Dr. Atkins' New Diet Cookbook (2 page)

By following the simple rules, you’ll find yourself on a weight-loss program that has the following surprising characteristics. Study them carefully for very few diets can claim even one of them.

This is a diet that:

• Sets no limit on the amount of food you can eat.

• Completely excludes hunger from the dieting experience.

• Includes rich and luxurious foods that you’ve never associated with dieting before.

• Reduces your appetite by a perfectly natural function of the body.

• Gives you a metabolic edge so significant that the whole concept of watching calories will become absurd to you.

• Produces steady weight loss, even if you have experienced dramatic failures on other diets.

• Is so perfectly adapted to use as a lifetime diet that, unlike most diets, the lost weight won’t come back.

• Consistently produced improvements in most of the health problems that accompany overweight.

I’m sure you wonder how all this is possible. Why does the diet work? How will my appetite be reduced? What’s all this talk of a metabolic edge? Those were all the questions I hoped you’d ask. Listen.

On the Atkins diet, you’ll lose weight without hunger. To most dieters that’s the miraculous part. No more counting calories, skimping on portions, rising from the table with an ache of appetite still present and unaccounted for. I not only tell my dieters,
Well, if you’re hungry, eat!
but I take pleasure in the fact that low-carbohydrate dieting suppresses appetite. Most of you will find that the change in your appetite level is one of the most astonishing experiences of your dieting life.

You see, your body was designed to suppress hunger during
periods of food deprivation. If any of you have fasted or watched other people fast, you’ll have noticed that after the first two days hunger disappears. Carbohydrate restriction produces the same phenomenon.

What does the body of a faster or a low-carbohydrate dieter do to provide energy? It burns off its own stored fat. In the case of a fast you’ll also burn off muscle tissue, which is not advisable and can even be dangerous. On a low-carbohydrate diet, you burn off
nothing but fat
.

In the metabolic pecking order, the first fuel that the body uses for energy—glucose—is derived from carbohydrate food. But when you drastically restrict carbohydrate intake, very little glucose is produced in your bloodstream after you’ve eaten. Your crafty metabolism appraises the alternatives and for two days after the diet begins it turns to stored carbohydrate (called glycogen) to power its operations. Once that is gone, your body moves down the pecking order. It turns to its own fat for fuel. Presto! you’ve begun to lose weight.

You enter a state called ketosis because among the by-products of fat burning are compounds called ketone bodies. They’re your newfound source of energy. Be assured, your body is just as happy using them as it was using glucose. Another name for the whole process is lipolysis, which means “the dissolving of fat.”

As you go into ketosis/lipolysis, the appetite suppression I just mentioned occurs. Because this usually results in a decrease in your intake of calories, your rate of weight loss is accelerated. But if you continue to eat as many calories as you did before the diet started, you will generally lose weight anyway only at a slower pace.

This “extra” weight loss is the result of a very exciting side benefit of low-carbohydrate dieting called a metabolic advantage. Very simply—and this has been repeatedly demonstrated in scientific studies—
a person who’s eating a strict low-carbohydrate diet loses more weight at whatever his or her level of caloric intake is than he or she would be losing if eating the same number of calories on any other type of diet
. Startling, but at least ten studies conducted in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s demonstrated that effect. A low-carbohydrate diet is a calorically wasteful diet. More calories are burned off by your metabolism than on any other diet.

I’m sure I don’t need to tell you what an advantage this is. You don’t need to concentrate on restricting calories; all you need to do is keep your intake of carbohydrate at such a level that you’re in
ketosis and enjoying the metabolic advantage nature has provided for you. From that there automatically follows appetite suppression and accelerated rate of weight loss per unit of caloric intake.

Let me emphasize one simple fact: Your body
wants
you to use up your fat stores. It elaborates all sorts of messenger chemicals to facilitate the burning of your stored fat—they’re called fat mobilizers. The fat mobilizers redirect your metabolic processes so that you comfortably switch from your normal sugar-burning pathway to the alternative pathway where fat is your body’s—and your brain’s—primary fuel.

