On it now, for the last four weeks or so, not a giant fan. Don’t get me wrong, it works—I’m losing about 2-3 pounds a week now, after the first burst of 5 pounds the first week—but I miss the taste of bread and the taste of the occasional beer. I still haven’t gotten the burst of energy that the books say is supposed to happen. So, while I am happy with losing weight and inches from my waist, I am looking forward to the maintenance part of the lifelong diet.
My personal theory on why Atkins/lo-carb works, isn’t because of some mystical good calorie/bad calorie idea; it’s because you are sated on much less pure fat, than you would be on pure carbs, or, worst of all, carbs saturated with tasty, tasty fat. I can nibble on a few cheese cubes and be full. Or at least be done with eating.
I’m on sort of an Atkins/South Beach franken-diet. I have cut out all grains and starchy vegetables except sweet potatoes (I have one small one every few days or so, because I love them), and I eat very little fruit, but I don’t count carbs directly. I just eat mostly meat, leafy vegetables, nuts, cheese, and dairy products. (And low-carb tortillas!) I’ve lost 25 pounds in the past five months and want to lose 15-20 more.
The one thing that’s killing me is the lack of variety in my diet. But I understand that this is mostly my fault, because I choose to make the same meals over and over again and don’t branch out more. I wish there were a low-carb restaurant near me…
I’ve been plateauing for about two months, but I’ll keep eating this way regardless of weight loss goals because I feel so much better now than I used to, when I ate pasta by the half-poundful, plus chocolate and bread galore. I have consistent energy levels throughout the day, and I never get that “I’m stuffed to the gills but I want to keep eating” feeling that I used to have constantly. My blood pressure is down, my cholesterol levels are WAY down, my skin is much better, my menstrual cycle is more regular, I’m not plus-sized anymore…this is the way to live.
I eat lower carb, not low carb. I aim for 3g protein to 4g carb, for all meals except dinner. Dinner I eat higher carb.
I find this has the low appetite benefits of low carb (often days I will just have eggs & fruit, or a smoothie, and that lasts me until dinner), but is easier to stick to. I can have fruit paired with protein, I can make a good smoothie, I can even have soymilk and go lean cereal. And if there is something I really want, I can have it for dinner.
It may not work for everyone, but I lost 100 pounds and have kept it off for years this way, when nothing else worked.
I stayed on Atkins from around 2002-2004, but never did induction (I was already lean). I stayed semi-low carb through grad school, then my fiance, who is in his 70s, decided to go back on Atkins and asked me to do induction and all with him. He had lost some 40 pounds a few years back. (He is lean, lifts weights and looks like Adonis now). I cook standard low-carb fare for him.
I’ve gotten interested in Primal/Paleo. I’m halfway through the Primal Blueprint book by Mark Sisson. The problem is see is getting grass-fed beef and other pastured meat, even around here it’s expensive and I hesitate even though we have a decent income. We have to take our chances with the grocery store meat.
I don’t have a prior lipid profile, but my numbers a year after strict Atkins last year were:
That’s the thing. No chest freezer. Not that we don’t have the space, but we have too many large purchases to make before that. So someday…
Eatwild shows only two or three farms within a few hour’s drive and one that is closer, but still a ways. And they’re still too expensive. (Not paying delivery). There’s got to be more choices in Tennessee. Oh well, I can get farm eggs close by.
I have been eating a whole foods diet lowish in carbs, high in natural fats, moderate in animal protein since September 2009. I am not, and have never been, overweight or overfat- I’ve always been painfully underweight. I made the switch to eating this way purely for other health reasons, and was really concerned that I would lose weight doing so. However I have sucessfully gained and maintained weight through the past year or so, which I’m thrilled about. Mostly muscle mass,
I decided to limit the carbs in my diet due mostly to my own research on health and nutrition. I pretty much follow a Primal diet as laid out by Mark Sisson, but he isn’t a big influence for me. Specifically, I made the choice to severely limit grains (with the exception of white rice), beans, and processed sugar/sweeteners. I just try to eat real, fresh food excluding those things. I have varied the amounts of potatoes, other starchy veg, and fruits I eat through the past year or so. Lately, when I add up my daily intake I usually come in at 100-150g daily of carbs, which is still ‘low’ according to the usual recommendations. And I’m very active, so most of that fuels workouts and helps my muscles recover - I find don’t even want to eat starch when I’ve had a day just sitting around.
