Atkins Diet Loopholes

Dr. Atkins started the Atkins diet by making the clinical ketogenic diet (very low-carb, relatively low-protein, very high-fat) friendlier for the lay dieters. In the process, he lost an important point of controlling protein intake and keeping the proper ratios of carbs:protein: fat.

It resulted in uncertainty regarding actual carbohydrate amounts circulating in the blood because almost half of the eaten protein can be turned into glucose by the body. It in turn resulted in a weight loss failure or plateau.

He called such cases "metabolic resistance" - but they could be simply results of protein overeating. Dr. Atkins advised attempting the "fat fast" consisting of 90% fat.

Low carb foods for weight loss

Carbohydrate requirement can be different on different diets, and finding low carb foods for low carb diets can be difficult. There are diets advising consuming "good" carbs like in whole grains versus "bad" carbs like in white bread or sugar.

Another group of carbohydrate-regulating diets, such as, for example, the Zone, prescribes very precise combination of carbs/protein/fat. The Zone defines this combination as the 40/30/30 ratio and this is a very liberal carbohydrate allowance comparing with a 'standard' low carb diet permitting 100 carb grams a day or less.

The strictest of all is the ketogenic diet requiring that carb and protein grams combined should be at least 3 to 4 times lower than fat grams. Concrete gram amounts depend on caloric requirements.

Low Carb Diet Safety

Low carb diets, even it their extreme manifestation, the ketogenic diet, and the well researched Atkins diet, were reported as being safe and efficient.

Children on clinical ketogenic diet, which is highest in fat and lowest in carbohydrates out of all the diets, resulted in no serious health problems for decades after their diet.

The low carb diets that advise on high protein intake can cause kidney problems, but those instructing on limiting protein intake and having more "good" fats instead are beneficial even for this condition.

Low carb diets are not more nutritionally challenging than any restrictive diet though they can require a different set of supplements, for nutritional balancing.

What Are Low Carb "Negative Calorie" Foods?

The popular Negative Calorie Diet is in fact a low-fat, low-energy-density diet. What is offered by vast varieties of low carb diets, is just the opposite - high-fat, high-energy-density diets. But if we stop to think in terms of negative calorie balance, we'll see that any diet can do. Another thing is what's called "fat burning effect" of foods. From this standpoint, low-carb, high-fat foods are indeed able to make the body burn its own fat for fuel, the effect that low fat diets cant achieve.

The matter is, our metabolic mode is directly affected by the ratio carbs+protein to fat. If there's at least 1.5 tiles more fat in a food or meal than there's carbs+protein combined, the body's metabolic mode shifts into the fat burning mode. The higher the ratio in favor of fat grams, the deeper into the fat burning mode our body is. This condition is called ketosis and low carb foods and meals are what causes ketosis.

Here's a sample list of foods that can be eaten without portion control and still cause ketosis.

"Free" foods - eat all you want. The higher on the list the better.

Butter
Heavy cream
Cream cheese
Sour cream
Sesame seeds
Bologna
Pecans
Frankfurter
Knockwurst
Coconut

Combining foods that with low ketogenic capacities and those with high, you can have just about any food and still get into the ketosis state. For example, 2 leaves of Romaine lettuce plus 2 tablespoons of sour cream or 1/3 cup of Chinese cabbage plus 1 tablespoon of oil are negative calorie" meals though the lettuce or cabbage alone are not.

Low Carb Diets and Low Carb Recipes

Low carb diet plans are vast and varied and involve low carb recipes. The mild low carb diets and recipes, such as the Zone, don't even restrict carb intake emphasizing proper ratios of carbs:fat:protein, which, by the way, is pretty close to the new diet guide pyramid.

All low carb diets prohibit the intake of refined carbohydrates coming from processed sugar, white flour, high-fructose corn syrup, etc. Some low carb diets assume that the dangers of saturated fats are overrated, and make note of that in their low carb recipe suggestions.

Most of the low carb diets are especially beneficial for people with the "apple" body shape, with body fat concentrated mostly around the middle. This is because even a mild low carb diet results in improved insulin sensitivity and insulin resistance is the reason of abdominal fat accumulation.

One of the more attractive features in the low carb diet is a decreased appetite and increased sense of well being, which are attributed to the ketone bodies released by body fat tissues when carbohydrate intake is limited.