Ketosis/lipolysis is the happiest condition a dieter can be in. Not only does it work, but it requires no willpower, no hunger, and no suffering of any kind. After two or three days of adjustment to the diet, most of you will feel better and more energetic than you’ve felt in years.

Being on the Atkins diet is a great convincer, but you have to bring some degree of resolution and commitment to your nutritional changeover. A halfhearted low-carbohydrate diet may make you feel physically better, but it probably won’t produce much weight loss. Smooth, consistent weight loss is a consequence of so severely restricting carbohydrate intake that you do go into ketosis and begin to burn your own fat for fuel.

To do this you must initally cut down your carbohydrates to one or two small salads or a salad and a helping of vegetables per day. Bread, pasta, sugar, and starchy foods in general will not be allowed while you’re in the weight-loss phase of your diet plan. Once you’ve reached your ideal weight you’ll be able to cautiously increase your intake of carbohydrate foods.

Knowing whether you’re in ketosis/lipolysis or not is obviously crucial to your success. Some people play it by ear (or ounce). If they’re losing weight they know they’re following the game plan. I think it’s more effective to get Bioketone testing strips, which you can put in your urine once a day (preferably in the evening). If the strips turn purple, you know you’re in ketosis.

Another crucial aspect of dietary success is nutritional supplementation. In the strict early phase of the diet, which I call the Induction phase, you’ll need vitamins and minerals to keep you at a healthy level for all nutrients. Even when you’re at the advanced and more liberalized levels of the diet I strongly advise supplementation
because it’s good for you. See “Nutritional Supplementation” in the appendices for a description of what your basic multivitamin formula should include.

My other advice for the beginning Atkins dieter is in the area of preparation. Prepare your relatives and prepare your kitchen. Qualitatively speaking, this is a strict diet. There’s no room for cheating. I can already hear your spouse saying, “Just this one little piece of cake won’t hurt you.” It will. You can’t do the diet that way.

So start by telling the folks you live with just what you intend to do. Tell them that you take your diet seriously, and you’d appreciate their doing the same. If they question the wisdom of a high-protein diet that isn’t interested in fat restriction, tell them to watch and wait. When they see how terrific you feel and how good you look, their temptation to criticize will start to fade away. Be diplomatic and gentle but firm. Eating is a very emotional habit, and changes in the way you eat affect everyone around you. Nonetheless, this is your diet, not your relatives’.

As for your kitchen, if you live alone it will be easy. Invite some friends over to finish off the ice cream, and give all your forbidden goods away to friends and neighbors. If there are others in the house, and they’re not going to be on this diet, then simply see that there are separate portions of such forbidden foods as bread, potatoes, and sugar-laden desserts for them. The main course, the salads, and the vegetables will be suitable for everyone.

Now, before you turn to the wonderful part of this book (the food!), look at the next chapter and make sure you know how you’ll do the series of diets that together comprise the Atkins diet. This is going to be your gateway to a lifetime of eating pleasure and dieting success.

This chapter is designed for those of you who haven’t read
Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution
. It will give, I hope, a simple and effective description of the Atkins diet in its four stages.

These are:

1. The Induction Diet

2. The Ongoing Weight-Loss Diet

3. The Premaintenance Diet

4. The Maintenance Diet

These four stages are an effective way of breaking up and explaining what—for you—will be one continuous lifetime diet. The Induction diet gets you into weight loss with a bang; the Ongoing Weight-Loss diet carries you through the weeks or months of weight loss needed to get you close to your ideal weight; the Premaintenance diet takes you the final few steps and eases your transition to what is perhaps the most important diet of all; and that is the Maintenance diet—your lifetime ticket to health and slimness. Let’s take them in order.

