Whether you are an old hand at the weight loss game, or have, at the very least, been on a diet before, the following scenario may sound all too familiar.
Determined to succeed, you vowed to go about slimming down the "fight" way. You stopped eating red meat, cooked egg-white-only omelettes with no shortening in a Teflon pan, removed the skin from chicken, ate your baked potato without butter or sour cream and consumed lots of pasta. Frozen yogurt, fruit and sherbet served as dessefi. Your breakfast consisted of oatmeal and skim milk or else granola and a banana. A typical lunch was white-meat turkey on a roll and a generous salad, hold the dressing.
And you stuck with your Low-fat regimen. You knew it was the fight diet because your friends and family congratu-lated you on your healthy habits. Yet somehow it never felt quite right for you. Nor did it ever work the way you thought it would. You found that you weren't quite satisfied eating this way: You were often hungry and low in energy and-worst of all—permanent, significant weight loss proved elusive. You never actually achieved the goals that motivated you to go on a diet in the first place.
Here's the good news: Most of you will now find that your frustrations are about to end. I have helped tens of thousands of people who have come to me needing to lose weight and improve their health. And I promise I will help you, too.
Diets come and go, but what people hope to get from them remains fairly constant. What would you like from a weight loss program? Let your fancy run free. Would you like to:
·be freed from hunger much of the day?
·eat until you are pleasantly satisfied and full?
·enjoy foods so rich that you've never seen them on any other diet?
·reduce your appetite via a perfectly natural metabolic function of the body?
·never have to count calories again?
·eliminate addictive food patterns?
·experience steady weight loss, even if you have had dramatic failures or weight regain in the past?
·learn a way of eating that will keep any lost weight from coming back?
·enjoy enhanced energy?
·feel better than you have in years?
·be more attractive?
·bolster your self-confidence?
·improve health problems that have accompanied your excess weight?
·minimize your risk factors for certain diseases? slow the aging process?
What happens to real people with real problems when they follow the Atkins Nutritional Approach? Well, let me give you a far from atypical example.
Traci Laurens, a 44-year-old restaurant manager and mother of two, had always considered herself a "big-boned girl." Over the years she'd tried many a diet, but her weight continued to oscillate between 190 and 230 on her five-foot four-inch frame. Fortunately, Traci was not experiencing way health problems, and, in spite of her weight, she walked every day.
"I had occasional headaches but no real problems other than the fact that I hated to look in the mirror" she recalls. "I did what all overweight people do: I focused on my face and never stood back and took a long look. My problem was that I couldn't get away from carbs; I craved them. I had been raised on starches and sweets. I am from a family of twelve and that's how my mother stretched meals. I didn't know any other way of eating.
"In 1998, I met my fiance, lack. He fell in love with the size16 me, but I had really gotten tired of being fat. A friend told me about Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution. I read it cover to cover, and on New Year's Day 2000 1 began Induction. I broke through my cart) addiction sometime in the first week, and from that point on, doing Atkins was easy. Thirty days later I moved from Induction to OWL [Ongoing Weight Loss], having dropped to a size."
Traci and her fiancé had planned two romantic back-to-back cruises in February 2000, a slow time at both their jobs. Even though cruises are floating smorgasbords Traci stuck to protein and fat and passed up most of the carbs. After the first one-week cruise, she was wearing size 9 or 10 and had to buy some new clothes. At the end of the second cruise, she weighed 146. Newly invigorated, she increased her walking routine to one and a haft hours a day. And, like most people, she found that exercise kept her head clear, relieved her anxiety and restored her energy.
Traci has stuck to about 30 grams of carbohydrate daily because she feels good on that level That way, when she wants to indulge herself a bit, she has some "wiggle room" in case she gains a few pounds. She says she doesn't miss starches at all and hasn't had a piece of bread since December 31, 1999.
"I love to eat sautteed portobello mushrooms in garlic and butter sauce or beef shish kabobs with multicolored peppers and summer squash. If I'm eating breakfast out, I enjoy scrambled eggs and bacon. I am no longer bloated and never tired; I haven't taken a nap in a year and a haft. I go to bed at 10:30, sleep through the night and awaken at 5:15, raring to go. When I run into people I haven't seen in a while they say, 'I can hear you, but I don't see you—-what happened?'"
Traci plans to continue with Atkins because she now understands it is a whole life change. "With Atkins, I easily keep my weight between 133 and 139 pounds; she says. "I know how quickly 70 pounds can go on. But now I also know the secret to how quickly they can come off.”
Change the Way You Look at Your Body
Now we are going to get to the bottom of a mystery and one of the great inequities of life. I bet you know people who eat more than you do, exercise less and yet never seem to put on a pound. They're not lying about the amount they eat any more than you are. They do eat a lot. Maddening, but true.
Instead of envying them, realize that these slim friends are actually cause for celebration. The fact that they are not fat is living, breathing proof that being overweight needn't mean you're greedy, weak-willed, lazy or self-indulgent. Instead, in all probability, it may mean you are only metabolically less fortunate than they are. Doesn't that make a lot more sense? Most people eat when they're hungry and stop when they're full. And if that's the case, how could they be overeating? They're doing what their bodies tell them to do.
