The premise of the Atkins diet is that you should eat more high-fat and high-protein foods and fewer high-carbohydrate foods because carbohydrates cause your blood sugar to rise and excess blood sugar is converted into body fat. The late Dr. Robert Atkins wrote in "Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution" that you should plan and eat big meals because excess calories don't cause weight gain unless those excess calories are from carbohydrates.
Starting Diet
Atkins wrote that you could change your body chemistry within a few weeks by banning most carbohydrates during the approximately two-week induction phase of the Atkins diet. Eating only high-protein and high-fat foods causes your body to stop craving the carbohydrates that cause body fat, according to Atkins.
During the induction phase, your meals should exclude the following foods "entirely": beans, breads, cereal, fruits, fruit juices, milk, pasta, sugar, yogurt and vegetables with a lot of starch or sugar, including beets, carrots, corn, potatoes and yams.
Big Meals
You need to eat at least every six hours while you're awake to change your body chemistry, "Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution" reports. Eating three large meals or four or five small meals daily is acceptable. Your only limitation is that you can eat only 20 g of carbohydrates daily.
Atkins says you should eat high-fat, high-protein meals with "liberal" amounts of beef, chicken, duck, eggs, lamb, pork, shellfish, turkey, veal and wild game.
Transition
The Atkins diet allows carbohydrates that cause low blood sugar spikes during its second phase, the ongoing weight loss phase, because the two-week carbohydrate ban caused potentially permanent changes in your body, including "a decrease in appetite, reduced sugar cravings and dramatic increases in energy."
Your meals can include 25 g of carbohydrates daily in the first week of the phase and 5 additional grams each week until you are only five to 10 pounds overweight and you move to the third phase, the pre-maintenance phase. Atkins' recommendations include spinach, peppers, tomatoes, broccoli, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries and cantaloupe.
Extra Food
You should regularly prepare more food than you can eat in one meal so you can use the extra food for future meals, Atkins recommended. "Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution" urges you to think "out of the breakfast box" and eat lunch and dinner leftovers, including large salads with a variety of vegetables and salad dressings for breakfast. You can also turn dinners such as roast pork into a future lunch such as Chinese Mooshoo pork by preparing extra food.
Substitutions
Planning your meals requires you to have the right foods in your refrigerator and pantry, "Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution" reports. The primary premise of his recommendations is that low-carb foods such as spaghetti squash and cauliflower should replace high-carb foods such as pasta and potatoes. He also wants you to substitute wild rice for white rice, tofu for bananas, soybeans for kidney beans, sour cream for low-fat yogurt, heavy cream for milk, olive oil for corn oil and butter for margarine.
References
- "Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution"; Dr. Robert Atkins; 2002
- "Atkins Diabetes Revolution"; Dr. Robert Atkins, Mary Vernon and Jacqueline Eberstein; 2004
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