I haven’t cheated on the Atkins diet for any significant period of time, but I have tasted those things that I used to love: a Pringle chip, a bit of potato salad, a regular cookie, a yeasty dinner roll. With the exception of the dinner roll, none of them tasted nearly as good as I remembered, and I found I never really missed them. I haven’t had pasta in a year and a half and I never miss it. I don’t ever want chips or crackers unless they’re low-carb soy chips, and even then I can eat a small quantity and be done with it. Now the dinner roll is something I have to watch out for, because it’s my favorite food in the world. I try to limit them to only about one a year, because I could easily eat my body weight in them.
Bambi, I am also male. As I said I’m 5’9" or thereabouts, but even having lost 16 pounds (I’m 220) I’m still visibly tubby and in need of slimming down. Part of this could be that I have had abdominal surgery with resulting incisional hernia, but I know part of it is that I’m still overweight.
I won’t make any predictions for you when you get to 235, though. If you find that you still wish to lose another few pounds and hit (for example) 200, I’m sure you have the strength of character to pull it off.
Me, I’m shooting for 180-190 somewhere.
Bambi Dr. Atkins lived in, practiced medicine in, created his diet in, and died in NYC! We’ve heard about him, and every restaurant in the entire city has Atkins-friendly choices.
Size sixty pants. Huh. That’s not too far from where I’m at. To think, it wasn’t that long ago when I was a 46. The funny thing is when I was a 46, ten years back, I couldn’t find that size in most stores. Now that I’m a 56 I see 46s in a LOT more places. You’re definitely right about smaller-sized clothes being cheaper. It’s KILLING me how my pants and shirts are always around $35-60 bucks-- even on sale.
Thanks for the advice about other people’s benchmarks. This may interest some of you… my personal attitude is not about weight, though. I don’t even own a scale and I’m not interested in knowing how fat I am. I know its too much. My attitude is that I’m doing this to lose clothing sizes, to be able to go into any store and buy belts and pants off the size 30 rack. I’m pulling out all my old clothes and I’m using those as a benchmark to tell me what progress I’m making. I couldn’t tell you with much accuracy how much weight I’ve lost this past week, but I’ve noticed that I can actually suck in my gut some, and can now squeeze into some of my pants from last year… and that I can actually wear some of my button shirts that I couldn’t button before. although they are still tight, being actually able to BUTTON them is a big deal.
Of course, I must become more physically active. So I’m slowly walking. A few blocks in the neighborhod every night and back. Pretty soon I’ll buy a bike and pedal around the neighborhood, and work up the stamina to pedal down to OSU or along the river.
I’ve lost 50 pounds on Atkins, and have stalled here. But I’ve been going to the gym, and clothes that didn’t fit me in the Spring now fit, even without weight loss, so I’m still doing okay in my mind.
This is so much better than before, if I never lose again, I’m still happy.
Bambi, I found out pretty much the same as you–the things I craved weren’t that good. I also found out that a little bit of what I craved often satisfied me–I didn’t need a meal or an entire serving, a bite of the cake for a co-worker’s birthday was enough. I will go to buffet places sometimes, just to have a bite of things.
I do know that some things, if I kept them around the house, would creep back in pretty quickly (warm bread with butter! potato stuff!) so I limit my exposure, and that is fine, they stay special treats intead of taking over.
Like you, I intend to stick with low-carb, just not the induction level, just because I like it, like not feeling so full and sleepy after lunch, like the energy level.
Good luck–I bet at least one thing you eat in New York will taste fantastic, and make you happy, but that you will be able to leave it behind until your next visit.
I doubt the dish would be Atkins compatible… it’s one to two sweet potatoes (my favorite part so no substituting them) with a red onion, bell pepper, zucchini, yellow squash, and button mushrooms in balsamic vinegar and vegetable oil.
And feel free to share whatever it is you eat. I most likely will not go on the diet but I might like individual ideas and dishes.