Which is why the critical factor is not how much you eat, but what you eat. And if you're overweight, the what is likely an excess of carbohydrates.
It’s What You Eat
Do you believe that a man can go from gaining 0.5 pound a week to losing 3.9 pounds a week without significantly altering the number of calories he consumes? Let me introduce you to Harry Kronberg. I want yon to pay close attention to his story and try not to give way to disbelief, because these results are real Harry Kronberg, the 39-year-old manager of a lumberyard, came to me with a heart arrhythmia arid a desperate weight problem. He had been chubby even ns a child, but now things were out of hand. A few years before, he had gone to a low-fat diet center and had managed to drop from 245 to 185 pounds. Sounds good. But before long, Harry had gained it all back with an added dividend of another 35 pounds.
That's right, when Harry came to see me, he tipped the scales at 280 on a five-foot six-and-a-half-inch frame. In the previous thirty-five months, eating a relatively starchy, low-fat diet of approximately 2,100 calories a day, he had gained 70 pounds, exactly 2 pounds a month.
Harry started Atkins, radically restricting his intake of carbohydrntes while eating freely of meat, fish, fowl and eggs. Harry was told he could eat ns much ns he needed to feel satisfied. The calorie count was strikingly similar to what he had been eating on his previous diet. Three months into his new regimen, he had lost 50.5 pounds (almost 4 pounds a week), and then continued to lose at a steady 3 pounds weekly. His heart symptoms vanished, his total cholesterol level dropped from a mid-range 207 to n dramatically lower 134 and his trigiycerides went from 1 34 to 31.
OK, What I Eat, But Will I Still Enjoy Eating?
It will really surprise me if you can't. Let's take n look at Patricia Finley's menu. She's been doing Atkins for three and a half months, and she's lost 31 pounds. Patricia, who used to eat quite a lot of starches and who would sometimes go on massive dessert binges when she was under pressure, has converted to tasty, controlled carbohydrate eating.
For breakfast, she eats a cheese omelette, or some vegetables with blue cheese, or bacon and eggs. Lunch can be tuna fish or chicken with a sumptuous salad. But sometimes she'll have chopped sirloin sauteed with onions, chili powder and peppers. Patricia enjoys having olives or asparagus spears for snacks, but she puts the greatest amount of energy and attention into dinner. She finds that it isn't possible to feel deprived when you're enjoying a meal consisting of guacamole (mashed avocado mixed with tomatoes, onion and seasoning) and strips of chicken and steak. Add to that her passion for grated zucchini in olive oil with butter and nutmeg, her taste for broccoli with lemon butter sauce and her homemade recipe for chicken soup, and what do you get? Starvation? Not. Patricia also enjoys lamb shanks with chopped onions cooked with olive oil herbs and "Crazy Mixed Up Salt:' And she assures me this is only a small sample of the food she finds it possible and delightful to eat—doing Atkins.
Yes, that's a weight loss eating plan I've been describing, though it may be hard to believe. I think there's food for thought in such a food story. The Atkins Nutritional Approach allows you to adapt your meal planning to your own individual tastes as long as you eat "acceptable foods" (see Chapter 11). To help you along the path, the "Food and Recipes" section starting on page 367 is full of delicious meals to satisfy your controlled carb taste buds. Now, let me mention some of the other things this book will teach you:
YOU WILL LEARN HOW TO OVERCOME CHALLENGES SO YOU CAN:
·get right back on track if you occasionally "fall off' Atkins.
·stop binge eating in a matter of days.
·manage cravings for sweets and starches.
·ensure that what you lose is fat and not lean body tissue.
·modify your food choices according to your own metabolism.
·supplement your meals with vitanutrients to help overcome metabolic resistance.
·with your doctor's supervision, eliminate certain medications that helped keep you fat.
I WILL SHOW YOU HOW TO GET HEALTHY SO YOU CAN:
·overcome diet-related conditions such as unstable blood sugar, yeast infections and food intolerances.
·avoid the health catastrophe of hypefinulinism.
·improve your energy level, which will make exercise easier.
·find the.fight vitanutrients to complement the foods you eat for complete nutrition.
·lower your cholesterol and triglycefide levels and iraprove your other blood chemistry values.
·address the medical conditions—especially diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure—so often associated with obesity.
I'LL HELP YOU DEAL WITH THE DAY-TO-DAY ISSUES SO YOU CAN:
·navigate supermarket aisles to find controlled carb, low-sugar foods.
·dine out with case in elegant restaurants or even fast food chains.
·attend dinner parties without compromising your weight loss program or offending your hosts.
·explain your new way of eating to family and friends. go on vacation or attend special functions without cheating.
·eat comfortably with those whose style of eating remains different from yours.
This Just Might Be the Plan for You
That's an ambitious program I've just outlined: I am happy I don't have to warn you that it's going to he difficult. The truth is that as long as you are committed, it's going to be surprisingly easy. And it's going to literally change your life—-and your perception of yourself.