Viv's Modified Atkins Diet

[Sid Bonkers]

There was an awful lot of fat on mammoths and bison though lol They used it to make rushlights for their caves , and render it into grain cakes , to make them last longer, ( just read jean Auels, the mammoth hunter )

Grain cakes, would that be carbohydrate?

And how much fat was on a mammoth and how many mammoths did paleo man kill, not much and very few would be my guess, and please dont say they drove them over cliffs I live in south London and the nearest cliffs to me are Dover so paleo man would be proper puffed out if he had to chase a mammoth that far, that is of course if he could have scared a mammoth into running in the first place.

Seriously Alliebee if you want an in depth discussion about hunting wild animals and how much fat is on them I'm all ears?????????

Have you never watched a wildlife program on TV? Other than polar bears and sea mammals that live in very cold conditions I have honestly never seen a wild animal with an ounce of fat on it but if I'm wrong please put me right

Oh and dont even start on the Eskimos, who have the highest level of heart disease of any culture and one of the shortest life expectancies.

Dont take this personally but you cant kid a kidder I'm afraid

[alliebee]

You are right Sid, i was only trying to inject a smile into proceedings,

Your post made me laugh

[viviennem]

You're wrong and right at the same time, Sid. Animals in Africa don't need extra fat - the climate is in general pretty consistent and they don't have to protect themselves against and have fat reserves for the winter - except maybe in the extreme south.

On the other hand, land animals in the northern zones do put on fat in the winter. In these latitudes, all species of deer, bison, horses, bears, and all the small animals, eat over the summer to lay down enough to survive the winter. Palaeolithic times were at the very end of the last Ice Age, so it was even more necessary for them then than it is now.

I think the main difference between the fat we eat now and the fat all our ancestors ate, Palaeolithic down to the pre-agricultural revolution times, was that it was organic and had no added chemicals. Nor were animals housed indoors all their lives and fed manufactured foods designed to gt them to maximum sale weight as quickly as possible. We are at the top of our particular food chain, and we all know what happened eg to peregrine falcons at the time of DDT and similar pesticides. What goes into their food gets into us too!

You don't need to go out of your way to eat fat. Try to eat the best fresh food you can afford, from good sources, and don't avoid the fat unless you don't like it or can't eat it for medical reasons eg liver problems.

Viv

[antmos]

Hi Viv,

I am currently doing the Newcastle diet but my plan is that as soon as I have finished that I am going back onto the Atkins induction phase. I love your Atkins summary which will save me pouring through the books again! I am also amazed about the total carbs vs net carbs. I was not aware that in the UK it was done differently and I have been subtracting the fibre from the total carbs, totally underestimating the carbs. Thanks for that advice!

Let us all know how you are progressing on your Atkins diet.

Good luck

[librarising]

All starchy vegetables eg potatoes, carrots, swede, turnip

Looking to replace the hole left by traditional starchy vegetables, I recently came across turnip recommended on a low-carb website (don't ask me which - when I surf, I surf. )
Imagine my surprise to see it in your list !
So i've just googled "turnip gi value" and found the following website

http://www.montignac.com/en/search-for-a-specific-glycemic-index/

where for turnips (cooked) it says

GI 85* ... BUT ... (*These foodstuffs, even though they have high GIs, their pure sugar content (pure glucid) is quite low (approximately 5%.) Consuming these foods should not significantly affect blood sugar levels.

Guess I need to do some more surfing research :

[FractalFragger]

i couldnt find if this hasalready been asked or not but is beetroot ok with Vivs modified Atkins Diet?

[viviennem]

i couldnt find if this has already been asked or not but is beetroot ok with Vivs modified Atkins Diet?

Afraid not. Boiled beetroot has 8.6g carb per 90g of beetroot - doesn't take much to push your carb intake up. Like many root vegetables, it's full of "sugars". Have you tested to see how it affects your BGs?

