I have shared with you all that I will be starting the Atkins Diet. I have been on the diet for one straight week now. Starting from January 1st to January 8th. For you that do not know the Atkins diet is a diet where you do not eat any carbs of any kind. You are on a strict 20 grams of carbs a day. Your diet mostly consist of meats, cheese. Fats, oils, and vegetables.
My Atkins Diet Week 1 Progress:
The week started off rough to say the least on the first day I was so motivated for this diet and so excited to start it. Throughout the day and week I found myself sad about the delicious pasta I wouldn’t be able to eat. Your body also goes through withdraw from all the sugar you are used to eating that are in the carbs such as pasta and soda. So you start to crave that sugar about on the third day on the Atkins diet because your body burned up all the sugar and its wondering where some more is.
After you get through the third day it gets very easy to stay on track with this diet. Your body is now burning the fat that is stored in your body and also the fat you are eating. Before when you were eating carbs your body was burning the sugar and not the extra or stored fat causing you to keep weight on or gain weight. So when you eat eggs and bacon for breakfast you honestly get full until dinner. Of course I eat lunch too but your body has all that protein that you don’t get hungry as easily as you would if you’re eating sugar carbs.
I decided to weigh myself every Friday while on the Atkins diet. This was my first weigh in on the 8th of January. When I started this diet last week I weighed myself and I was 166.4 pounds! Today when I weighed myself I was 157.1! I lost a total of 9.3 pounds! I am not joking you guys I was able to lose over 9 pounds in my very first week on the Atkins Diet. It can be tough sometimes not eating pasta or bread but when I think about how I lost 9 pounds my first week it motivates me to keep on track with this diet. This diet is not another one of these fad diets this is the real deal honey and you will get results.
My Mother Louisa’s Atkins Diet Week 1 Progress:
On January 1, my family and I jumped into our New Year’s resolution to lose weight and get healthy. Being a May baby I am blessed with a good amount of determination and perseverance (okay call it stubbornness if you must) so I knew that if I committed to dieting, I would do it! Well, here is a snapshot of my first week…
Day 1: I didn’t feel very hungry because I spent the previous few days ridding the refrigerator of all Tabu foods- btw- they were delicious! Anyway, I cooked the traditional good luck foods, collards, long noodles, black eyed peas- minus the ham hocks for my vegetarian son- and substituted ham leftover from last week. I ate some of everything, but heavy on the ham. That pretty much kept me satisfied for the rest of the day.
Day 2: The family was still experiencing ‘holiday fatigue’, so I happily snacked on bacon, cheese, olives, collards more leftover ham without much complaint from my husband who fed himself while at work.
Day 3: I continued snacking on my favorite foods from the refrigerator during the day. I found a roast of beef buried in the freezer and cooked a nice dinner for the family that evening. I made baked potatoes and broccoli to round out the meal. (I didn’t eat any of the potato telling myself I could use half of it to make a nice potato salad to go along with the leftover roast beef I would eat for lunch the next day.) I did, however, mound sour cream directly onto the broccoli and slices of roast. I ate as much as I wanted.
Day 4 I nibbled on leftovers for lunch…never got to make the potato salad I craved the night before, because as it turned out my husband ate it for breakfast before I could let him in on my plan. No matter, by now I wasn’t really hungry for it anyway!
My husband had been craving seafood for several weeks so I decided to make the crab cakes and shrimp that I had planned for Christmas Eve (for the Feast of the Seven Fishes) but never got to. My nine year old granddaughter was adamant that she wouldn’t eat anything to do with fish, so I fixed spaghetti with homemade pesto sauce and salad for her and as a side for my hubby. I did put some spaghetti on my plate, but ended up licking some of the pesto off and leaving the spaghetti.
Day 5: During the day I nibbled on leftover shrimp and crab cakes. My husband had to work today and apparently filled himself up while he was on the job, because he came home and declared that he wasn’t hungry and I didn’t have to worry about him for dinner. Great! I wasn’t hungry either so I took the night off! Several cups of plain, hot tea kept me satisfied.
