Absolutely Actively Atkins

Today I saw a number on the scale I last saw a number on the scale I last saw in the year 2000! And the weekly average is also down!  I am overcoming the bounce!  Not blasting through, but maybe an image of chipping a slightly bigger dent with each bounce.

This is taking a whole lot of effort. I'm not sure how long I'll maintain the effort, but I'm really working on finding sustainable things to eat and short cuts and habits to make doing this easier.  I would like to achieve a certain goal - which is less than 10 pounds away - but may be satisfied 5 pounds short of that - if it becomes my new set point.

So this time I am totally, completely, "doing Atkins".  In the past, I have read the books and done it, but decided in many cases that I know it, and so I made choices without thinking them completely through.  I also have been influenced by cultural stigmas around Atkins, which resulted in me being ambivalent about the process, and only committed to it for a short-term weight-loss goal, not for the rest of my life.  I wrote about it this in the past. I've gone back and read those posts, which are newly tagged "Atkins". Now, I'm all in. For life, but that doesn't mean just like what I'm doing now.  I'm out of the closet, and dangerously close to wanting to proselytize.

The science is finally catching up with Atkins, which was developed by Dr. Robert Atkins based on his clinical experience, not conventional wisdom. Current dietary recommendations - and even the way Weight Watchers scores points - is relatively Atkins friendly.  You want to lose weight, control your blood sugar, or improve your cholesterol numbers?  Cut carbs, up protein, and don't worry about "healthy fats".  This is now the conventional wisdom. In fact, the newest recommendations by the "Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee", (which are draft recommendations and yet to be finalized) basically say this, walking away from the old food pyramid with starches on the big bottom.  The part of this that seemed to grab the most headlines was the point that dietary cholesterol has essentially nothing to do with the cholesterol and so you can feel fine about eating eggs.  The original recommendation was based on a reasonable hypothesis - but no clinical evidence - that there was a relationship.  The science testing this hypothesis has been repeated several times in the last twenty years, always with the same result - the cholesterol in your blood is manufactured by your body, not from eating cholesterol.  But due to prejudice, and scientific and bureaucratic inertia, the draft guidelines finally (and grudgingly) acknowledge this.

There is a counter culture underground that has followed Atkins for years. There are also many other named variations of eating like this - Paleo is the current most popular label. I am sticking with the detailed Atkins guidelines right now, not mixing and matching from other diets. But there are of course sub-variants even within Atkins. I've found several discussion groups on-line where folks are adamant about following "the Atkins diet as Dr. Atkins himself specified it". That is captured in a book published in 1980; there was an update in 1993 and maybe some revised editions until Dr. Atkins died (from injuries sustained in a fall) in 2003.  They seem to think he was a prophet, where I think he was an insightful clinician.  But science has moved on. So there are books written from 2010 on that modify The Doctor's prescriptions slightly. That is what I am following.  I'm going back and reading and re-reading a couple of different books that stick to the same rules but describe and talk about them differently.

Certainly anyone reading this far knows the broad outlines of the Atkins Diet.  Eat meat. Eat fat.  Eat bacon and eggs for every meal. Eat bacon-wrapped bacon.  Eat steaks with bearnaise sauce with a daily glass of red wine. Eat Atkins-labelled shakes and energy bars.

Well, actually not so much.  The main new point is to focus on getting enough vegetables.  This is an element for life.  Limited portions of meat, limited amounts of dairy, limited amounts of avocados and nuts.  No fake sweeteners (though there are raging debates about what is fake - for example, is stevia fake?  Are sugar alcohols?).  Read every label and eliminate any with sugar (in any of its synonyms) listed within the first five ingredients, or that has more than five carbohydrate grams per serving.  Generally, don't even bother looking at anything labelled "low fat" because chances are it has starch and sugar - this is very true in the dairy world, including greek yogurt. Track your food, and start with an average of 20 net carbohydrate grams per day, +/- 2 grams.  "Net carbohydrates" means you can subtract fiber grams from the total, so high fiber vegetables like cauliflower and avocados can add volume.  As you track your food, also track your calories because they do matter if you want to lose weight. I read a lot, and there are tidbits, pointers, and new ideas coming up all the time.

In practice, this pretty much means cook from scratch from primary ingredients.  Almost all prepared salad dressings or sauces have sugar in them. Almost all prepared meats have too many carbs. No yummy beef stews or curried chicken from the food bar at Whole Foods - because I don't know what's in them, but they are almost all thickened with some form of starch.  (I can grab a roast chicken, though, hooray!)

The general idea is to strictly limit carbs and calories initially. One's body takes a couple of weeks to learn how to process fat as the main source of fuel. Once the transition is made, food choices can be slightly expanded, along with the carb count which can ratchet up by about 5 grams a week. Generally, to lose weight, carbs need to be stopped under 50 grams.  Because meat is limited, and carbs are limited, but generally you should eat at least 1100 calories a day, a lot of the food is fat. Atkins does not really emphasize "good fats" versus bad ones, though a consequence of limiting meat is limiting fat from meat.  As I am losing weight, some of my fuel by definition is coming from my own body fat, and I'm limiting total calories.  Once I decide to stop losing weight, I won't be burning my own fat, and so will need to up my calorie count to provide adequate fuel. NOT FROM CARBS, and not from protein, so my fat intake should go up.

So I'm staying under 30 grams of net carbs now, and only gradually widening my food choices. Blueberries are my favorite berries, which is the first fruit allowed. Melon is also allowed early on, but that's hard to do in small portions for just me. I've got all tree nuts, (but not cashews or peanuts) and most green vegetables, and would eat small amounts of winter squash, sweet potatoes, and carrots, but I haven't gone out of my way to get them.

I travelled for work this week, and managed my way through even without a concrete plan. We went as a group of six to a famous barbecue place. It was St Patrick's Day, and everyone had beer.  I looked at it longingly, but found a "dirty martini" on the menu. Alcohol has no carbs, it has a tiny amount of vermouth, and brine from the olive jar. Salty and tasty.  Dinner was way too much meat (no red sauce) and a tasty vegetable kabob.  I boxed up the meat, left it on the hotel room windowsill overnight, and had some plain meat for breakfast, got a green salad from the cafeteria to go with the last of the meat for lunch.  My a handful of almonds I had brought got me home.

Folks on the discussion group are full of discussions about how to make sweets. They use stevia and xylitol. Not for me. They also make "fat bombs" with these fake sweets, to up calorie count without carbs.  But I did make my version where I melted in the microwave roughly a quarter-cup each of almond butter, coconut oil, cream cheese, and 80% dark chocolate. Poured into mini-muffin tins and frozen (because not stable at room temp) a single treat has 120 calories and only 2 carbs - and nothing fake!  One a day max, if my calorie count is low.

I intend to make shrimp alfredo with basil pesto zoodles for dinner.  (Zoodles are strings cut from zucchini, using a vegetti which happily my girl gave me for Christmas. )  Yum!

Tomorrow, I'll eat a treat, and allow myself to go up in carbs - but ideally would like to be under 50. I won't take the whole day off, because I'm on a good trend, and I don't want to upset it.

Excelsior!  Nothing motivates to stay the course like seeing progress!