have seen) people put the weight back on once they’ve quit the diet; but I think it’s a bit of a balancing act. Once the weight is lost, you can’t go back to eating a poorly balanced diet. I think that carbs will be safe again, but that there will have to be a corresponding reduction in fat. I think maintaining a healthy weight is a matter of balance and moderation. But I’ll find out after I buy the books.

Anyway, wish me luck! (I want to get back to my “original weight” – seven pounds, six and a half ounces! rimshot )

2

Good for you! Good luck! I’ve been doing the locarb woe since January. Lost 25 lbs and then maintained for the past few months. I’m back on the wagon again and have been doing pretty well. This is a lifestyle change for me for good. I’ve done LC several times and then would try and get off of it and gain back all of the weight i gained almost immediately and then some.

That was because I didn’t look at it as a lifetime choice like I have now.

Good luck!

3

Once upon a time I lost 65 pounds. I drank a Slim Fast shake and two cups of espresso for breakfast, another shake for lunch, and then ate whatever the hell I wanted for dinner. Of course I worked seven miles from my apartment and had time to work out in the mornings as well (eventually 120 situps, 25 pushups, and jogging for 45 minutes). I kept the weight off for years. Then I was laid off and am now working 43 miles away… and I got a computer and discovered the joys of posting to this message board! Over the last four years I’ve managed to gain almost all of the weight back. Time for drastic measures.

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Good luck!

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Thanks! :slight_smile:

4

Hey, I hear ya, John.

I’ve been playing this game for over 20 years. It’s time to stop, besides I’m getting dizzy w/all the yo-yoing. :smiley:

5

good stuff man. i did it in early 2002 for a short while, and lost a stone in like 4 weeks. more than half of that in one week!!! unfortunately, i fell prey to the one great love of my life: pizza. my mum just makes the most fantastic pizza, with an amazingly good base, and i just couldnt help it… i’m currently yo-yoing between 14 and 15 stone, but i’ve gotten to the ‘dont give a f*ck’ stage of my life now. and so young too… :dubious:

6

I just started the South Beach diet which is also lo carb, but as I understand, not as drastic as Atkins. Since Monday, I’ve dropped 5#, and I ate out for the first time today with no problems. Truly, the main reason I started South Beach is that it’s supposed to be excellent for lowering cholesterol and triglycerides, but the weight loss is a bonus.

Good luck to you! The battle of the spare tonnage never seems to end, does it?

7

A girl I work with is doing Atkins right now and loves it, but she measure success in inches, not pounds, as she doesn’t have a scale at home.

I, on the other hand, am doing Body-for-Life. I’ve lost seven pounds in three weeks and the workout plan is awesome and short.

They both seem to work well, but BfL REQUIRES you to do the workouts. I doesn’t work without them.

8

I did very well before, when I was working out. But with my computer addiction and the long commute, I can’t work out in the mornings. Afternoons? After battling the traffic on the 405 (and if I’m on the motorcycle, occasionally almost getting killed by idiot cage-drivers) about the only thing I want to do when I get home is read my e-mail and collapse! So I think I’ll take 20 minutes or so in the morning to do the mile and a half walk and keep up the paddling on weekends, and forget the actual workout regimen for now.

Thanks! Actually it did end a while ago. Girls would tell my (then-)girlfriend how lucky she was. snarf :dubious: But after we broke up and I got lazy, it sort of sneaked up on me.

9

Awww. Sorry to hear this. Was going to invite you to a pasta fest! In Italy, no less. [just kidding!] I know a couple of successful low carbers. Best of luck! :slight_smile:

10

Glad to hear of the results.

However:

Quackwatch seems to claim that people lose weight on the Atkins diet because they were eating too many carbs and calories in the first place, not because Atkins is correct in his nutritional ratio recommendations. I refer you to:

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/lcd.html

11

Be careful with cutting out carbs completely. The Atkins diet has you cut them out altogether for I think 2 weeks, then eat limited carbs. If you cut out carbs altogether for a long time, it can be dangerous. DO NOT USE THIS DIET IF YOU HAVE BLOOD SUGAR PROBLEMS, either hypoglycemia or diabetes. I’d read the book ASAP, and I’d recommend talking to your doctor, since it can actually cause health problems if not done properly.