I get most of my calories from fat (cream, butter, coconut oil, and tallow in particular). I eat a fair amount of protein but nothing excessive - meat, eggs, seafood. Some nuts, some fruits (certain fruits or too much fruit is also an IBS trigger, so I have to be careful). I eat all sorts of vegetables, but not huge amounts. Starch is from potatoes and sweet potatoes mostly. And I still enjoy my milk chocolate, custards, other fatty but sweetened desserts.
From 2007-2009 (when I was eating mostly vegetarian and tons of grains), I was having worsening problems with IBS (stomach pains, cramping, diarrhea, pooping 4-7 times per day), acne, eczema, hives, other rashes, gum soreness and bleeding, more frequent than usual headaches, oversleeping yet never feeling rested, low energy, low stamina, always feeling cold with freezing hands and feet, a disturbed menstrual cycle (from my usual norm), painful and debilitating periods, hair loss, more mental health issues than were customary, and probably some more stuff I’m not thinking of at the moment. Thyroid testing and other hormonal testing told me I was ‘within normal levels’. I was tested for celiac - negative. I had an endoscopy and colonoscopy to check for damage - everything looked fine, thank goodness. But I was getting sicker and sicker, at a time when I was working very hard change the unhealthy lifestyle I’d lived the past few years, and doing it all ‘right’ by the book (except that I never ate low in fat, I have always craved and eaten large amounts of fat)… I was so frustrated. And felt like crap.
My current diet has almost totally resolved every issue I listed above (even the acne I had since I was 16), so I am a true believer that I need to eat this way for the sake of my short and long-term health.
This is the entire premise of good calories/bad calories. Calories from carbs are “bad”, because your body doesn’t feel satisfied by them (among other reasons) thus you can overeat them to an incredible extent, unlike fat and protein.
Dietary cholesterol has little to no effect on levels of your blood cholesterol. Cholesterol is a vital substance and your liver will compensate if you do not eat enough. The yolk is the best part. There’s a story (anecdote alert) going 'round the low-carb blogosphere about a guy in a nursing home who ate some 25 whole eggs a DAY. His cholesterol numbers were when measured totally within normal range.
You’re absolutely right about mentioning the word Atkins, bless his soul, or even low-carb, to questioners. Just say you’re dropping sugar and starch. They can’t argue with that.
rhubarbarin, I’ve heard your story before and I find it interesting. Thanks for telling it again, but these two aspects are new to me. Why did you decide to include white rice and fatty but sweet desserts?
Also, why did you choose animal fats over vegetable fats?
Sorry, but this is a bit misleading. Atkins *never *recommends going carb free. For the first two weeks, called Induction, it calls for severely restricting carbs, but you still need 20 grams, to come mostly from leafy green veggies. It’s only that low for two weeks, to kick your body into ketosis. After that, you add carbs until you find the amount that stalls your weight loss, and then go 5 grams of carbs below that. So yes, it’s low carb, but it’s not carb-free, and not really even *nearly *carb-free except for those first two weeks.
I did Atkins years ago and had great success with it. I lost about 35 pounds in two months, and after the first few days of “Atkins flu,” I had never felt better in my life–tons of energy, clear skin, good mood. Unfortunately, I screwed it up by staying in Induction too long…I was enjoying losing the weight fast so I kept things simple and boring. And then when life hit (lawsuit, cross-country move, helping care for my sister’s newborn, colicky twins), I fell off the wagon.
I’ve been meaning to get back on ever since, but like someone said upthread, that first week or so is very hard, and you really have to be motivated to do it. I’ve been having babies these past few years, so it hasn’t even been an option for me. But now my youngest is one, and I think I’m ready to go again. I’ve just started * The Beck Diet Solution* book (I think someone on this board recommended it, actually…whoever you are, thank you! It’s awesome!), which allows you to use any reasonable diet, but you can’t start until the third week, so I still have a couple of weeks left to eat bread and pasta.
Thank you, everyone, for your stories. I’m reading this thread with great interest, as I’m somewhere between a type 1 and type 2 diabetic. My Endo is on the fence as to which. Type 1 runs in the family, on both sides, so that’s what he’s thinking I am. I’m overweight, so I guess I could go either way with that.
It seems that any carbs I eat shoot my blood glucose through the roof, as do any fruits I eat, because of the sugar in them. The last apple I ate was last Friday, and it shot my BG up to over 250, and that was with fast-acting insulin. So, those are out now, too.