Meal Frequency And Carbohydrate Control

There's at least two aspects of effects of meal frequency on controlling carbohydrate metabolism: daily calorie intake change and blood sugar regulation. For some reasons, more frequent meals can decrease appetite thus reducing calorie intake in some people while increasing appetite in others. Researchers think that this can depend on intensity or/and duration as well as types of exercise and fitness level. However, all people benefit from frequent meals if it doesn't cause calorie intake increase -- either by naturally reduced appetite or by keeping the portions small.

The benefits of carbohydrate control by reducing portion and increasing frequencies of meals are the following:

• Lower fluctuations in appetite
• Lower total cholesterol and "bad" cholesterol
• Lower insulin secretion and glucose levels
• Lower free fatty acids levels and adipose (fat) enzyme levels
• Lower uric acid levels (risk factor for coronary heart disease)
• Increased bile acid secretion, which is good for your liver, gallbladder, and digestion

Exercising And Low Carb Foods

By exercising, you maintain your muscle mass while encouraging the burning of fat for energy. On early stages of any low carb diet, people are often unable to exercise vigorously, because of the limited amount of low carb food in their system. But moderate-intensity exercises of longer durations are encouraged by most of the low carb diets, even while maintaining a low carb food recipe regime. When your body adapts to its new way of eating, more intensive exercises become possible. It is important to start or continue perfecting strength training for both preserving the muscles and "earning" the right to eat nutritious foods even if they contain some more carbs.

Low Fat Versus Low Carb: Long Term Results

Low fat diet craze is over and the low carb diet popularity is on decline but researchers keep publishing results of the studies that started almost 10 years ago. When first short term clinical trials revealed that the Atkins diet is safe and efficient, low fat gurus suggested that we wait for several years to see how their approach will win on the long run. Now, our wait seem to be over -- one of the leading American medical journals, JAMA, published results of their 7.5-year long trial. So were the low fat gurus right? Doesn't seem so.

The group of women that complied with low-fat eating plan for all these years didn't show any signs of better health than the control group eating as much fat as they pleased. What's worse, their waist-to-hip ratio increased over the years as compared with women who were not limiting their fat intake. This ratio reflects insulin sensitivity and blood sugar control -- the greater the ratio, the worse.

One possible explanation is usually, that the lower in fat a diet is, the higher it is in carbohydrates and higher intake of carbohydrates was shown to associate with higher 'bad' cholesterol and lower 'good' cholesterol. Also, diets that are higher in 'good' fats like olive oil and fatty fish seem to increase energy expenditure by increasing heat dissipation through the skin. In one study, Atkins dieters were able to eat up to 300 Cal. extra a day and still lose more weight than those in the control eating higher-carbohydrate diet.

Low carb foods in Low Carb Diets

Some diets rely on low carb foods with a low glycemic load. The term "glycemic load" is used to describe the amount of carbohydrates appearing in the blood after eating a certain serving of a food. Meats and dairy products are low carbohydrate foods because of their low carbohydrate content leading to low glycemic load.

Raw vegetables and fruits, while containing the same amounts of carbohydrates as cooked ones, are considered acceptable under low carb diets because ounce for once, they only elevate blood glucose levels to a lesser degree.

Atkins induction phase and caffeine

Many low carb dieters reported that cheating on the Atkins diet by drinking coffee cased weight loss stalling. During the Atkins induction phase, carbohydrate limitation is strict in order to induce ketosis and to shift the metabolism from running on carbohydrates to running on ketone bodies.

Insulin is a potent anti-ketogenic hormone. It was shown in an experiment that insulin level can be elevated by caffeine. Daily consumption of coffee and caffeine-containing drinks caused decrease insulin sensitivity and compromises efficiency of any low carb diet.

Source: Diabetes Care 25:364-369, 2002

Ketosis without weight loss?

It is a common situation on Atkins diet that people are in ketosis but the scales just refuse moving. The first thing to do is measure your waist, hips, and neck. If any of these circumferences shrink, you are losing fat while gaining muscle: muscles are heavier, inch for inch.

However, if you are not losing inches, cut down on protein and add some good fats, for instance olive oil, to your meals. Research revealed that fatter meals result in more intensive fat burning at rest.

If this measure doesn't work, the last step is to try the fat fast. The fat fast is 90% fat and 10% protein, plus limiting calorie intake to 1000 Cal. a day.

Are You a Carbohydrate Addict?