If you want to stick at 25g to 30g carb per day, it's easiest to eat nothing that isn't on the list of foods that I - or rather, Dr Atkins - gives. If you want to eat beetroot, weigh it and count the carbs in your daily allowance. It's one good thing about the Atkins Induction - you can use it as a base and just add on extra carbs to the level you want to eat at. That's how the Atkins Diet works - very low carb Induction Phase (my diet) is for 2 weeks; then you increase your carb intake by 5g per day - Ongoing Weightloss Phase - until you start putting weight back on .

That's when you use the diet for weight loss. If you're using it for weight and diabetes, add on only Low GI carbs from fresh food (no processed) and test to see which foods you can tolerate without spiking your BGs. As a rule of thumb - stay away from cereals and root crops, and all flour-based products.

Viv

[FractalFragger]

Afraid not. Boiled beetroot has 8.6g carb per 90g of beetroot - doesn't take much to push your carb intake up. Like many root vegetables, it's full of "sugars". Have you tested to see how it affects your BGs?

If you want to stick at 25g to 30g carb per day, it's easiest to eat nothing that isn't on the list of foods that I - or rather, Dr Atkins - gives. If you want to eat beetroot, weigh it and count the carbs in your daily allowance. It's one good thing about the Atkins Induction - you can use it as a base and just add on extra carbs to the level you want to eat at. That's how the Atkins Diet works - very low carb Induction Phase (my diet) is for 2 weeks; then you increase your carb intake by 5g per day - Ongoing Weightloss Phase - until you start putting weight back on .

That's when you use the diet for weight loss. If you're using it for weight and diabetes, add on only Low GI carbs from fresh food (no processed) and test to see which foods you can tolerate without spiking your BGs. As a rule of thumb - stay away from cereals and root crops, and all flour-based products.

Viv

Havent eaten any since being diagnosed. really guttin on that front then coz i used to love beetroot

[RoyG]

Great thread, can anybody add any more recipes to spice things up a bit just what I have been looking for.

[viviennem]

Have a look at the recipes on the Low Carb section of the forum. There are many very good ones there, including breads and puddings that are low-carb - though not really suitable if you want to go as low as 25g of carb per day.

I don't cook much (too lazy to be creative!), and don't do puds except for the occasional sugar-free jelly with cream, berries with cream or live yoghurt, and apricots, plums and all berries in season. I can also cope with the occasional apple - but it's too easy to let too many carbs creep in with fruit, so I tend to avoid it.

Mostly I survive on roast meat, casseroles, fish, salads and heaps of microwaved veg. And 2 eggs every morning.

Viv

[valenshyne]

hullo there, just come across your thread and reading the basics I have a couple of questions, 1:- Can a type 1 go on this, or is it more of a type 2 diety thing? 2:- Can a busy mum easily do this? 3:- Are you able to swap things around with the vegs (am allergic to peppers/chilli and I can't stand carrots, onion and most leafy greens! lol)

Sorry if these have already been covered but I cba to read through all the posts!

Ta in advance for all info given =)
Sarah

[viviennem]

Hi Sarah,

I believe a Type 1 can do this diet, but obviously you'd have to adjust your insulin and I'm afraid I'm very ignorant about Type 1, so I can't help you there! Maybe ask again on the Type 1 bit of the forum? Have you read Dr Richard Bernstein's Diabetes book? That's all about low-carbing for all types, but he is a lifelong Type 1 himself, now well over 70. He also has a website, I believe - try Googling. He's a bit too extreme even for me, but his method works.

I would think a busy mum can do my diet - it will just take a bit of organising. There's no problem cooking meat, fish and casseroles for the family that you can eat too, and you can cook carbs eg potatoes, pasta etc for them - but you have to be very strong-willed to keep off those carbs yourself. Easy for me - I live alone, and I have nothing in the house that I can't eat.

I have an omelette for breakfast these days, but you can eat anything you're allowed at any time of day - I have even been known to eat chicken salad at 07:30 - delicious! If you're always rushed in the morning, prepare something the night before - cold meat, chunks of cheese, cherry toms, radishes, whatever - and grab a bit every time you pass. Or you could have plain yoghurt with a few berries, nuts and seeds.

Similarly with lunch - pack up a boxful of allowed food the night before, to take with you. Don't forget to get it out of the fridge!