I went from 465 to 365 from oct 03-may 04, size 70 to size 56, lost a shoe size, so you’re goddamned crazy if I’m not gonna cheat…
even if I gain 20lbs, I’ll lose the weight like a crack addict when I get back on(and get back in school w/ a regular eating schedule).
BTW, off to eat some peanut butter pie now.
Wow. Dan Turk, that’s great. What did you do to lose so much weight? How often do you cheat, and what do you eat?
I’ll answer for him, cause it’s my thread, dammit. He and I are doing our Atkins together. We’ve stayed in induction for most of the time we’ve been on it. He’s cheated three times or so since he started, and I’ve done once. We eat similarly, which is to say bunless burgers, salads with yummy high-fat dressings, steaks, cheeses, pepperoni, and broccoli. More or less.
Thanks, Bambi. I’m doing the late night thing because this is the time when I go out and do some walking: its cool, I won’t be observed, and the stores and fast food joints are all closed.
i went into maintenance over summer 'cause I was out of school and kinda lax in everything in life
I also am here to claim credit for bambi’s losses, he mocked the diet at first but is now a loser like me
I’m a little nervous about Atkins. Mostly because I am hopelessly devoted to things like potatoes and potato chips. It would be wonderful to find that I don’t crave all the things that I do now, such as potatoes, rice, and bread. I also know that I eat way too many pre-packaged foods that are full of bad things. Right now, though, I am trying to get into exercising again. I lost about ten pounds in six weeks, through swimming two or three times a week, and drinking water instead of so much soda and juice. I don’t really have good cooking facilities where I live right now, though, so full-fledged Atkins might be hard for me to start. I also forgot to bring my mom’s copies of Atkins books with me when I came back to school. :smack:
The salad with the high-fat dressing sounds really good right about now, though.
The definition of low carb is any regimine that you consume less than 100 grams carb in a 24 hour period. If you eat the skins, and limit it to perhaps 1 sweet potato every couple of days, it may very well fall into the lowcarb category. As we say, the focus should be on maximizing the nutritional quality of the food, which can include whole grains and densely nutritional foods …
The sweet potatoes are the dealbreaker there. The rest of that stuff is OK. The first two weeks, you have to limit your carbohydrate intake to less than 20g a day, so sweet potatoes are right out. As to my intake, I usually do bacon and eggs or an Atkins pizza (my term for pepperoni and cheese nuked in the micro) for breakfast, pepperoni for snacks, a salad (usually with seasoned chicken breasts, cheddar, and a nice dressing) for lunch, and then a steak, italian sausage, or fish for dinner. When I eat out, I usually just get a burger (skip the bun) and broccoli instead of fries. My diet is slightly more limited than that of someone in the ongoing weight loss or the maintenance phases, because I have so much to lose – this means I’ve stayed in induction for the last 8 months. My edition of the book says that a year is OK for that, so I’m sticking with it.
Also, I ate from Taco Bell tonight. I used to subsist on a diet of Taco Bell and frozen dinners. I used to eat from there at least 3 - 4 times weekly. I lived at and on Taco Bell. My foray there tonight will probably be the last time I eat there. It’s so salty, and so sickening. I didn’t even eat that much of it, but it was a bad idea, so I’m gonna check that off the list of stuff to experience this week.
Right, this is what I was meaning with the differences in body composition. I’m 5’ 10". With no fat on me, I would weigh 228, which means that for me to go below that would require the loss of muscle and bone – neither of which is especially desirable. I’ve always been fairly muscular, and the last time I lost a lot of weight, I lost quite a bit of muscle mass. When I put back on the weight, the muscle mass returned with it. On Atkins so far, I haven’t lost any muscle mass, which I like.
The reason I’m aiming for 260 is that at 260, I would be 88% lean (muscle, bone, organs) and 12% fat, which is squarely in the low-normal range for a male my age. 235 would put me at 2.9% bodyfat, which is well below the healthy range. 200 would mean the loss of over 28 pounds of muscle, which isn’t at all what I want.