Though Rachael and Richard Heller, the authors of "The Carbohydrate Addict's Diet: The Lifelong Solution to Yo-Yo Dieting" (Signet) explain the way their diet works in terms of insulin sensitivity and metabolic resistance, not all nutritionists agree. Medical literature fails to support this theory but the diet does work for at least 80% of overweight people. Can it work for you? It can, if you are:

- hungry before lunch after a complete breakfast
- having a difficult time stopping to eat starches or sweets
- not satisfied after you just finished a meal
- ready to start eating even after the thought of food
- feeling sluggish after a meal
- getting tired in the afternoon
- unable to lose weight on any diet you tried

The diet's daily menu roughly consists of two very low carb, low calorie meals and one "reward meal" when you can eat anything you want, in any quantities - but for only one hour. This way, people don't feel deprived, but most importantly, one meal a day, especially the last meal of the day, doesn't ruin the appetite-reducing mode: you just don't have enough time to overeat.

The deprivation (or rather its absence) part is very important and often overlooked by fad diets leading to cheating and quitting. The Hellers' program has quite a few more techniques helping to maintain healthier appetite. for one thing, they advise that in case you haven't any progress for a week, you should not to reduce anything in your diet, but to add a large salad that should be eaten before your reward meal. This decreases the meal's calorie density so portion for portion, you consume less calories.

Precautions for Following Low Carb Diets

In order to maintain a safe low carb diet, it is important to take a certain amount of vitamins, minerals, and other essential nutrients to avoid malnutrition. Low carb dieters should increase their fiber intake with the recommended raw vegetables, soy beans, or in the form of fiber supplements, e.g., sugar-free Psyllium husk powder.

Emotional Eating

We know that eating will produce a pleasant sensation so often we eat, even though all we need is comfort.

The truth is, exercise, sauna, cold shower, massage, pleasant odors, and mental efforts all increase the level of special "reward" chemicals in the brain called Endorphin.

The advice is based on this fact: try other rewards. Buying fresh flowers can be a better answer than a bowl of Rocky Road. Exercise, go to sauna, take a cold shower, invest in a massage device, buy a vail of perfume, or enjoy a book.

Low carb diet: how it works

By limiting carbohydrates, low carb dieting seeks to shift the body from burning sugars to burning fat for energy. When the body has no more carbs to burn, it enters a state called ketosis.

During ketosis, the body burns fat instead of carbs for fuel producing the by product ketone bodies. Ketone bodies are thought to be the reason of decreased appetite and cravings for sweets as well as for the general sense of well being.

Foods Allowed On Different Low Carb Diets

On different low carb diets, you'll eat somewhat different foods. What all these diets have in common, is eliminating all refined carbohydrates like sugar, sweets, white flour and breads baked with it, pastas, rice, potatoes, etc.

• On Atkins diet, you'll eat lots of meat, poultry, fish, cheese, ham, eggs, cream, and oils. Two bowls of green leafy vegetables are allowed every day. As you progress to advanced phases of the diet, more carbohydrates will be gradually introduced as long as you keep losing weight.
• On the Carbohydrate Addict Diet, you eat similar foods -- but once a day, for one hour, you can eat absolutely all you want, it's called "reward meal".
• On the Zone diet, yo have to keep the ratio of protein to fat to carbohydrates in every meal so you basically eat lean protein, nuts and seeds, berries, and non-starchy vegetables.
• On the Banta Diet, you can eat any food but every meal should have at least 1.5 times more grams of fat than grams of carbs and protein combined. If a food naturally meet this requirement, you can et as much of it as you want.
• On the Fat Fast diet, you eat 90% fatty foods while limiting calorie intake to just 1000 CaL. a day

It Is Possible To Use Carbs To Lose Weight!

The Sonoma Diet advises that you don't have to erase from your diet foods just because they are high in carbs. The whole grains can actually help you in your weight loss battle because of their fiber and antioxidant phytonutrients, like the ones in the Sonoma Diet's Top Ten Power Foods. Fibers slow down carbohydrate absorption so not only the "effective carb grams" are fewer but also less carbohydrates are actually getting into your blood. Just make sure that "whole grain" is the first ingredient listed on a food's label.

How to make vegetable more palatable

When it comes to cooking vegetable dishes for a veggie-hater, recipe is the king.

Try to start with such versatile a vegetable as avocado. Its natural taste is rather subtle allowing for using it as a fruit in fruit recipes or as spread (just add some sharp cheese, or dill and garlic, etc.)

For example, take a regular banana cake recipe and use avocados instead of bananas, plus an extra sweetener and banana extract.

Depending on your culinary preferences, try cold cut wraps with lattice leaves instead of pitas or flat breads, or adding finely chopped fresh parsley, chives, coriander, and the like to your broth and non-vegetable soups, or cook stews with lots of vegetables that 'dissolve' in the process, like onions or carrots.