If you can't eat many of the listed veg you're going to be pretty restricted in what you eat, and more importantly you'll miss out on some of your essential vitamins and minerals. Also your roughage/fibre is in the veg, so you may end up very constipated. The only thing you can do is trawl through a carb-counter book and substitute the lowest-carb veg you can find for the ones you can't eat. You may end up eating a few more carbs than the diet recommends, but it will still work.

For the constipation - eat rhubarb with live yoghurt regularly, try taking flax-seed oil capsule, and try stirring oat or wheat bran into things such as yoghurt or casseroles.

Give it a try for 2 weeks and see what happens. I used to hate lettuce - now I eat it at least 7 times a week, and you know what? I enjoy it! All fresh and juicy and covered with mayonnaise

Good luck with it.

Viv

[Mileana]

I am still not sure if I am type1 (LADA) or type 2 - but I am on insulin at least.

If you know your insulin:Carb ratio and don't mind spending the bit of time to get things readjusted, there's nothing preventing you from low carbing, really.

Just be aware that you may need to cut down on carbs first instead of going cold turkey depending on how stable your basal insulin is - if you use any of it for meal coverage you might find yourself going low, so use common sense.

It is already recommended, I think, that type1s reduce or at least watch their carb intake - what you have to be aware of is as I said above that as you have less carbs to cover, you will most likely need less insulin, especially bolus, perhaps also some basal.

I think that on insulin I would very much struggle to come up with a better way of losing weight without being hungry or lacking micro-nutritients - insulin will tend to store fat and most carbs (starch and sugar, really) will be 'empty calories' which tend to make you need more insulin, so over all, if you think first, I find it a good choice.

About the green leafy stuff, it all depends what you do to them - Atkins is not too fat-phobic, so you have options to more or less drown them in eggs, cream, oils etc - of course within reason, but we're not talking dry spinach with meatballs of air here I like adding green stuff to omelets for instance, do greek salads sometimes with garlic infused oil, stir fry's etc.

When I started basal/bolus a good month ago, doc wasn't aware of the effect of low carbing, so she had recommended I take so and so much insulin with a meal - 8 units I think it was - I landed in a bit of a hypo after being very careful and taking only 6. I find that now I only need about 2 or 3 units per meal. My basal still needs to be rather high though, but everyone is different - just want to make you aware of the difference it made to me so you don't land in any initial trouble - in the slightly longer term it has been a real blessing for me - lost about 2 stone in 2 months. My carb is low-moderate at around 50-75g day.

-M

[diadeb]

Hi Viv, everyone, I have been doing the Atkins induction for the past 2 weeks and have only lost a couple of pounds. I have been eating well within the 20g carbs per day and drinking plenty of water but I have not been exercising. Do people think that lack of exercise is the reason that I am not losing as much weight as I perhaps should have. Advice please, many thanks x

[viviennem]

Hi Diadeb,

Do you have much weight to lose? and what have you been eating prior to starting Atkins?

When I first went on to Atkins (pre-diabetes) I lost 15lb in the first 2 weeks. Most of that was water because I had previously been eating a "normal" diet. If you have been dieting for weight loss before trying Atkins, you may have already been through that initial fluid loss so won't show as much loss as I did.

Exercise is good for you and Dr Atkins recommends it - but I'd lost almost 2 stones from April 2004 to getting the "wolfhound exercise machine" in the June and starting regular exercise. Prior to that it was just housework and gardening. You should still lose without any exercise at all - it justs takes a bit longer.

I can't think why you haven't lost more if you've really been sticking to it. There are a few people it doesn't work as well for, but most people do lose. Have you been measuring yourself? It's a good idea to take a few base measurements - chest, waist, hips, upper arm, upper thigh - 'cos sometimes you lose size without it showing on the scales.

Have you noticed any difference in your blood glucose readings? If they're improving, do try to stick with it. I'm sure the weight loss will follow, though maybe a bit slower than with others.

SOrry I can't help more - it must be very frustrating. Concentrate on those BGs instead - and do try measuring.

Viv