For God's sake DP, the kid asked for advice on weight loss... not a pseudo-psychology session.
No worries Fatgirl, it's not that tough. After learning what you need to know; get rid of that awful moniker and come back with a better user name to enjoy the rest of the forum.
Here's what you do:
Think of your body as an engine that burns food. Like most things in nature, it generally takes the path of least resistance. The easiest thing for it to burn is sugar. Indeed, most foods are converted to simple sugar (glucose) for fuel. Next easiest to convert to simple sugar is starch (bread, potatoes, pasta etc.)
What Atkins figured out; was that as long as your body gets enough of these types of foods; it doesn't have to convert fatty foods for fuel.
Step 1: Eliminate all sugars and starches from your diet for 3 days. This is called induction
and is what people who opine from ignorance think is what the diet is all about. It isn't. What this step does is throws your body into a state of ketosis
which basically means it begins feeding off of it's own fat, even while breaking down the fatty foods you're allowed to eat. Bacon, eggs, beef, chicken are all fine, in
any quantity, so you don't have to go hungry.
Step 2: Keep your daily intake of carbohydrates below 20 per day for 2 weeks. Weight will pour off of you and let you know that it's working. Initially, this will be exaggerated because you will be losing water weight as well as fat
and unfortunately; some muscle as well. Make no mistake; you'll definitely know it's working long before this step is over.
Step 3: After 2 weeks it is time to determine what your person tolerance for carbohydrate intake is. Add 5 grams of carbs to your daily diet for a week. Add 5 more the following week and so on until you stop losing weight. At point you will have determined your threshold for carbohydrate intake before your body leaves the state of ketosis
with your current lifestyle. More exercise will give you more tolerance. If you should leave the state of ketosis, no biggie. A couple more days of induction will return you to it in a jippy. And you don't have to start all over, now that you know your personal carb number. That's all there is to it. Take vitamins along the way to ensure that you're getting your daily requirements.
Step 4: Maintenance. Now that you have the body your happy with, keeping it is relatively simple. Increase your daily carb intake to the threshold that maintains your weight. For some that will be very high, for others it will be very low. This is what people refer to as good or bad metabolism, but either way it's easy enough to control. You now have the ability to raise or lower your weight at will so your worries are over. If you want to splurge, go for it. It is recommended that you try to get all of your splurging out of the way with in the same day
probably no more than once a week
but again this is determined by your individual tolerance for carbs.
This is the diet you will maintain for the rest of your life. I've found that if I maintain the diet; I maintain my ideal weight of about 165 pounds, as opposed to the 200 and climbing I was at when I first did it. If I simply avoid Ice Cream, Sugared Soda-Pop and other sweets; no other regulation is required for me to walk around at about 175 which is a weight I'm comfortable with. Only you can decide where you're comfortable, but now you know how you can attain and maintain it if you want to. Do get the book to learn the myriad of details I no doubt neglected to mention. It's an interesting enough read, since he teaches you more about your body than just weight maintenance.
I wish you the best of luck, and welcome to A2K.
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