…are good. We’re in the Atkins induction phase. We’re both the sort that can gain weight on green beans: any sort of carb loves us. And we wear tutus to skate. Spandex provides a certain impetus to be good.
So we’re in the protein-only phase of Atkins. We can have hard cheese, unsauced meat, eggs, and that’s about it. I have about 6 ounces of milk every few days, which is the only carb (I know: cheese is milk, but it loses carb somewhere in the cheesification.)
We have one other advantage: having been to an endocrinologist to get sorted out, and being on thyroid meds, which we turned out to need according to the New Rules—endocrinology has revised its criteria for meds, which isn’t as widely publicized as it ought to be, even within the medical community. So we now each have a normal level of thyroid activity. That helps bigtime.
What are we eating? Quite a lot. We have 2 softboiled eggs apiece for breakfast. 2 sandwich-slices of sharp cheddar for lunch. Possibly a sugar-free latte (my big cheat). And we stay away from low-fat cottage cheese (which is high carb) and other low-fat dairy: they seem to add something to make up for the fat, which does us no good at all. We could have butter if we had something to put it on. And we do not have diet drinks or carbonated drinks of any stamp but one: aspartame triggers the insulin response and rebound, and that’s a no-no, the same as sugar. I get my coffee, Jane gets her Sobe Lean (uses Splenda, which is allowed). We both get a glass of wine in the evening. And supper is a half a roast chicken, or 1 and 3/4 pounds of roast beef or pork. We do the cooking: a lot of delis tend to add stuff involving carbohydrate. Chicken is rubbed down with olive oil (which makes spice stick to it)Â and (pick one) hot curry powder, black bean sauce and cumin, chicken spice, or chilis; beef with salt, black pepper, thyme; and pork with rosemary, thyme, black pepper, salt. We roast everything, losing the fat, open roaster on the chicken, closed on beef and pork.
The result? After struggling to limit portions for a year, with zip result, I have dropped 4 pounds in a week; Jane has dropped 3 plus, and we are doing great. This diet admittedly isn’t for everyone, but we thrive on it, and we can exist on it for weeks before we have to add a few carbs. We do get cholesterol tested on schedule. What surprised us is that our cholesterol (OUR cholesterol: we do not say what happens for other people) actually is measurably better when we’re on this high-fat diet.
Sure, I think fondly of pasta, but I think even more fondly of being able to get into my jeans. Thanksgiving is going to be a spiral-sliced ham, no sugar cure, no glaze. Christmas—well, maybe we’ll blow our diet for Christmas week to New Years, then get right back into the strict phase. Changing things around after a month or so does not seem to be a bad thing.
The usual disclaimers: go to a doc, be sure you’re ok with it, get your cholesterol tested if you think of trying any diet. But we prefer to go into the holidays determined to hold the line, or better.
Ham with no sugar?! x_X
Hmm… maybe try a salt crust? 🙂
My diet is mainly: try to eat regular meals (I often miss lunch because I’m in class) and snack on nice things (fruits/veggies/seeds/nuts), not my luvverly chips! I have not yet found an acceptable alternative to my breakfast: toasted bagel with Adams All-Natural Crunchy Peanut Butter (anything but Adams is scary!) and a glass of skim milk (again, anything else tastes weird)… it saw me through the last seven or more years and tends to stave off migraines, and I’, stickin’ tuit! ;D
Anything other than ACPB is just a waste of money! 😀
Anything that staves off migraines is definitely the way to go.
I’ve noticed more and more kids snacking happily on fruits/raw veggies etc. and it’s so encouraging. Hope for the future gens. Those of us who came up in the sixties got so much in the way of “new” snack foods, we became the guinea pigs (literally) for the subsequent gens.
Lol—another Adams Crunchy fan! We believe that there is no other True Peanut Butter. 😉
Luckily, once you get off the strict phase of Atkins, nuts and peanut butter without sugar become a nice treat: straight from the spoon, with Adams’.
