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OK, I drafted this for my husband, who is not going to read the book, so he could understand what we were doing. I then expanded it a bit beyond "Eating on Atkins" because I thought it might be helpful to other people. I would appreciate feedback and I will edit accordingly.
EATING ON ATKINS: 14 DAY INDUCTION
Every day you MUST consume the following:
1/ A multi-vitamin. It is essential that you not be deficient in essential vitamins and minerals. If at all possible, a vitamin with no iron is vastly preferable - try vitamins for men or "Over 50" vitamins. Otherwise, choose the vit with lowest possible iron.
2/ 64 oz (four pints) of water at a minimum. Plain water, as in tap or bottled water. This is not optional. If you cannot flush, you will not lose weight, end of story. How much you pee without this much water intake is irrelevant – that's from water in vegetables and not from flushing.
3/ 3 cups of allowed vegetables. These form the basis of your diet and they are not optional. 3 cups – no more, no less. Choose 3 from column A (Salad), or 2 from Column A and 1 from Column B (Other).
4/ Meat, fish, shellfish and eggs until satisfied. Initially this may be a lot, but your goal is to eat until you are not hungry instead of "full." Quantities will diminish as your appetite decreases.
5/ More fat than you can really imagine eating while you are on a diet. Atkins Induction is a high fat, medium protein, low carb diet. This means butter, mayo, untrimmed meat, pork rinds, etc are your friends. FAT IS NOT OPTIONAL. You are aiming for 65% of your daily intake to be in the form of fat.
6/ A maximum of 20g of carbs, more than half of which will come from your vegetables.
Every day you MAY consume the following:
7/ Up to 4 oz hard or semi-hard cheese.
8/ 2 - 3 tablespoons of full fat cream (aka heavy, double or fresh cream depending on location.)
9/ Up to 3 packets/servings of artificial sweetener, preferably Splenda. (Over-sweetening results in a completely foul after-taste so you need to get used to using it for your own preferences.) This allowance includes anything you consume made with sweetener, like Diet Coke which you should totally not be drinking anyway.
10/ Salad dressing or salad cream made with NO SUGAR added, max 2 carbs per Tbsp. You must check all the ingredients for starches, etc and count the carbs. Oil and vinegar (non-Balsamic) are the preferred options.
11/ Optionally you may also eat 1/2 of a small avocado and/or 10-20 olives and/or 2 - 3oz full fat cream as long as you include the carbs in your daily count. You can also have 2 -3 Tbsp lime or lemon juice. These are called "special category" foods and you should treat them as just that: special treats, unless you find they have no impact on your weight loss at all.
Every day, you will ALSO:
- Eat primarily fresh foods (this means cooking.)
- Cook with butter, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, or other natural oils like canola, sesame, etc. - no low-fat, synthetics, margarines, sprays or spreads.
- Read every label, and reject anything with added sugars, starches, nitrates or anything -ose. (Exception: Suralose, the commercial manufacturing form of Splenda.)
- Exercise. This is also not optional. Exercise to your ability, even if it is 10 minutes of slow walking.
Every day you will NOT:
- Count calories. We do not count calories on Atkins; we count carbs.
- Eat sugar, milk, half and half, margarine, spreads, fruit teas, flour, wheat, fruit (besides tomato), alcohol, pasta, rice, lentils of any kind, Atkins or other low-carb shakes and bars regardless of what the label says, sugar-free Jello or pudding, any additive ending in -ose (dextrose, fructose, etc.) If it isn't on the Allowed Foods list, it is not allowed - end of story.
MENU PLANNING AND FOOD TRACKING
The hardest part for many people at the beginning is menu planning.
Get a free account at FitDay or another online tracker application. Plan your daily menus in advance, starting with your vegetables so you know where you have room to add. You can then see, on the pie chart at the bottom, the proportional breakdown of your daily food intake. You want:
- 65% fat, 5% carbs, and the rest in protein.
When we count carbs on Atkins, we count net carbs. This is the total carbs of the food minus the dietary fiber. FitDay will total your dietary fiber for you at the bottom of your Foods tab, next to the pie chart. If you are in the UK or ROI, be aware that dietary fibre is ALREADY REMOVED from the carb count on packaged foods.
You will learn interesting things using FitDay like:
1 cup of tomato has 5.5 net carbs. That is more than a quarter of your daily carb allowance, making tomatoes precious. Water chestnuts, while allowed, are really only appropriate as a garnish because they have 15g of net carbs per cup. Asparagus only has 2.4 net carbs, however, making it carb cheap. Bok Choy has .8 net carbs, making it fabulous.
A cup may be more or less than you think it is. A cup of lettuce is only 50g. A cup of green beans is 100 grams, which is a lot of green beans. Over time, you will become familiar with what a cup of a given food looks like and what will buy you the most actual food for your allowance.
Take care with foods that have very different volume when cooked. A cup of chopped tomato equals about 1/3rd of a cup of cooked tomato (or tomato puree). Use the calorie-to-measurement conversion method below.
ATKINS IN METRIC
If you are a control freak, you may prefer a food scale in ounces or grams to a measuring cup.
If you are not American, the entire concept of a cup will be mysterious to you. Using FitDay, find the calories for 1 cup of salad (7.7). Switch the weight measurement to grams and try 100 grams. Then raise or lower the gram count until you hit 7.7 calories (55g). That is how much lettuce equals one cup. (You may wish to keep your own list of gram equivalents for easy reference.)
