I fell off the wagon and need to jump back on, questions

[farmwife]

Hi all!

I did Atkins faithfully for about 3 weeks. I didn't transition over to OWL very well. I'm an all or nothing kind of person and when I added in nuts I added in way too many then I just started slipping and now I went from looking, feeling and doing great to looking, feeling and doing poorly.

Where do I go from here?

I need to start over with induction, I realize that but how do I maintain this lifestyle?

Another problem is that I couldn't eat with my family, except breakfast. We have a large family and we eat every meal together, even snacks.

I need to find more family friendly atkins meals. Any ideas about that?

I'm going grocery shopping tomorrow to stock up.
Here is what I am getting. Please offer suggestions.
cheese, LOVE IT!
hard salami
black olives
eggs
turkey bacon
sausage
nuts
pork rinds
salad
celery

[Pretty Polly]

Re: I fell off the wagon and need to jump back on, questions

I've been in your situation Cheating for what seems like ever, starting again and failing, sneaking a few nuts in here and there. But as of Tuesday this week I started a100% clean induction and as of this morning have lost 3Ibs.

In my experience go as clean as you possibly can (its only for 14 days)

To be honest I wouldn't get these things you listed:

cheese, LOVE IT!

I really really had to limit my cheese, infact I don't even have it in the house as I over eat it. If I do get it I portion it our into 4oz a day at a time and freeze the rest

hard salami - high salt content
nuts - not allowed on induction
pork rinds - high salt content


black olives - Special category may stall/slow down weight loss

turkey bacon - check for sugar
sausage - check for sugar

Go as fresh as you can, lots of veg and salad and lovely fresh meat along with all good fats like olive oil and butter

[Elizellen]

Re: I fell off the wagon and need to jump back on, questions

Why can you not eat all your meals with the family? Many of us cook a main dish that all can eat (meat or eggs etc) and prepare a salad or veg side dish from the one-cup list for ourselves plus a starchy side dish for those who eat starches.

[OzLover]

Re: I fell off the wagon and need to jump back on, questions

I agree with Elizellen regarding fixing meals. Here is a great website with low carb recipes. My family enjoys many meals from this site.
Linda's Low Carb Menus & Recipes - Home

The other thing I noticed it after only 3 weeks you were eating nuts which are Rung 3. Did you skip Rung 1~more veggies & Rung 2~dairy? Many people find nuts difficult to eat as it is hard to eat the allowed amount & are often a trigger food for people. I can't eat cashews but do fine with almonds & walnuts.

Good luck on a clean Induction! Do you have a copy of DANDR 2002 version? Reread about OWL & introducing foods following the Carbohydrate Ladder.

[farmwife]

Re: I fell off the wagon and need to jump back on, questions

I agree with Elizellen regarding fixing meals. Here is a great website with low carb recipes. My family enjoys many meals from this site.
Linda's Low Carb Menus & Recipes - Home

The other thing I noticed it after only 3 weeks you were eating nuts which are Rung 3. Did you skip Rung 1~more veggies & Rung 2~dairy? Many people find nuts difficult to eat as it is hard to eat the allowed amount & are often a trigger food for people. I can't eat cashews but do fine with almonds & walnuts.

Good luck on a clean Induction! Do you have a copy of DANDR 2002 version? Reread about OWL & introducing foods following the Carbohydrate Ladder.

Oh, I thought nuts were rung 1. I better go re-read. I read it several times but must have gotten confused. I'll look into those recipes.
Thanks!

[liv]

Re: I fell off the wagon and need to jump back on, questions

Make sure you have 2002 book.
Nuts is problematic for most of us. Atkins does tell us to limit them to only a few really. I really do not consume many kinds of nuts - only those I know I can handle. But that is part of what you learn on OWL and those are valuable lessons.
Yes veggies come first. Hard to go wrong with veggies. Dr. Atkins was a smart guy

[yellowsun_5t5]

Re: I fell off the wagon and need to jump back on, questions

I struggled with the same thing. I did induction for 2 weeks, fell off the wagon for 2 days and then re-started induction on Monday. I haven't weight myself, but my ketostix are not showing progress.

I went out and got two packs of the atkins shakes (they are extremely expensive though) and have been using those instead of eating cheese when I get cravings.

Good luck - don't give up! Before I restarted induction I weighed myself and my slip ups didn't register any gain at all!