I follow a vaguely similar diet: min 50g protein, 800 Cal./day. (Do NOT do this without a doctor’s involvement!!) I find this tea marvelous:
https://www.gourmet-coffee.com/cinnamon-orange-1lb.-loose-leaf-tea.html
I make it very strong in a press maker. It’s more cinnamon than orange, so it’s quite different from Constant Comment–I looked long and hard for a good bulk cinnamon tea! I have it with Splenda, so it essentially has no calories. It’s such as strong taste, it seems to trick my body into thinking it’s actually getting food. I drink huge amounts of it, and it’s really nice to have something (anything!) that one can indulge in with complete freedom while dieting.
It also makes the house smell wonderful.
My current tea-of-choice is Choice Organic’s Liquorice Peppermint. It’s peppermint and licorice root. Tastes a lot like sweetened mint tea, with no sugar or caffeine. (Note: this is not the same as the very-similarly named Sweet Liquorice Mint, which has spearmint and peppermint, licorice root, and something called coneflower, which I believe is echinacea. I find that this one has a bit of a medicinal aftertaste, which I put down to the echinacea, since the other version doesn’t seem to have that aftertaste or contain anything but licorice and mint.) But it makes a nice mellow tea, very soothing to drink. The only downside is that licorice teas are not easy to find. I order mine at Whole Foods, and have to buy it in lots of 6 boxes.
Keep in mind that licorice can be toxic. See Wikipedia or web search for “Licorice Tea”. You will find some online sources for licorice tea, but none with which I’ve dealt.
I hear you about hard to find/get. I could find cinnamon tea is bags (ick!), but not loose after a while. That prompted me to start looking online, and the tea of all kinds is much cheaper. Cinnamon is the most expensive I buy at $13/lb. I bought 5 lbs. because the 5th was nearly free due to the weird discounts I noted below. And one or two bags will be gifts.
Plus I save the gas and time going to the one store that had the tea I wanted.
I do keep that in mind, and limit myself to one glass a day. Being generally healthy, I figure that amount is probably safe. And undoubtedly better for me than the Earl Grey with half-and-half and sugar that is my second favorite!
Oh, and for iced I have a lovely tisane called Summertime from these folks http://shop.theteagardens.com/category.sc;jsessionid=B421072D1B70CDAAD7F007B36A52D370.qscstrfrnt01?categoryId=10. It’s lemongrass, rose, raspberry, and mint… wonderful on ice. And the spot that sells it is just around the corner, and does a nice afternoon tea with scrumptious scones, so it’s no bother for me to get some loose leaf.
I’m a total Cretin when it comes to ice tea–Lipton bags in bulk from Costco. Hot tea, I’m very picky about. The Tea Gardens–I think I saw them when I was looking back when. OK prices. Hard to find out they’re selling by pound. I’ll keep them in mind. Thanks!
I should add, Roger’s Gourmet Coffee has great product, but their order system is a bit wacky. First if you’re buying much, you want to do a web search for coupon codes. Second, look at the codes they offer on their site, which may work for different sized orders. Third, orders generate points, and you can use those points to help pay for the order you’re ordering; so you always pay by points, then pay by credit. Fourth, they offer free shipping by amount and/or coupon. So, end result, doing their quirky order dance, I get 17.5% off and free shipping.
All in all, I use coffeebeandirect.com for anything but cinnamon tea. Their prices are much lower, their packaging is better, and their order processing is simple. But, while they have a tea like Constant Comment, they don’t have a true cinnamon tea.
I’m diabetic; I have to struggle to limit carbs all the time. I can do it fairly well at home, but eating out, whether in restaurants, fast food places or friend’s tables is always difficult, and I often cheat. When I can focus my attention on my diet I lose weight easily. I think that low-fat notion does not really work for weight loss. I struggled in my pre-diabetic stage to lose weight and keep normal blood glucose levels, but all the stuff the ADA tells you to eat involves low fat and more carbs than my body can handle. Brown bread and brown rice are still bread and rice. There’s a book – Good Calories, Bad Calories; fats, carbs and the controversial science of diet and health, by Gary Taubes, that traces the changes in medical belief about carbs and fats. It’s very hard to find low-carb, filling food in any public place.