PS: I am actually going to do a spreadsheet of all induction veggies in cups, grams and carbs, I just have not gotten around to adding the foods which we don't eat to it. I'll make it public when it's done.
EATING ON ATKINS: 14 DAY INDUCTION
Every day you MUST consume the following:
1/ A multi-vitamin. It is essential that you not be deficient in essential vitamins and minerals. If at all possible, a vitamin with no iron is vastly preferable - try vitamins for men or "Over 50" vitamins. Otherwise, choose the vit with lowest possible iron.
2/ 64 oz (four pints) of water at a minimum. Plain water, as in tap or bottled water. This is not optional. If you cannot flush, you will not lose weight, end of story. How much you pee without this much water intake is irrelevant – that's from water in vegetables and not from flushing.
3/ 3 cups of allowed vegetables. These form the basis of your diet and they are not optional. 3 cups – no more, no less. Choose 3 from column A (Salad), or 2 from Column A and 1 from Column B (Other).
4/ Meat, fish, shellfish and eggs until satisfied. Initially this may be a lot, but your goal is to eat until you are not hungry instead of "full." Quantities will diminish as your appetite decreases.
5/ More fat than you can really imagine eating while you are on a diet. Atkins Induction is a high fat, medium protein, low carb diet. This means butter, mayo, untrimmed meat, pork rinds, etc are your friends. FAT IS NOT OPTIONAL. You are aiming for 65% of your daily intake to be in the form of fat.
6/ A maximum of 20g of carbs, more than half of which will come from your vegetables.
Every day you MAY consume the following:
7/ Up to 4 oz hard or semi-hard cheese.
8/ 2 - 3 tablespoons of full fat cream (aka heavy, double or fresh cream depending on location.)
9/ Up to 3 packets/servings of artificial sweetener, preferably Splenda. (Over-sweetening results in a completely foul after-taste so you need to get used to using it for your own preferences.) This allowance includes anything you consume made with sweetener, like Diet Coke which you should totally not be drinking anyway.
10/ Salad dressing or salad cream made with NO SUGAR added, max 2 carbs per Tbsp. You must check all the ingredients for starches, etc and count the carbs. Oil and vinegar (non-Balsamic) are the preferred options.
11/ Optionally you may also eat 1/2 of a small avocado and/or 10-20 olives and/or 2 - 3oz full fat cream as long as you include the carbs in your daily count. You can also have 2 -3 Tbsp lime or lemon juice. These are called "special category" foods and you should treat them as just that: special treats, unless you find they have no impact on your weight loss at all.
Every day, you will ALSO:
- Eat primarily fresh foods (this means cooking.)
- Cook with butter, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, or other natural oils like canola, sesame, etc. - no low-fat, synthetics, margarines, sprays or spreads.
- Read every label, and reject anything with added sugars, starches, nitrates or anything -ose. (Exception: Suralose, the commercial manufacturing form of Splenda.)
- Exercise. This is also not optional. Exercise to your ability, even if it is 10 minutes of slow walking.
Every day you will NOT:
- Count calories. We do not count calories on Atkins; we count carbs.
- Eat sugar, milk, half and half, margarine, spreads, fruit teas, flour, wheat, fruit (besides tomato), alcohol, pasta, rice, lentils of any kind, Atkins or other low-carb shakes and bars regardless of what the label says, sugar-free Jello or pudding, any additive ending in -ose (dextrose, fructose, etc.) If it isn't on the Allowed Foods list, it is not allowed - end of story.
MENU PLANNING AND FOOD TRACKING
The hardest part for many people at the beginning is menu planning.
Get a free account at FitDay or another online tracker application. Plan your daily menus in advance, starting with your vegetables so you know where you have room to add. You can then see, on the pie chart at the bottom, the proportional breakdown of your daily food intake. You want:
- 65% fat, 5% carbs, and the rest in protein.
When we count carbs on Atkins, we count net carbs. This is the total carbs of the food minus the dietary fiber. FitDay will total your dietary fiber for you at the bottom of your Foods tab, next to the pie chart. If you are in the UK or ROI, be aware that dietary fibre is ALREADY REMOVED from the carb count on packaged foods.
You will learn interesting things using FitDay like:
1 cup of tomato has 5.5 net carbs. That is more than a quarter of your daily carb allowance, making tomatoes precious. Water chestnuts, while allowed, are really only appropriate as a garnish because they have 15g of net carbs per cup. Asparagus only has 2.4 net carbs, however, making it carb cheap. Bok Choy has .8 net carbs, making it fabulous.
A cup may be more or less than you think it is. A cup of lettuce is only 50g. A cup of green beans is 100 grams, which is a lot of green beans. Over time, you will become familiar with what a cup of a given food looks like and what will buy you the most actual food for your allowance.
Take care with foods that have very different volume when cooked. A cup of chopped tomato equals about 1/3rd of a cup of cooked tomato (or tomato puree). Use the calorie-to-measurement conversion method below.
ATKINS IN METRIC
If you are a control freak, you may prefer a food scale in ounces or grams to a measuring cup.
If you are not American, the entire concept of a cup will be mysterious to you. Using FitDay, find the calories for 1 cup of salad (7.7). Switch the weight measurement to grams and try 100 grams. Then raise or lower the gram count until you hit 7.7 calories (55g). That is how much lettuce equals one cup. (You may wish to keep your own list of gram equivalents for easy reference.)
PS: I am actually going to do a spreadsheet of all induction veggies in cups, grams and carbs, I just have not gotten around to adding the foods which we don't eat to it. I'll make it public when it's done.
Vitamins are good things to take whatever the reason though.
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