Even pilaf, when cooked properly, is 1 part lamb, 1 part rise, and 1 part onions plus carrots.

How Many Carb Grams Is In a Low Carb Diet?

A diet is considered a low carbohydrate one if you consume below 100 effective carb grams a day (total carbs minus fiber grams) but most of such diets start with more serious carbohydrate limitation to induce ketosis.

The bad news is, only the clinical ketogenic diet and the ketogenic diet used by bodybuilders really calculate how much carbs get into your blood-stream because if you don't count the protein to fat to carb ratio, you cant tell whether your diet is truly ketogenic or not.

The only diet designed for regular dieters that pre-calculates the ketogenic ratio (so called "Fat Burning Index") is bantadiet.com - it's available online and is free so there's no risk for you in taking a look.

Low Carb Diet: What to Eat?

A Low Carb diet is a diet that allows only so much of carbohydrates. If you eat more than 100 grams a day, you are not on a low carb diet. Different low carb diets have different requirements to foods to eat and to avoid. Atkins diet starts with a serious limitation allowing only 20 carb grams a day.



The Ketogenic diet pays close attention to amounts of not only carbohydrates but also protein and fat. It also limit liquid intake to keep the ketone concentration high.



There are diets that tell you to eat one type of carbohydrates, calling them "good" carbs and avoid another ones, the "bad". Such are the Glycemic Index and Glycemic Impact diets.



However, since they don't limit carb grams, they have to make you watch your fat intake, which makes them not exactly low carb diets since a true low carb diet should be rather high in fat, better high in "good" fat like olive oil and fatty fish.

Low Carb Diets: the Ketogenic Diet

The Ketogenic diet is a very low carb diet developed in the 1920s for treatment of intractable childhood epilepsy. The ketones accumulating in the brain on this diet have a generalized calming effect, thus reducing the symptoms or even leading to convalescence of epilepsy. The ketogenic diet has a higher fat intake than traditional low carb diets and a stricter ratio of carb:protein:fat, especially for patients in the hospitals.

Atkins Induction Phase: Possible Errors

Often people start the Atkins diet and expect fast weight loss results overnight. It doesn't work this way and even if it does, the weight loss is water loss in most cases. What to do?

1. Check your inches loss. If you are losing inches, especially around your middle, you are making progress. Just keep going!

2. You can say you fail only after the induction phase is over and your weight and inches are still there. It's often a result of uncontrolled protein intake. The matter is, Atkins diet doesn't instruct you to count protein and 50% of protein is being converted by your body into carbohydrates.

3. Dr. Atkins called the stubborn cases (20% of all cases, by his estimation) "metabolic resistance' and advised to start controlling calories and limit calorie intake to 1000 Cal. a day while reducing protein intake to 10% of all calories. The Fat Fast plan he suggested was bound to be a success.

An easy version the Banta diet offers for breaking weight loss plateau or to jump start a diet, consists of 1.25 cup heavy cream a day devided into 5 portions and taken with unlimited amount of strong green tea.

The Many Types of CaloriesThere's no Free Calories. Or is there?

Calories are called many names. To start with, the 'calorie' in recipes and even on some nutritional fact labels is in fact a kilo-calorie, which means that it signifies 1000 times more energy than a simple calorie. To avoid too complicated spelling and too long pronunciation, they are called 'big calories' or Calories (with capital C).



A calorie is a simple idea in physics: it's the amount of energy it takes to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees F).



Incredibly, but this approach is used in nutrition, too: 1 calorie is the amount of heat that is supposedly released by 1 gram of food when it's burnt. Yes, not 'burnt' as in 'fat burning' but burnt literally, on fire. Have you read in popular articles that energy (calories) in a Big Mac could drive a car for 40 miles?



So what can mean 'free calories' from this standpoint? The answer is, nothing! The term "free calories" has no precise meaning. However, it's not meaningless.



Many weight loss diets let you eat certain foods freely like without counting calories in the case of low carbohydrate diets.



On the Negative Calorie diet, you can eat any amounts of low 'calorie density' plant foods on the list.



On the Carbohydrate Addict diet, you can eat any amounts of any food at all - but only once a day, for only one hour.



On the BantaDiet.com, you can eat any amounts of any food or meal as along as you stay within Banta's food lists and use Banta's recipes, which are pre-calculated to insure proper ratio of fats:carb+protein.



You can also earn yourself some 'free' calories to eat by exercising or even create a negative calorie balance by burning more calories than you consume.