12

What’s your thinking about this? Carbs are what kick your blood sugar and insulin around–fat and protein really don’t affect it much.

13

Check the quackwatch site given above, it explains it.

14

I had a friend who did really well on Atkins. Good luck to you :slight_smile:

I can’t do his plan as I have kidney disease and too much protein will make it much much worse! (And according to the dietician I had for a study I did - most americans eat way too much protein on an average day!)

15

I saw something very depressing on the Discovery Channel the other night. It was about obesity, and there was this one guy who was 1400 pounds. He was bed bound, and did everything (and I do mean EVERYTHING) in bed. It took a forklift to get him to the hospital for weight loss treatment.

What was depressing was that they said we are born with a certain number of fat cells. As you eat more than you expend in energy, the fat cells multiply. You can lose weight and the fat cells will empty, but they will remain, waiting to be filled up again.

That just made my day. :frowning:

16

Okay, now that’s strange…

I just hopped onto the bathroom scale. It says I’ve lost five pounds since Friday morning. Two and a half pounds per day seems like an awful lot. I was expecting less than half of that rate during the initial couple of weeks, and then the weight loss tapering off after a while.

Except for my morning coffee, water is my drink of choice. I drink plenty. Last night, in addition to what I mentioned in the OP, I ate a large chunk of medium-sharp cheddar for dinner. (I didn’t feel like cooking.) Two eggs, drumsticks, cheese, two cups of coffee and lots of water is a lot to eat in a day, isn’t it? How can I have lost 2-1/2 pounds in 24 hours? (Even understanding that bathroom scales are not precision instruments.)

To those of you who have tried this: How much should I expect to lose in a week? I was thinking optimistically five pounds per week to start, not five pounds in two days.

Another thing: I usually don’t start feeling peckish until about 09:00, and I’m usually not really hungry until 11:00 or so. Today, I’ve felt that I could stand a little something since I got out of bed at 05:00. I think I’ll have to fry up some carcass before I go kayaking today. (What I really want is a nice bowl of oatmeal, but 26g of carbs is a bit much right now. Maybe some nice kippers or groundcow…)

17

For one thing, please consider that in the first few days, especially on low-carb diets, you lose a lot of fluid. Also, doing a quick count in my head of what you ate, I’d say it rings in at around 1,000 calories, which is really not enough. It’ll produce super-fast results in the beginning, then will mess with your metabolism big time! Try this: write down your food intake for a couple of days, and calculate how many calories you’re eating. I don’t know how tall you are or how much you weigh, but my guess is you need at least 1,600 calories a day.

18

October, at no time on Atkins do you cut out carbs completely. For the first two weeks, you keep your carb consumption below 20 grams a day, most of those carbs coming from vegetables. Then after two weeks you gradually add more carbs (again, good carbs from veggies, not carbs from stuff like white flour and sugar) until you are still consistently losing weight but not gaining. I’ve been doing it for a few weeks now and I have never felt better and I am eating 100% better foods than the junk I was eating before I started Atkins.

The great thing is I have lost enough now that it makes it so much easier to jump on my bike and do 30 miles - I’d tire out 10 miles down the road before. I have lost enough that exercising is easier.

I lost a lot of water weight in the beginning Johnny - 9 pounds in one week. It has slowed down considerably now, maybe 1-2 pounds a week. But I feel great and am definitely eating a lot better than I was before. I don’t miss white flour or sugar one bit.

19

Oh, and drink a lot of water (I just realized this as I got up to fill up my bottle again), it really helps. Instead of drinkig a soda or juice, drink water. I think it is a really important part of losing weight. And exercise at least 5 times a week, it will help both with losing and firming up.

20

I think that if a person merely cut out all white flour and sugar, they would lose weight. I heard of people who are allergic to wheat and who are very thin because they do not eat bread, pastries, etc.