[imagood1]

Re: I fell off the wagon and need to jump back on, questions

I went out and got two packs of the atkins shakes (they are extremely expensive though) and have been using those instead of eating cheese when I get cravings.

The shakes aren't allowed on induction -- they should ONLY be used during extreme emergencies when you don't have anything else to eat.



Farmwife - here are the OWL rungs - the only nuts I've been able to find that I can eat are no salt sunflower seeds - I think the reason is because you can have so many of them that it really seems like you are getting more than you actually are. http://www.atkinsdietbulletinboard.c...te-ladder.html.

I fix 3 meals a day for my mother, my husband and myself. I start with the meat then figure out what they are going to have and what I am going to have -- I've been doing this since January, so I know it can be done. The first few days it was difficult to sit at the same table with them, but I'd rather eat with them as opposed to making myself feel like I don't deserve to sit at the table with other people. I pass their food back and forth and have no problem with it. Actually I'd rather eat the delicious food I eat as opposed to the starches they are eating.

I've even found several recipes we can all eat (check the stuffed green peppers, mock-a-foni & cheese). Everyone can have eggs & bacon for any meal....no need to make it tougher on yourself than you need to.

Make sure you are only eating the amount of cheese & olives we're allowed to have.....cheese is another food people overeat on.

Good luck

[yellowsun_5t5]

Re: I fell off the wagon and need to jump back on, questions

The package for the shakes say they are acceptable for all phases of the diet...

And the Atkins website has them incorporated in to a two week Induction meal plan.

http://www.atkins.com/Program/FourPhases/WhatIsInduction/TwoWeekMealPlan.aspx

Do you mean that although they are "acceptable", people should try to avoid them?

[liv]

Re: I fell off the wagon and need to jump back on, questions

The atkins company run the atkins.com website and they live out of selling products and they have marketed these shakes and bars to be legal on induction. They have also changed the rules of the diet so that they are legal. But following the book it is hard to see how these products with illegal ingredients can be accepteble. Maybe they are OK in emergency. That is how I use them.

Shakes seems to be OK with some people but stall others. They are a staller for me. So I do not use them.

[farmwife]

Re: I fell off the wagon and need to jump back on, questions

The shakes aren't allowed on induction -- they should ONLY be used during extreme emergencies when you don't have anything else to eat.



Farmwife - here are the OWL rungs - the only nuts I've been able to find that I can eat are no salt sunflower seeds - I think the reason is because you can have so many of them that it really seems like you are getting more than you actually are. http://www.atkinsdietbulletinboard.c...te-ladder.html.

I fix 3 meals a day for my mother, my husband and myself. I start with the meat then figure out what they are going to have and what I am going to have -- I've been doing this since January, so I know it can be done. The first few days it was difficult to sit at the same table with them, but I'd rather eat with them as opposed to making myself feel like I don't deserve to sit at the table with other people. I pass their food back and forth and have no problem with it. Actually I'd rather eat the delicious food I eat as opposed to the starches they are eating.

I've even found several recipes we can all eat (check the stuffed green peppers, mock-a-foni & cheese). Everyone can have eggs & bacon for any meal....no need to make it tougher on yourself than you need to.

Make sure you are only eating the amount of cheese & olives we're allowed to have.....cheese is another food people overeat on.

Good luck

Thanks for the encouragement. I made hamburger soup for lunch today. The kids decided they would just eat bread instead.

I'll just keep trying.

I'll check out those stuffed peppers and mock-a-foni & cheese.

Breakfast is no problem. I LOVE eggs, besides we have our own chilckens!

[Julie in CA]

Re: I fell off the wagon and need to jump back on, questions

Another problem is that I couldn't eat with my family, except breakfast. We have a large family and we eat every meal together, even snacks.

I need to find more family friendly atkins meals. Any ideas about that?

Hi Farmwife!
I'm very new here, so I don't know that my advice will be very helpful...
My dh and I have 5 children (well, 4 of them are teenagers now!), and my dh is *very* set in his ways regarding meals. We are a farm family, and I teach my children at home, so we eat almost all meals together too. It felt really really difficult at first to eat what I was supposed to while still eating the same basic meal as the rest of the family. What I did was sit down and make a list of all of the meals my family would regularly eat. I examined each meal, and checked to see if it would be okay for me. If the meal was okay, I left it "as is". If the meal would be okay with a few changes, I made a note of necessary changes and left that meal on the list too. A few of the meals, I had to completely cross off, because I couldn't figure out a way to make them work for me.