Low Carb Diets and Chocolate: To Give Up or Not To Give Up?

Chocolate is made from cocoa beans, which contains minerals (copper, iron, zinc, and magnesium) and specific health-protecting antioxidants called polyphenols like those found in tea and red wine - and very little carbohydrates. Regular chocolate bars are so sweet because a lot of sugar is added. When sugar is being replaced by sugar substitutes, chocolate can be fairly low in carbohydrates.

However, unlike in most of home-made baking goods, the artificial sweeteners in chocolate (and all candies) can be different from, for example, Splenda, saccharin, or aspartame because it should provide specific silky thickness. These sweeteners are sugar alcohols or polyols: maltitol, sorbitol, mannitol, xylitol, etc. They result in a much slowe rise in blood sugar levels but they are not completely carbohydrate-free. From this standpoint, use chocolate in your own desserts.

Here's a popular low carb chocolate recipe: chocolate almond cake (courtesy of bestlowcarbs.com, with permission)

Ingredients

4 eggs
1/2 cup sugar equivalent, i.e. Stevia
1 cup almonds, coarsely shopped
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 Tbs almond flour
1 tsp baking soda
3 Tbs unsweetened cocoa powder

Instructions

Separate egg whites from yolks. In a blender, blend the whites and sweetener. Continuing blending, add the ingredients in this order: nuts, vanilla, flour, soda, yolks, and cocoa, blend for 2 minutes more. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.

South Beach Diet

The South Beach Diet was originally designed for cardiac patients who needed to lose weight, especially those with the "apple" body type (fat concentrated mostly around the middle).

The diet starts with eliminating simple carbohydrates, those with high glycemic indexes. The South Beach Diet also encourages an increase in fiber intake and the avoiding animal (saturated) fats.

The diet seeks to create long term changes in eating habits and encourages the consumption of whole grains at every meal.

What Are Low Carb "Negative Calorie" Foods?

The popular Negative Calorie Diet is in fact a low-fat, low-energy-density diet. What is offered by vast varieties of low carb diets, is just the opposite - high-fat, high-energy-density diets. But if we stop to think in terms of negative calorie balance, we'll see that any diet can do. Another thing is what's called "fat burning effect" of foods. From this standpoint, low-carb, high-fat foods are indeed able to make the body burn its own fat for fuel, the effect that low fat diets cant achieve.

The matter is, our metabolic mode is directly affected by the ratio carbs+protein to fat. If there's at least 1.5 tiles more fat in a food or meal than there's carbs+protein combined, the body's metabolic mode shifts into the fat burning mode. The higher the ratio in favor of fat grams, the deeper into the fat burning mode our body is. This condition is called ketosis and low carb foods and meals are what causes ketosis.

Here's a sample list of foods that can be eaten without portion control and still cause ketosis.

"Free" foods - eat all you want. The higher on the list the better.

Butter
Heavy cream
Cream cheese
Sour cream
Sesame seeds
Bologna
Pecans
Frankfurter
Knockwurst
Coconut

Combining foods that with low ketogenic capacities and those with high, you can have just about any food and still get into the ketosis state. For example, 2 leaves of Romaine lettuce plus 2 tablespoons of sour cream or 1/3 cup of Chinese cabbage plus 1 tablespoon of oil are negative calorie" meals though the lettuce or cabbage alone are not.

The Stages of Atkins Diet

There are four main phases of Atkins diet:

• The induction
• The ongoing weight loss (OWL)
• The maintenance

The induction phase is used to force the body into ketosis. After the introductory stage, the ongoing weight loss begins – carb intake is gradually increased - 5 carb grams per day weekly - as long as weight loss continues. The threshold in daily carb grams should be found, above which weight loss tops.

The final phase is lifetime maintenance, in which this threshold level of carbohydrate consumption is carried out for life.

Low Carb Diets, Ketosis, And Ketosticks

A ketogenic diet is a diet that, when followed conscientiously, produces a by-product called ketones. Most dieters can reach ketosis (a condition associated with increased amounts of ketones in the blood) by limiting their carb intake to less than 60 grams a day. The state of ketosis is what makes a ketogenic diet metabolically so similar to fasting that it is often being referred to as a controlled fast.

The clinical ketogenic diet is a diet high in fat and low not only in carbohydrates. It also limits water intake (to avoid ketone dilution)and carefully controls calorie intake.

A diet that allows less than 100 grams of carbohydrate a day is considered low carb. Whether or not it causes ketosis is a different question. The matter is, we all periodically experience ketosis, for example, before breakfast and after exercise. Eating foods that are low in carbohydrates, we prolong this state and the time spent in the ketosis is the time of fat burning.