Sometimes, when I tell people my goal weight, they get this look like, “Why would he want to weigh 260 pounds? Doesn’t he know he’ll still be fat?” Well, I won’t, really. I’ll have a high weight, but a low level of body fat. The only problem is that I’ll look kinda lopsided, because much of my muscle mass is concentrated in the lower half – 17 years of being obese has strengthened my legs quite a bit more than it has my torso and arms. That’s why I’ve been doing some strength training on my upper body, to help even it out a little bit.
Hm, strength training. Good idea. I need to get back into that myself. I was always annoyed, though, because my upper body seems so weak. It does make sense that all these years of weighing far too much would strengthen one’s legs though. I just don’t like going to the gym by myself. I like having someone else there, because then I’ll stay the full time I’ve allotted to work out. I look at weight goal charts for my height, age, and sex, and they seem fairly unrealistic to me. Perhaps I’ve been confused by too many years of obesity, because it seems to me that to be “normal” one must be really thin.
This whole post could have been written by me. Once I got the heavy, carb-laden food out of my diet, when I taste it now, it doesn’t seem as good. Potato chips, homemade cookies, whatever - it just doesn’t seem like I need it, and I can easily pass it by or stop at one bite.
I also haven’t had pasta in over a year and I don’t miss it at all. In fact, regular pasta meals seem downright unappealing to me.
The only thing I do miss are Chinese dumplings. There’s a great Chinese place near me that has great dumplings, and I’ve had those a few times, and they are as good as I remember.
We got chicken from Popeye’s last week, and before I started doing Atkins, I would have had at least 2, maybe 3, of the biscuits. This time I didn’t even have the slightest urge to have one. I didn’t eat any of the sides (fries, mashed potatoes and rice :eek: ), but made myself a salad when we got the food home, and took the skin off my chicken. (We had gotten a big family meal-deal for the four of us.)
I lost 70 pounds since last spring (2003) on Atkins and had hit a stall, but I just went back on a rather strict Induction to get things moving again, and have lost three pounds in the last week.
Indeed. An example of my lopsidedness: I can leg press over 1000 pounds, but I only bench 205. I can do calf raises (both legs together) at about 700, but bicep curls (again, both together) only about 100.
Which brings me back to the body composition point. BMI and other indices have an “average” person, whose body type may or may not match yours – it certainly does not match mine. My original goal weight was around 230 - 240. After getting my bodyfat analyzer ($40, eBay), I realized that even the higher of those numbers is too low, so I adjusted the goal upward to 260. To be less than that, I would have to have a bodyfat percentage less than 12%, which is like a marathon runner or triathlete.
Also, I noticed above that you said you don’t have good cooking facilities. Just FYI, everything I eat hot can be made with on a hotplate in a skillet (or on an electric griddle) or in the microwave. You can forego the micro if you can remember to defrost your meats and such ahead of time – I can’t, so I need it. In addition, everything you need to know about Atkins is freely available on the Web.
Um, ditto. Right down to the dumplings. That is really the kind of food I’m looking forward to cheating with in NY. Vietnamese, Japanese, Indian, Ethiopian.
I had some Doritos this morning. They tasted almost sugary, and not at all good. I used to love this particular kind of dinner roll (Hawaiian Sweet Rolls, if you have them around there), but now I just don’t like them anymore. Something about Atkins takes away the desire for high-carbohydrate foods. I used to love tortellini, ravioli, pizza, fried chicken, mac & cheese, all sorts of potatoes, pretty much every starchy thing on the planet. Now, these things aren’t even at all appealing. Sometimes I look at others eating them and I wonder how they can manage. The taste I had for them is just gone.
I haven’t been dieting for a month. I dont think i’ve gained any weight back as my waist is the same.
Its probably good that you are cheating, your body may have an easier time losing weight after you go back on your diet now.