I’m cutting back on carbs in a big way. I try to get no more than just a few per day, and the result is keeping my BG levels to a nearly normal reading. Aside from the apple incident a week ago, I’m just eating mostly vegetables, and a little meat for protein. I take my slow-acting insulin injections twice per day, as well as Byetta injections twice per day. I also inject fast-acting insulin for any carbs that I eat, which isn’t much at this point! The weight is coming off, and that makes me happy. I rarely even get hungry anymore, and I have to force myself to eat. That part is pretty scary, because that’s just not like me!
I’m really interested in hearing about all your experiences with the low-carb/no-carb thing, so keep ‘em comin’!
For me it works great for rapid weight loss but I certainly wouldn’t want to maintain
this diet for the rest of my life.
It really is the no fun diet but there is no denying that it works.
So I know that I don’t use it properly because life is too short and I’m unwilling to do without real ice cream, cake, bread, huge baked potato oozing with butter, etc…for the rest of my life.
I’m 205 now and I’ll be down to 180 just in time for summer (gotta look good in the wifebeater and T-shirts).
Oh well, I’ve been doing this for the last 5 years… works for me.
I love Atkins. If I could afford it I’d eat that way now but nobody else in the house is interested so just buying us all the same carby pastas and potatoes is all I can do. I felt so much energy and didn’t binge nearly as much, but that binging is my downfall.
I lost 80 lbs in a year and I was perfectly content. Then I went on anti-anxiety meds. The nausea had me craving simple carbs. Veggies lost all appeal. The worst part was not only did the med not help with binging, it made me feel zero guilt when I did. I gained it all back plus 30 lbs. but it wasn’t because Atkins is flawed. It’s because up until about a month ago I was binging about four times a week on three or four thousand calories worth of junk.
My favorite Atkins approved foods were the simplest. I could just eat a hunk of lightly seasoned broiled chicken and a hunk of Monterey Jack dipped in avocado paste every day for lunch. I remember making some sort of bread substitute with spinach, parmesan and eggs. It wasn’t the consistency of bread but you could slice it into squares and it would hold fixins inside just fine. I liked the low carb tortillas too. I found that I really like sucralose in liquid form and learned to bake some desserts with that and erythritol. I really got into the DaVinci syrups too. And flax muffins!
I will sing Atkins praises because it’s a great, healthy way of eating as long as you take it seriously and don’t base your diet on the misguided assumption that it’s a “all you can eat meat and cheese diet”. It isn’t even like that during the two week induction phase but after that I know I had more veggies and fiber from flax than I do now, no doubt about it.
BTW a LOW carb cheesecake will have cream in it with a nut crust, sweetened with your favorite type of sweetener. I liked banana DaVinci syrup in mine, or white chocolate. That’s an Atkins style cheesecake. Of course you wouldn’t eat that on induction, but you can have what they call mock cheesecake which also yummy. Cream cheese or ricotta, egg and sweetener in a cup you nuke about a minute IIRC. It is satisfyingly sweet and very low carb. I also liked adding pumpkin to my cheesecake. Pumpkin is actually an awesome way to give foods a creamy consistency. I used it in my soups and roasts in addition to sweet treats.
I lost quite a bit of weight on the South Beach Diet. The first week induction phase was hell! Basically, salad and only salad. But I kind of enjoyed the diet once I got going. Substituted romaine lettuce leaves for bread in making wraps, and mayonnaise was allowed!. As long as I had a list of the approved foods, I could get creative. Some of the recipes trying to replicate the bread experience were ludicrous - whizzing pork rinds in a blender to make ‘flour’?? About this time, thankfully, allowable breads were showing up in the health food stores, in the freezer case … I lost weight and had more energy than I’d ever had, so there’s truth to the idea that white flour, white rice, and sugar weighs you down, so to speak. My sweet tooth suffered - Too much artificial sweetener on the SBD, too many flavoring syrups, and as for sugar free candy, well - beware! I did find a recipe for making a cake using a can of beans pulverized in a blender, with eggs and sugar free pudding mix. It was a real treat, surprisingly tasty, and no one could believe the ingredients…I should revisit that diet, I really have only myself to cook for now.
Another good low-carb substitute is using cauliflower as a substitute for mashed potatoes. Just blend them with butter, if I remember correctly, and it has the consistency and very close to the taste of mashed potatoes!
Recently lost 24 pounds on The Dukan Diet, a pretty interesting protein sparing modified fast. You eat nothing but lean protein for the induction phase, gradually introducing vegetables in the second phase.
I was never “hungry” but I did find myself craving veggies/bread during the induction phase