I absolutely agree: I gain weight like crazy on a low-fat diet—in fact, my current battle with weight stems entirely with a low-fat diet I tried when my father had a series of heart attacks and they put him on one. If I could argue one thing with the diet gurus, it’s that one size does not fit all. We’ve found a few notions in the battle for good low-carb dinners: a sausage-mushroom omelette, or two of them, is a good filling meal. You can fare pretty well at a Chinese buffet, off the barbecued pork and the skewered chicken: no rice, no noodles, stay away from the sweet stuff, but you can live there. A steak house is a good thing: no sauces. And any place that has breakfast all day long is a good bet.I dodge salads, because most everything you can put on them (or have in them that’s interesting) is carb-ish. One thing with a thoughtful host: providing a big plain-egg and cheese omelette for one guest is not a big disruption. I can produce an omelette in under 3 minutes, far less fuss than it takes to special-cook somebody’s hamburger (less-salt, more salt, medium rare, etc), so I don’t think it any problem at all to provide that…assuming omelettes are ok. When we’re traveling on Atkins, we like places that are breakfast at all hours.
You could try half of a local favorite: loco moco. Traditional loco mocos involve a scoop or two of rice, a hamburger patty, and a fried egg on top of that, with brown gravy over all. One of those will fill you up for most of the day, besides overwhelming your caloric intake! In your case, I’d nix the rice and go light with the gravy or not at all, or maybe replace it with a drizzle of hot sauce.
When I was first diagnosed diabetic, I went on Atkins and maintained it for about two years when I realized I could not go through life without carbs. I’d dropped 20 lbs, and gained 10 back. It did teach me to avoid rice, pasta, potatoes and to choose wisely when eating out. I then tried NutriSystem, which helped me figure out portion size. I just finished up the 7-day UltraSimple diet, which is a detox diet (you basically eat brown rice, vegetables, chicken, broth, water and probiotics) which showed me that consumption of dairy and grains do actually stress me out and I’ve got to limit them. 🙂 It got me to make banana-blueberry smoothies with flax for breakfast instead of eating toast.
A real good breakfast if you can do fruit is to put milk and a banana and a dash of vanilla in a blender with a little ice. Add seasonal berries, etc.
Couldn’t you freeze the banana and eliminate the ice for a thicker drink? And peanut butter would probably be good in there too…
Let me know how it goes. 😉
Mmm. Trying to limit the dairy, though. 🙂 I do love creamy banana flavors.
I lost 10 pouns last time on Adkins, pretty quickly, but I was craving chocolate in a bad way.
I’m not able to maintain it for very long. I find that low carb, not low fat works well for me as a regular diet, but I love fried everything, and bread and pasta, so I have to limit that stuff to treats.
Good luck!
Best advice I had was from my doctor: find the sensible diet that works for you and stay with it. For me the only thing that works is portion control and limiting treats to one a week, curtail sugar and avoid artificial sweeteners. ( I have MCS and they raise havoc with my system}.
Debra Lynn Dadd has a terrific website for those with diabetes, MCS, etc. I haven’t reached the point where I can set up a link but she can be found at .
I think almost any fruit can be frozen and turned into a smoothie with yogurt etc. I lived on them this summer…..felt like I was eating ice cream all the time.
I buy all my tea from Upton Tea Co. in Hopkinton, Mass. They have everything from tea from every country that produces tea to tisanes, rooibos etc.
Has anyone tried using any nut butters other than peanut butter? Almond and hazelnut are to die for. Cashew is so delicate it tends to get overwhelmed by other flavors.
I think I’m driveling on! 😆
Oh help the web information did not post! I’ll try this: Debra: dld123.com and Upton: uptontea.com. I may have to get a tutorial Patience! 😉
To make a link appear, put www. in front of it. Of course that will get you hung up in my pernicious spamblocker. That’s http://www.dld123.com and http://www.uptontea.com 🙂
You could put butter onto soft-boiled / poached eggs. 🙂
You seem pretty on top of this, but I must say: I hope you’re checking your blood pressure. Atkins tends to be high in sodium & low in potassium, so people can have their blood pressure get right out of control.
Now: how to do this as a vegetarian….
As a vegetarian, it would be a problem, particularly if you’re not eating cheese and eggs. Some veggies, like coconut, nuts, and avocado are pretty high in vegetable fats…I know, because once you’re able to add some carbs on Atkins, we can indulge in those ordinarily ‘caution’ items. I’m not sure, however, how you compose that into a menu.
