Beginning A Low-Carb Diet

A reader writes:

I was on you site and hope you can help me. I need to lose 40 lbs. I am a women 5’7 and weigh 190. My age is 50 . I would like to go on the Atkins diet but for me it is hard to sit down and write a meal plan for every day can you please help me?

Buy the book.

Do not say buy the book. I have a busy life style with foster children and not much time for myself.

Oh, okay.

The good news is that if you want to do the Atkins diet you won’t have to write out a meal plan for every day. You only have to keep certain principles in mind:

Eating carbohydrates causes your body to manufacture insulin, which prevents you from burning fat. If you eliminate carbohydrates then your body will be able to burn fat better.
Your body has three sources of fuel it can burn: carbohydrates, fat, and protein. If you get rid of the carbs then your body will have no choice but to burn fat and protein.
Atkins recommends that you eat no more than 20 grams of digestible carbohydrates per day for your first two weeks on the diet (the Protein Power Diet recommends 30 grams instead if you feel 20 is too restrictive). This will virtually guarantee that you go into fat burning mode.
After the first two weeks, you can increase the number of digestible carbs you eat per day to a higher level (perhaps 40-60 carbs per day) as long as you don’t stop losing weight. If you do stop losing weight (over a period of a few weeks) then reduce the number of carbs till you start losing again.
After you’ve lost the weight you want to lose, you can increase your daily carbs again, so long as you don’t start gaining weight. If you start gaining weight, reduce your carbs till you get back to where you need to be weight-wise.
If you go off the diet completely then you are likely to gain back all your weight. This happens when you go off any diet, so don’t view the diet as a temporary thing but as a long-term change in how you eat.
To figure out the digestible carbs you are eating, look at the number of carbs listed on the product label and subtract those that are due to fiber (which you can’t digest) or which are listed as "sugar alcohols" (technically, you can digest these, but they don’t spike your insulin up). For example: If the package says that a serving has 11 grams of carbs, 4 of which are fiber and 2 of which are sugar alcohols then the total digestible carbs in a serving are 5 grams (11 – 4 – 2 = 5). It’s the total digestible carbs (not total carbs) that you want to keep low. DEGESTIBLE CARBS ARE ALSO SOMETIMES CALLED "NET" CARBS ON PRODUCT LABELS.
The fact that you are counting carbs means that you are NOT counting calories. Eat whenever you are hungry and eat as much as you need to satisfy your hunger (NOT MORE). Just keep the carb count low. You are counting carbs, not calories. This makes the diet much easier than calorie-restriction diets since you can eat whenever you are hungry and thus avoid hunger pains.
The upshot of lowering carbs in this way means that you need to avoid things made from sugar or grain (wheat, rice, corn) or anything starchy (potatoes).
You can eat beef, pork, chicken, fish, eggs, butter, oils, and cheese, though, since these have virtually NO carbs. (Eating meats–which have protein–is better than lots of butter, oils, and cheese, though, since meats will give your body protein to burn so that your body only burns fat rather than the protein stored in your muscles.)
Eating green vegetables is generally good (but not corn, which is a grain, or potatoes, which are starchy).
Eating fiber is good. I recommend drinking a powdered fiber supplement mixed with water (not a pill)–such as the ones make by Yerba Prima. This will fill you up without adding calories (you can’t digest fiber). DO NOT drink fiber supplements mixed with sugar since the sugar will spike your insulin and hinder your weight loss. If you can get 25 or more grams of fiber a day it will make your weight loss easier, but build up to this level slowly or you may feel bloated while your body gets used to the new level of fiber.
Take a good multi-vitamin EVERY DAY to make sure you’re getting enough vitamins. If possible, take a multi-vitamin designed for people on low-carb diets.
Get some exercise. Just twenty minutes of brisk walking three times a week will really jump up your metabolism and make you burn fat better. (Take the kids walking with you if you need to; it’ll help THEM get exercise they need, too!) Do in-home walking if you want. I recommend Leslie Sansone’s in-home walking DVDs to help keep you happy and motivated. She’s so friendly and supportive of you ask you walk away the pounds. She’ll make you feel good about exercise and not bored by it.
Learn about low-carb substitutes for foods you like. There are TONS of these now. There are good low-carb breads, tortillas, pastas, pizzas, chips, cereals, meal bars, diet shakes, ice creams, candies & candy bars. Just make sure you don’t go crazy with them and eat more digestible carbs than you should. Keep that daily carb-count low. These same low-carb products can be ordred online (do a Google search for them) if they aren’t in your local grocery, nutritional, or health-food stores.
You may have carb cravings for a few days but these generally go away
in two weeks, and you can eat low-carb foods like the ones mentioned in
point #15 to stop them.
You may feel tired the first few days on the diet. This is normal, but your energy will snap back in a few days and you’ll feel GREAT–like you have more energy than you’ve had in years.
Once you have settled into a routine, you likely won’t need to count carbs any more. You’ll know instinctively from what you’re eating that you are below your weight-loss threshhold. And you WON’T need to do a daily meal plan or deprive yourself if you start feeling hungy.
Your weight can go up and down a good bit over the course of a day or a few days. Therefore, don’t get discouraged if you see it fluctuating in this fashion. To avoid this, some dieters recommend weighing yourself only once a week so you’ll see less of the fluctuation. What counts is that you are losing weight over the course of several weeks, not that you seem to be losing it every time you step on the scale.
To the extent you can, spread out your consumption of digestible carbs throught the day. This will minimize your insulin reaction to the food you’re eating. Don’t eat one big, high-carb meal if you can avoid it.
For low-carb milk buy the low-carb milk in your grocer’s freezer or use (and, if needed, dilute with water) heavy cream or whipping cream or half-and-half. Sour cream is also low-carb.
For low-carb crunch eat celery, pork rinds (chicharrones), nuts (without honey-roasting! always watch the digestible carbs on the label!–macadamias are the best, though peanuts and almonds are good), or small amounts of raw carrots or popcorn–or specially-designed low-carb chips.

Also, few other notes:

If you have a major health problem, check with your doctor before starting the diet (or any diet).
To smooth your transition into the diet, take 2-3 days to adjust to the low levels of carbs you’ll be eating at first. Decrease your carbs over these 2-3 days until you’re at the 20 (or 30) grams of digestible carbs per day that the diets recommend.
Consider taking nutritional supplements that will help you lose weight–like chromium picolinate and L-carnitine. Here’s a good book on the subject.
Poke around my diet section for additional suggestions (like drinking flax seed oil, cranberry juice, and lemon juice–or how to make low-carb mashed potatoes or low-carb hash browns). These may be a help.
Buy the book. It really will help. Just treat it as a source of ideas rather than something you have to read from cover-to-cover.
Get a low-carb cookbook or two. The recipe ideas will help keep the diet from getting old and will help you discover low-carb equivalents for your favorite foods. The standard low-carb diet books (like the Atkins book) also include recipe sections to give you ideas. Many low-carb recipes are also available online for free. Just Google "low-carb recipes."
When you have time (amidst your busy schedule), check out some similar low-carb diets, like the Protein Power Diet, the South Beach Diet, and the Fat-Flush Diet. They can give you good tips and recipe ideas, too.

Finally, BE CONFIDENT! You CAN do this!–and without feeling hungry.

I spent YEARS trying to lose weight before my doctor told me about the Atkins Diet, but when I discovered it, it changed my life. I lost a HUGE amount of weight on it, I’ve KEPT THE WEIGHT OFF (despite some slips and plateaus), and I’m fitter and feeling better than I did for YEARS.

You can feel that way, TOO! Go forth and CONQUER!

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live." View all posts by Jimmy Akin