The Induction diet—your start-up diet—is very strict in its limitation of carbohydrates.
Because of its rigor, this phase of the diet is not appropriate for pregnant women and people with severe kidney disease
. You’ll only be eating 15 to 20 grams of carbohydrates on it, which might be two medium salads and a helping of vegetables. The purpose of this strictness is to ensure that your body does indeed go
into ketosis/lipolysis, does begin releasing fat-mobilizing hormones that will suppress your appetite, and does, after the first two or three days, begin to consume your own fat. This is what you’re working toward initially, and your success is pretty well assured.

Once you’re in ketosis, your body has made a transition from burning carbohydrate (glucose) for fuel to employing its alternative metabolic pathway that was evolved millions of years ago to enable you to survive periods of famine. You now break down fat, and the byproducts of this fat breakdown—ketone bodies—are consumed for energy.

This is the basic Atkins diet, so let me explain it in full. The other three diets are careful, gradual liberalizations of the Induction diet, and they’ll be easy to explain once you’re grounded in the Induction diet.

1.
Your diet must contain no more than 20 grams of carbohydrates a day
. For most people, induction of ketosis/lipolysis can be achieved on this intake. This allows for approximately 3 cups of salad vegetables (loosely packed) or 2 cups of salad plus ⅔ cup of cooked vegetables in the below 10 percent carbohydrate category.

2. You are no longer on a quantitative diet. Therefore you should adjust the quantities to your appetite. When hungry, eat the amount that makes you feel satisfied but not stuffed. When not hungry, eat nothing or just a small protein snack to accompany your vitamins.

3. You are, however, on a qualitative diet. This means that if the food is not on your diet, you are to have absolutely none of it. Your “just this one taste won’t hurt” rationalization is the kiss of death on this diet. Addicts will find this rule builds character in a hurry.

4. Your diet will consist of pure proteins (not many of those in nature, however), pure fats (this means butter, olive oil, and mayonnaise are permitted), and combinations of protein and fat (this is the mainstay of your diet). Foods that are protein-and-carbohydrate or fat-and-carbohydrate are
not
on this diet, because carbohydrate is not on this diet.

5. Using a carbohydrate gram counter, one could find other combinations totaling less than 20 grams of carbohydrate. One would be using foods like nuts, seeds, olives, avocados,
cheeses, cream and sour cream, lemon and lime juices, and low-carbohydrate diet foods. Don’t assume these foods are low, unless you absolutely know the carbohydrate content of the portion you are eating. In the Carbohydrate Gram Counter on
page 230
, I will include the carbohydrate content in grams of the foods you may include on this 14-day
Induction
diet as well as on more liberal levels of the diet that you will be doing as your lifetime diet plan.

Exceptions: 1) luncheon meats with nitrites or sugar added

2) products that are not exclusively meat, fish, or fowl, such as imitation fish

OTHER INDUCTION DIET FOODS:

Vegetables of 10 Percent Carbohydrate or Less

Alfalfa Sprouts

Arugula

Bok Choy

Boston Lettuce

Celery

Chicory

Chives

Cucumber

Endive

Escarole

Fennel

Jicama

Mache

Morels

Mushrooms

Olives

Parsley

Peppers

Posse Pied

Radicchio

Radishes

Romaine

Sorrel

Basil

Cilantro

Dill

Oregano

Rosemary

Thyme

For salad dressing use the desired oil plus vinegar or lemon juice and spices. Grated cheese, chopped eggs, bacon, or fried pork rinds may be added.

Artichoke Hearts

Asparagus

Avocado

Bamboo Shoots

Bean Sprouts

Beet Greens

Broccoli

Brussels Sprouts

Cabbage

Cauliflower

Celery Root (celeriac)

Chard

Christophene

Collard Greens

Dandelion Greens

Eggplant

Hearts of Palm

Kale

Kohlrabi

Leeks

Okra

Onion

Pumpkin

Rhubarb

Sauerkraut