Additional TIP: Don't rely on ketosticks to estimate the success of your low carb diet: they only can turn purple when you burn a large amount of fat so that the excess ketones are discarded in the urine. When all ketone bodies are used up for body's energy needs, there is no color change though you can be in a state of ketosis.

An Allergic Reaction

If you think you are allergic to a specific good, the best you can do is seeing an allergist. These doctors can do a specific test and if it really is allergy to strawberries, you will better avoid them at all times. In its severe form, it can cause an allergy-caused shock.

I would also advise you to have anti-allergic pills with you in case there's another food to cause you this reaction.

Vegetarians on Atkins Diet?

Dr. Atkins didn't specify fat to protein ratio, and fat sources on a vegetarian diet is no problem with oils, nuts, avocados, etc.

What can be a problem is protein sources. It's less of a problem if you eat diary and eggs, but if you are a vegan, you need to hunt every protein gram.

Here are acceptable protein sources:

Soy (Tofu, fake meat and the like)
Peanuts
Nuts
Seeds
Legumes
(Eggs, Dairy)

There are findings that people consuming at least 1 cup of nuts and seeds a day, have friendly bacteria in their intestines that produce essential amino acids, which in their turn are building blocks for protein.

Atkins Diet, Protein Intake, and Cholesterol

Higher protein intake doesn't increase blood cholesterol levels. What does increase cholesterol levels is the "mixed" high carbohydrate, high fat eating style. Long term clinical trials revealed that the expectations regarding cholesterol-lowering effects of low fat diets were not met.



Researchers from Texas' Veterans Affairs Medical Center showed that compared with low carb diets, the high-carb diet caused an increase "bad" cholesterol levels while reducing levels "good" cholesterol.



It is important to keep in mind that Atkins diet should not necessarily be high-protein, Dr. Atkins just didn't specify protein intake. However, for the cases he called "metabolic resistance," he recommended very high, very low carb and protein intake along with limiting calorie intake.

Carbohydrate Restriction vs. Calorie Restriction

For those who limit their carbohydrate intake to less than 100 grams a day, there's no need to count their calories. Low carb diets create calorie deficit a kind of automatically by eventually decreasing appetite.

However, different low carb diets instruct to have different amounts of carbs per day, from 20 g/day on Atkins Induciton Phase to just eliminating the simple, refined type of carbohydrates as the South Beach diet does.

If you prefer to count calories instead of carbohydrates, there's a couple of things to keep in mind:

1. Pay more attention to calorie density rather than to pure calorie count: calore for calorie, calroie-dense foods tend to be muych less nutritious.

2. Figure out your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) and never, ever go below it! RMR is the minimum number of calories your body needs to support breathing, circulating blood, etc. You can calculate you RMR using the Harris-Benedict equations:

Men: RMR = 66.473 + 13.751*BW + 5.0033*HT - 6.755*Age
Women: RMR = 655.0955 + 9.463*BW + 1.8496*HT - 4.6756*Age

Where BW = body weight in kilograms, HT = height in cm, Age in years

Alternatively, search for "RMR calculators" online.

Atkins Diet Guide

The Atkins diet was created by Dr. Robert Atkins in the early 1970s. The Induction Phase of the diet instructs to limit carbohydrate intake to 20 grams a day; it lasts until the state of ketosis occurs, when the body is burning fat for almost all of its energy. During the next phase - Ongoing Weight Loss (OWL) - the amount of carbohydrates should be gradually increased: 5 grams a day is added weekly until weight loss stops. The next phase, Maintenance, is supposed to last for the rest of your life and allows the carbohydrate amount you figured out for yourself during the OWL.

No carb diets and carb burning exercise

Some low carb food dieters may think that eliminating all carbs from their meals will help them to lose weight more quickly. However, there's no such thing as a no-carb diet.

The only way to further reduce carb amounts actually circulating in the body is to "burn" the carbs. How?

There's a biochemical formula showing that every set of strength training exercises burns a certain amounts of carbohydrates. Those doing weights can enjoy either going deeper into ketosis or indulging in higher-carb foods such as fruits. This can have a beneficial effect on their general nutritional status.