My day includes a banana, and also potassium supplements. Sometimes it isn’t enough and I wake up at oh_GHu in the morning with a leg cramp (this predates the low-carb diet by some years).
Yummy. However, Atkins doesn’t work too well with diverticulosis, even if asymptomatic. Got to keep up the high fibre fruits, veggies, grains, etc.
Bummer of a problem. Jane has to take fiber when she’s on Atkins—she’s found one brand, Fiber Plus, that works for her. I’m lucky. I don’t.
Your success with this high-protein, high-fat diet absolutely baffles me, but if it works, it works. I succeed on almost the opposite: almost no meat, LOTS of veggies (sigh, the local produce sellers are gone for the winter), extremely low sodium and cholesterol, and keep count of fiber and potassium, keep them high. (A microwave-baked potato with chives and yogurt bumps them both up nicely. Also cantaloupe has lots, again sighs for the end of summer.) Add a minimum of 1/2 gallon of water/day, in addition to any juice, coffee, etc., and plenty of walking, and it brings down not only my pounds but my blood pressure by at least 30 points.
The water seems to be necessary to flush out excess sodium, etc., and makes me feel a lot better. Till I get used to it if I go off the regimen, it IS a pain in the matter of frequent peeing, though.
Oh yes, and my diet also has lots of whole grain — big bowl of oatmeal with flax seed and TVP and raisins is my standard breakfast, brown rice, whole wheat bread, yummm. Like I said, diametrically opposite of Atkins. Atkins would poison me so fast …
Ah, and my recipe for pork loin roast: a great success this evening. For this one you MUST use an open roaster, with a rack, ie, no lid. Takes 3 hours at 350 degrees.
On a surface of your choosing, for a 15″ pork loin roast, sprinkle a fistful!!! of black pepper, a teaspoon of salt, and 2 teaspoons of rosemary leaves, evenly distributed. Make the area wide enough so you can roll the roast over it, picking up all that spice all over it. Wash roast. Roll through spice, lay in rack, and roast for about 3 hours. 10 minutes to fix, 3 hours to cook. If you are cooking a smaller roast (this one does 2 obligate carnivorous people for 2 days, four people for one, with 2 thick slices apiece—or eight people nicely if they have other things to eat besides… 🙂 Goes great with new potatoes. )
It comes out with a peppery thin crust, and should just about cut with a fork.
Oh, and for people who have problems peeling bananas, there is actually a wiki on it: http://www.wikihow.com/Peel-a-Banana
The monkey method (starting at the “bottom” of the banana) works really well.
Oh, and my favorite pork recipe: pork shoulder cooked in milk. Take pork shoulder, season with salt and pepper, brown, put in a pot with milk (4 cups), garlic, lemon peel, and rosemary. (You can use other spices if you want… a lot of recipes call for sage or bay leaf, some go for a lot more.) You can either cook this on the stovetop for several hours, or put it in the oven and cook it for several hours. You wind up with wonderfully tender pork, and the milk gets browned and clumpy and tastes absolutely wonderful on potatoes, rice, noodles, etc.
Ain’t no justice—yesterday I was up a pound and Jane was down one. Today I’m down 2, and Jane is up one, after forgetting to eat lunch yesterday: total intake: 2 eggs, 3/4 lb of pork roast.
But we’re doing fine. And tomorrow I’ll probably be up and Jane will be down 2.
The good thing is getting this weight off, and breaking through the plateau that we each had established—takes a bit of self-denial to create a new weight set-point, but our theory is if we can get down to a former set-point we will find it a lot easier to hold there. One thing we can say is that even at our indulgent worst, we did not regain all the weight we had lost on the last concerted effort. I think set-points are the key to it. If you can set up and religiously stay at a weight a while, like about two months, the body ‘learns’ that is acceptable and tries to maintain it.
I think you are right about set points, CJ, but golly breaking through is torture sometimes. Thanks for showing me how to do links…I thought it would be far more complicated. I am really good at obsessing and turning molehills into mountains. Depends on perspective? :D!