As those of you who peruse Sally's Blog will know, she's started off on the Atkins diet. What you might not know is that in moral support, *I* have too. Whether it's my age, or more likely, my attempts to keep to the eating/drinking lifestyle of someone ten years younger, my weight has slowly crept up over the last two/three years to a stately fourteen stone. I want to get that down so this seems like the ideal opportunity.
However, it means only 20g of carbohydrate a day for two weeks. Then 25g the next week. Then 30g etc. until you find your comfortable "losing a little bit of weight zone" zone. But the problems are thus. [1] I like carbohydrates - no bread, rice, pasta, almost anything for James. [2] No caffeine for two weeks. *sob* I mean, can you imagine me in the first stages of caffeine withdrawal?? After two days, even my teeth hurt. My teeth! All of them. :( Things are getting better now as it's been nearly four days. (The reason for lack of caffeine BTW, is that it stimulates the production of insulin with affects your metabolism. After the first two weeks, you're allowed to creep back onto it again. As a side note, I'm shocked by my dependency). [3] No alcohol either!! God, it's gets worse, doesn't it? (The reason for this is that the body burns alcohol in preference to fats and should be avoided). It means that I'm giving up the beer and the wine - though wine isn't too bad, but might calm myself with the occasional vodka - no sugar - and diet lemonade if I've been good.
Will I lose the pounds?? Only time and this Blog! - will tell.
Note: I don't actually know how much I weigh as I couldn't be arsed to weigh myself before I started. ;-)
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4 comments:
Once you get into Atkins it isn't too bad. The first 3 days are Hell - we did them on a Friday to Sunday to minimise work impacts, but the Sunday was not fun at all.
The thing for us was that Atkins became really boring and samey after 3 months and taring your hair out boring after 6 months! Serena and I both lost a good amount of weight on Atkins (I lost over 2 st) but it was impossible to keep going.
We now have a fairly low GI diet (similar to Atkins) which we are using in the maintenance phase - i.e. not trying to lose weight.
Good luck with Atkins mate.
I was 16 1/2 stone when I started it. Between April 29th and June 11th I lost just shy of 3st. I found the diet really straight forward and even found myself making omlettes to keep me busy whilst I cooked my steak with mustard and brandy sauce - it was great! :)
Yes the first two weeks seems hard, but 3 years on I still hardly eat carbs - I don't miss potatoes, and rarely eat them. Pasta has dropped to an all time low (almost never) and I do eat rice, but again far less than ever before.
I didn't miss chocolate at all. What I missed was coke (not the drug) but the legal liquid version of the drug sold in supermarkets. I was a fiend on day 3 of caffiene ommission, though I felt like a beautiful butterfly emerging from a chrysalis on day 5....
One thing to note is in the years since Dr Atkins death they've proven that some of his ideas were wrong, and though the diet works extremely well, the reasons behind it working are wrong. So in a few weeks you can indeed have some alcohol or caffiene. However not having them have proven health benefits far beyond that of a diet regime....
I'd recommend weighing yourself - after all how will you truly know if you lose weight at the start? - mind you I lost 1st in 11 days.
Also remember to calculate the net carbs which is the carbs minus the protein - that's the true value of carbs you need to add to 20g per day.
For example nuts have more protien than carbs and are therefore null and void - after week 2 you can effectively just eat them as much as you want....
It's also worth using Atkins.com. Not sure if they still do it, but they used to have a diary where you could record your eatings and it added it for you and also graphed your weight and so on.
I used to snack on Pork Scratchings!
Pure Protein and Fat!
Zero Carbs!
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