Day 6: I tried my best to control my uncontrollable desire for sweets with a small hunk of cream cheese sprayed with a bit of canned whipped cream and sprinkled with dark chocolate powder. It didn’t work and I ended up eating cookies and whipped cream…I stopped counting after 4 cookies and emptying the can of whipped cream! Enough said!
Day 7: I can’t believe it’s been a week already! I feel as though I did well so far. I feel good and have more energy than I’ve had in a while. The freezer is devoid of allowed foods so I have no idea of what I will be fixing for dinner until I visit the grocery store. My shopping technique is to browse the meat section looking for sales and markdown items. I walk back and forth looking at meat and thinking about how I can fix it until my mouth starts to water. That’s when it goes into the cart. My husband is craving a turkey club sandwich with French fries…I can make that work!
At the moment I am without a scale so I can’t tell you how much weight I have lost, but my stomach feels flatter and my son tells me I look slimmer so I will consider the week a success! I will try to get a scale before I check in next week…until then, happy dieting!
The Atkins Diet Week 2
My Atkins Diet Week 2 Progress:
Every Friday is our weigh in to see how the diet is progressing. This Friday I went to the gym and weighed myself. Last week I lost a total of 9.3 pounds! Which put me at a weight of 157.1. This week when I went to the gym and weighed myself the scale said 154.6 pounds. That means I lost 2.5 pounds this week. At first I was discouraged with that number because of all the weight I lost the first week and then I realized that’s a lot of weight just for 7 days. So by now I have lost a total of 11.8 pounds in 14 days! I am very pleased with this.
They say by the third week of a diet people either do one of two things. They either stay on track with the diet and it becomes easier than ever to follow or they completely quit the diet. Now that I am starting week three I do not feel like quitting at all! Losing 11.8 pounds has been great and I’m getting closer and closer to my goal of losing 30 pounds. I have noticed that I feel great on this diet and I’m not eating every hour like I used to.
I am so pleased with the progress of the Atkins diet that I ever dropped a pants size. My pants were tight a two weeks ago and now I’m in a desperate need for a belt when I wear my jeans. People are starting to notice and saying I look thinner in my face and my stomach. Now that I have got the food part of my diet down its time for me to do a few exercises a day to keep me on track. I will do around 20 minutes of exercise a day around the house. I will incorporate workout videos from blogilates and some of my own ab workouts. I will have an update about how that goes next week.
We are loving our results and my mother in law still needs to buy a scale but we want you to try this diet too because we know if you stick to the plan you will get amazing results as well.
My Mother Louisa’s Atkins Diet Week 2 Progress:
? Will you still need me. Will you still feed me…..when I’m 64….? When that song was released in 1967, 64 seemed to be so far away. And it was far away, but now it’s here. Time slips up on us whether we’re noticing or not. So my friends, the time is now to commit to being your best self in your best body ever. I’m committing and you can too!
For me, the Atkins diet plan is a perfect fit. I love all the foods that are allowed. In fact they are some (most) of my favorite foods. With this plan, I feel that I am treating myself rather than denying myself, and that is the secret to success. For example, instead of lamenting over the bread I’m not eating I relish in eating the top off a pizza. Instead if eating that bowl of spaghetti and meatballs, I ladle meatballs and tomato gravy over a mound of ricotta cheese. YUM! You get the idea. I treat myself! I eat all the best parts of the food I love with no guilt! You can, too. And you deserve to!
Here’s a look at my Atkins Diet week 2
Day 8: Snacked on a couple of slices of deli chicken wrapped in some lettuce. Glued it all together with a few spoons of my favorite garlic and herb spread. ( I can’t believe this is a diet!) For dinner I fried up some hamburgers and sautéed fresh spinach. My husband and granddaughter added French fries…I didn’t want any.
Day 9: Felt extremely alert today after my usual two cups of breakfast coffee. After walking the dogs, I nibbled on a cold hamburger and a few olives. For dinner I fixed a small roast pork which I found on markdown for just over $5.