Atkins Diet and Fat Intake

Approximately 20% of Atkins dieters fail. Dr. Atkins explained it in terms of "metabolic resistance" and advised a kind of emergency plan he called fat fast. On this plan, one's supposed to increase fat intake to get 90% of calories from fat. However, calorie intake also should be limited to just 1000 Cal. a day. Which part of these two components of the fat fast diet works, is unclear: calorie restriction alone does work though it's very hard to stick with because of hunger. The good news is, increasing fat intake without calorie limitation also works! Why? Because of two things:

1. Limiting carb intake and protein intake along with increasing fat intake shifts your metabolism from using carbs for energy to using fats including your own fat.

2. Eating plenty of fat increasing body's heat dissipation so one can consume more calories and still lose weight.

From this facts, we can conclude that fats can help dieters to lose weight. But is this a healthy way to slim down? It seems to be - if you:

1. Consume "good" fats - not animal fat including that from diary but mostly oils and fish oil

2. Stay on this plan temporarily, until you lose all unwanted weight, then gradually increase your consumption of "good" carbs like whole grains, berries, and raw veggies

3. Burn excess carbs by doing lot of strength training

Calories on Atkins diet

The ability of Atkins dieters to eat *unlimited* amounts of calories is one of major dieting misconceptions. Atkins diet require counting only carb grams while indeed not watching portions and calories. However, when the calories consumed by Atkins dieters were counted it turned out that the dieters ate less calories than the control group on a regular, "mixed" diet, which happened due to reduced appetite - an attractive effect of many low carb diets.



There's more surprising fact about the Atkins diet. Clinical study showed that even when assigned to diet plan containing 300 more Calories, they still lost more weight than the control group. As it was revealed in a Japanese study, the higher fat intake led to increased metabolic rate at rest. The dieters simply had higher skin temperature thus losing energy in the form of heat.

Low carb dieting and clean teeth

The National Academy of Sciences' experts cited medical evidence indicating that diets high in sugar can promote dental concerns along with obesity, kidney stones, osteoporosis, and heart disease, while lower intake of carbohydrates can prevent these conditions.



According to the USDA, people should eat no more than 10 teaspoons of sugar. Meanwhile, the average American is consuming about 20 teaspoons of sugar per day.

Carbohydrate Information

Total carbohydrate is calculated "by difference" - the protein, fat, ash and water grams of a food are measured, subtracted from the total weight of the food and the remainder, or "difference", is agreed upon to be carbohydrates.

Net carbs are total carb grams minus fiber grams.

The more complex carbohydrates the better they are for your health. Simple carbohydrates such as sugar and refined white flour can cause such problems as obesity and diabetes. Recently is became known complex carbohydrates are to blame for high blood pressure and even some kinds of cancer.

Carbohydrates come in three different forms - sugars, oligosaccharides and polysaccharides.

Sugars are glucose, galactose, fructose, table sugar sucrose, milk sugar lactose, and sugar alcohols (Sorbitol, mannitol)

Oligosaccharides you can see an some nutrition labels of food packages. They are: are maltodextrins, raffinose, stachyose, fructo-oligosaccharides

Polysaccharides are starches (including modified starches) as well as cellulose of food fibers, pectins in fruits and berries, etc.

Carb Grams, Good Fats, and Weight Loss

To lose pounds on a low carb program, one has to reduce carbohydrate intake to have no more than 100 grams a day. However, this only means that more than 100 carb grams will make your diet non-lowcarb. In this case, you'll have to limit your calorie intake while on a true low carb diet, you don't have to. Atkins diet allows 20 carb grams on induction phase, on which people lose weight most quickly. However, you should consume enough "good" fat in order get the most of any low carb diet: this way, not only you lose your appetite most successfully but you cab "afford" up to 300 more calories a day and still lose weight.

Low carb recipes for low carb diets

Low carb recipes are widely available in books, periodicals, and online. Numerous authors, most notably Atkins, have put out recipe books on low carb diets. Many websites offer low carb recipes. These recipes are usually easy to make on your own, and will help you keep a low carb diet.

Atkins Diet and Fat Intake

Approximately 20% of Atkins dieters fail. Dr. Atkins explained it in terms of "metabolic resistance" and advised a kind of emergency plan he called fat fast. On this plan, one's supposed to increase fat intake to get 90% of calories from fat. However, calorie intake also should be limited to just 1000 Cal. a day. Which part of these two components of the fat fast diet works, is unclear: calorie restriction alone does work though it's very hard to stick with because of hunger. The good news is, increasing fat intake without calorie limitation also works! Why? Because of two things:

1. Limiting carb intake and protein intake along with increasing fat intake shifts your metabolism from using carbs for energy to using fats including your own fat.