One meal I had to toss out for example, was spaghetti & garlic bread. There was no way for me to make that acceptable. The pasta and the tomato sauce were both a no-no, and the garlic bread...well, let's not even go there!

A lot of the family meals were fine, with a little adaptation. We're in California, and my family loves mexican food, especially tacos. I still make taco dinner, but I season the taco meat with individual spices rather than taco seasoning (which often has sugar). Rather than a regular taco shell, I wrap my taco fillings in a large leaf of romaine lettuce. Amazingly, because the romaine has a bit of crunch, and because I'd ordinarily put lettuce on my taco, I don't mind the substitution. The rest of my family still gets their old-favorite meal, and none of us much notice that mine is wrapped in lettuce instead.

For enchiladas, I make them with corn tortillas for my family, but I set aside some of the meat/cheese filling and bake it in a ramekin and top it with a bit of salsa or hot sauce (sugar-free) for me. It bakes in the oven right alongside the family-version, mine just doesn't have the tortilla.

A lot of things my family would eat for dinner regularly are still fine for me. Dh is a meat & potatoes guy, so I just make more pot roast (or whatever) and I skip the potato. I have added small salads to almost every dinner though. It's healthier for my family anyway, and then I don't have to think so much about a side-dish substitution for myself.

Here are some of the dinners that are on my list:
grilled steak
grilled chicken
pot roast
kabobs
parmesan crusted chicken
cheeseburgers
pork chops/pork roast
chicken cordon-bleu (not breaded, though)
tacos
nachos
taco salad
cobb salad
enchiladas
philly cheesesteak (I don't use a bun)
taco soup
beef-vegetable soup
broiled chicken topped with sauteed mushrooms, bacon, & cheese
chicken thighs with pan-gravy

For lunch, we sometimes do hard-boiled eggs (family makes egg salad, etc), fresh veggies & dip. Most of the time, we do lunchmeat sandwiches, but I wrap my lunchmeat around a pickle, while my family has theirs on bread. Yes, you have to search high and low to find lunchmeat that's ok, but it's worth it.

For a little while, I missed not the baked potato I'd regularly have with dinner, but the *gravy* that I might have on it. Now I don't thicken gravy with a roux, but I remove the meat from the pan, reduce the broth in the pan over high heat, and then add a little slosh of cream and cook another minute for a really delicious pan-gravy. I pour that over my meat, to give it a little bit of flavor and moisture. I don't really miss the potato now.

I did miss mac & cheese, but the cauliflower version really sends me over the top with joy, so I eat that when my kids have the dreaded "blue box" of Atkins doom.

'Ya know, I didn't set out to write you a book! I'm not even sure that any of this will fit your lifestyle or your situation, but I wanted to encourage you along the way and let you know that you will find ways to make this work with your family, and it will probably be easier than you thought to do so! (just give it a little thought and planning).

[farmwife]

Re: I fell off the wagon and need to jump back on, questions

Hi Julie-
WOW! Thank you so much! We have 5 children as well and we also home educate them too! It's fun, fun, fun!

I love your ideas! I was able to make a couple meals that my dh actually liked. He has to have meat at every meal so that helps!

I think this is going to be a new challenge to find meals that fit.

I am going to try tacos with the cheese shells! That should be fun.

I think I'm going to take out a roast for tomorrow.

One nice thing about farming and atkins is that the freezer is always full of meat!

[Julie in CA]

Re: I fell off the wagon and need to jump back on, questions

Hi Julie-
WOW! Thank you so much! We have 5 children as well and we also home educate them too! It's fun, fun, fun!
It *IS* fun! Are your kiddos young? Mine are aged 11-18. I have actually graduated the oldest, and he's moved on to college.


I am going to try tacos with the cheese shells! That should be fun.
The cheese shells sound good, but I tend to overdo the cheese. That's why I stick with the romaine. I'm afraid if I tried the cheese shells, it'd put me waaaay over on cheese.


One nice thing about farming and atkins is that the freezer is always full of meat!
Amen to that, sister! I love the luxury of always having my choice of beef in the freezer...makes it hard for me to justify buying chicken or fish, tho!

-Julie
Hey, I sent you a P.M. just for fun...