A couple questions regarding menu.

[Tenteki]

Hey hey. I'm having trouble managing my veggie carb intake. It's really easy for me to eat too many veggies so I tried to cut back and be a little smarter about which I'm eating. The ones I have readily available for me to eat at work are: Mushrooms, Tomatoes, Onions, Avocado, Celery, Broccoli, Romaine. Today my Ketosis kicked in so I wasn't really hungry for the first 2/3 of the day.

For breakfast/snack I had maybe 3 eggs worth of egg salad. 6 hours later I had maybe 2 oz of roasted chicken with mustard and like .25 oz of cheese. My two main meals of the day were while I was working, at the start of my shift I had a hamburger with onions, mushrooms, tomato and 1/2 oz blue cheese sandwiched between two full romaine leaves, then at the end of my shift I had another one with 1/2 the lettuce and no mushrooms with some avocado instead.

It seems like some variation would be good, but the burgers are really easy for me to make and honestly taste really good and satisfy any cravings I have for junk food. Can I get enough carbs and nutrients from tomatoes, onions, romaine and avocado to have a healthy Induction? I'm taking a multivitamin without Iron and drinking at least 120oz of water a day.

[Georgiana]

Re: A couple questions regarding menu.

That's a very good question to ask and be concerned about. You see, if you only eat tomatoes, onions, romaine and avocados, you will only get the nutrients in those veggies. They are great and have some vitamins and minerals, but eating a wider variety of vegetables will provide you with a wider variety of micronutrients.

By the way, I believe you are following Atkins as laid out by atkins.com, not by "Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution", 2002. Am I correct? At ADBB we go by DANDR 2002, which is the last edition published by Dr. Atkins. According to his book, avocados do not count towards your daily vegetables during Induction and are limited to half a small one per day (they are in the "Special Category Foods", so they come with the warning that they may stall or slow down some people's weight loss). Also, I don't know how many onions, tomatoes and romaine you are eating, but according to DANDR 2002 you should be eating 3 cups of vegetables, with at most one of these three cups coming from the "Other Vegetables" list. Tomatoes and onions are both on the "other" list, while romaine lettuce is on the "Salad Vegetables" list. Another difference between atkins.com and DANDR 2002 is that, in DANDR 2002, we are not asked to get 12-15 net carbs from vegetables, but simply to eat our veggies and get over half of our daily net carbs from them.

[Tenteki]

Re: A couple questions regarding menu.

That's good to know. I'm actually following what I remember of the 2002 edition, it was the one I started the diet using the first time around, just forgot the part about avocado. I'm not too worried about it because today was the only day I had any and it was maybe 1/4 of a whole. I thought the 12-15 seemed a bit structured considering the varying levels of carbs in veggies. I've been going pretty low on condiments or additives except for a small amount of cheese so I'm fairly certain the carbs I'm getting are 75% from the veggies I'm eating so I think I'm okay there. So basically don't really sweat the carb count too much as long as I'm getting enough to sustain myself but never going over 20? I was just worried that I was undercutting myself some days. I usually end up at around 14-16 grams by the end of the day after I hit my allowed vegetables.

Onions and Tomato I added in the last couple days to add some variation to my intake, which before hand was primarily cucumber, celery, broccoli and romaine. The sweetness of onion and tomato was very welcome, but I'm making sure to keep it somewhat limited. I had maybe two whole slices of onion and 3 1/4" slices of tomato today, which in my mind made up roughly 3/4 cup and the romaine and mushrooms together would probably have been about 2 1/4 cups so I think I'm managing alright. I'll axe out the avocado for now, it was just a last minute addition to the burger.

Thanks for your quick reply and any more tips you have please feel free to fill me in. I think I'm hitting most of the major points..

[Elizellen]

Re: A couple questions regarding menu.

It seems you have a good grasp of induction eating

Just a thought - make sure the hamburgers have just meat and maybe seasoning in them espccially if they are from a food outlet (not ones you make yourself). You should be able to ask to see the label from the packet to check there are no added starches or sugars etc.