Since the oven was already on, it was easy to pop in a few sweet potatoes. When my vegetarian son came by with my grandson, I doctored up some canned black beans and boiled some brown rice. I had a bit of sweet potato with more than a bit of butter and all the roast I wanted. You can start adding fruit to the diet on day 10, but I had fresh strawberries in the refrigerator that everyone else was enjoying so I figured it was close enough and went ahead and ate a few myself. They were the oddest shaped strawberries I had ever seen. They looked like rounded rectangles but thy tasted like sweet, juicy perfection. I didn’t even think about using my emergency can of whipped cream!
Day 10: drank a couple cups of Joe with cream for breakfast. Getting out early for a matinee and lunch out at Olive Garden with the family. We shared a melted cheese and crostini appetizer. While my husband and son dipped their bread in the gooey deliciousness. I ate mine with a fork. When the salad arrived, I managed to eat two bowls full. My fish dish arrived with what looked like a full head of broccoli on the side. Our server added some freshly grated Parmesan to top it off. I was full after eating about half the plate full so I boxed up the rest to take home for later. While waiting for the others to finish, I spied 2 pepperoncini and some black olives in the salad bowl so I went ahead and helped myself to another bowl full of salad -after all, you don’t want all that good stuff going to waste! Sometime before bed, I drank a couple of cups of plain, hot tea and polished off my doggie bag.
So yes. Now that I am 64 I will feed me (myself), but only the foods that I truly love and I will savor each morsel of deliciousness that goes into my mouth because eating good food with family makes me happy and we all deserve to be happy. Until next time…happy eating!
How to Curb Your Cravings While on The Atkins Diet
Today I want to talk about cravings and how to handle them when you are on a diet. Everyone know that usually diets don’t allow the high calorie fattening food that everyone loves. Of course they wouldn’t then you wouldn’t be dieting! I have found three amazing products that are completely low carb snacks that you can have while on Atkins.
Quest Nutrition Protein Bars:
The first product I came across is Quest Nutrition Bars. This company makes many products from protein powder, protein bars, and even low carb potato chips! The only thing I have tried by this company so far is their protein bars. They have 19 different flavors of protein bars and my favorite so far is the chocolate chip cookie dough.
I feel like I am actually eating cookie dough! Before the Atkins diet I was eating a chocolate bar a day! I’m not even kidding so I have been having cravings for chocolate for the past two weeks! When I tried this bar it felt like I was having chocolate and it completely satisfied my craving! The best part about the protein bar is that it only has 4grams of net carbs so it is completely in this diet and the best snack after dinner!
Atkins Indulge Treats:
Another product that I found absolutely amazing was one of Atkins very own products. Atkins makes various products from their frozen meals to their snack bars. I never knew until just a few days ago that Atkins makes their very own chocolate treats. I got the Milk Chocolate Caramel Squares, and let me tell you they taste amazing.
You would think since these products are low carb that they wouldn’t taste good but they actually do it doesn’t taste like the fake sugar that some candies have. I absolutely loves the taste of them and I will definitely buy them again! They have so many different things to choose from too such as Fudge brownie, Chocolate covered almonds, Peanut butter cups, and much more so definitely try these if your craving sugar but you’re trying to be healthy.
Red bull Sugar Free:
Lastly I really am enjoying the red bull sugar free! I don’t really ever like sugar free drinks like this but I decided to give this one a try and I enjoy it very much. I have been getting the 12oz can and the whole can has only 4grams of carbs in it so if you’re an energy drink type person this will work for you on this diet.
I can take or leave energy drinks but I know some people need it so this would be a good alternative for you. I know most people like caffeine and most coffee you can have while on this diet but this is the first energy drink I have found that is very low carb. You need to be careful of caffeinated beverages because they can trigger insulin and stall weight loss. So keep that in mind but if you need an energy drink try this one.
The post The Atkins Diet appeared first on Dietinator.