2. Eating plenty of fat increasing body's heat dissipation so one can consume more calories and still lose weight.

From this facts, we can conclude that fats can help dieters to lose weight. But is this a healthy way to slim down? It seems to be - if you:

1. Consume "good" fats - not animal fat including that from diary but mostly oils and fish oil

2. Stay on this plan temporarily, until you lose all unwanted weight, then gradually increase your consumption of "good" carbs like whole grains, berries, and raw veggies

3. Burn excess carbs by doing lot of strength training

Are You a Carbohydrate Addict?

Though Rachael and Richard Heller, the authors of "The Carbohydrate Addict's Diet: The Lifelong Solution to Yo-Yo Dieting" (Signet) explain the way their diet works in terms of insulin sensitivity and metabolic resistance, not all nutritionists agree. Medical literature fails to support this theory but the diet does work for at least 80% of overweight people. Can it work for you? It can, if you are:

- hungry before lunch after a complete breakfast
- having a difficult time stopping to eat starches or sweets
- not satisfied after you just finished a meal
- ready to start eating even after the thought of food
- feeling sluggish after a meal
- getting tired in the afternoon
- unable to lose weight on any diet you tried

The diet's daily menu roughly consists of two very low carb, low calorie meals and one "reward meal" when you can eat anything you want, in any quantities - but for only one hour. This way, people don't feel deprived, but most importantly, one meal a day, especially the last meal of the day, doesn't ruin the appetite-reducing mode: you just don't have enough time to overeat.

The deprivation (or rather its absence) part is very important and often overlooked by fad diets leading to cheating and quitting. The Hellers' program has quite a few more techniques helping to maintain healthier appetite. for one thing, they advise that in case you haven't any progress for a week, you should not to reduce anything in your diet, but to add a large salad that should be eaten before your reward meal. This decreases the meal's calorie density so portion for portion, you consume less calories.

Atkins Diet: Long Term Results

There is no long term clinical studies of Atkins diet, however, indirectly, these data exist since 1920s; they concern children, which were resistant to then existed epileptic drugs. They were treated with the ketogenic diet, which is much more restrictive but is essentially the same as the Atkins diet.

Children stayed on the ketogenic diet for at least two years and none of them have had any side effects other then caused by dehydration since their intake of liquids was very limited. These side effects were reversible after children were allowed for more water to drink.

In one online weight loss community, anecdotal evidence was collected on 600 Atkins dieters. Among those who reported how long they kept the lost weight off, some could do it for as little as a few weeks yet there were a few others who never gained any weight back. On average, a successful Atkins dieter kept the lost weight off for 13.31 years.

Low Carb Dieting Trends, Pros and Cons

If you want a stringy, flat look, you most probably can not get it without carbohydrate restriction, this is what bodybuilders agreed upon long time ago, when the ketogenic dieting was either a clinical matter for epileptic children or a tool for highly self-disciplined weight lifting buffs.

Though low carb diets seem to be losing their popularity among 'average' dieters, fitness and medical professionals don't have anything to do with this process. Quite to the contrary, undeniable research results exist showing health and weight loss effects of low carb diets that are superior to low fat and calorie restrictive diets.

Cutting down on carbs forces your body to burn fat for fuel and to better control your insulin and blood sugar levels.

However, for very physically active people, decreasing carbcarbohydrate intake too much results in losing muscles. The solution? There are at least two.

1. For very active, fit people. Alternate low-carb and high-carb eating plans on a weekly basis or daily, around strength training sessions. This temporary excess carbs will be burnt, in mathematically precise manner, in every set of weights or machine exercise you do.

2. For normaly active or sedentary people. Choose a moderately carb-restrictive diet or just a 'good' carbohydrate diet like the South Beach, the Zone, or Sonoma diets.

The Mediterranean Diet or Mediterranean Diets?

It all started long ago, in the 1950s, when an American nutritionist, Ansel Keys reported that Cretan men had a very low rate of heart disease and cancer and lived long. Dr. Keys conducted a 15-year study of the heart disease and cancer in Greece, Finland, Japan, Italy, Netherlands, US, and Yugoslavia. The results of the study showed that in Crete, these diseases were rare while in all other countries were not (Japan was the only exception).



Why the diet described for a small island of Crete is now generalized for a huge area that include three continents and t least 16 countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea? Of course, diets vary between these countries due to differences in culture and economy. However, the common pattern can be extracted.



In significant amounts, daily, are eaten: Olive oil, fruits, vegetables, bread and other cereals, potatoes, beans, nuts and seeds



In moderate amounts, almost daily, are consumed cheeses, fish and seafood



Meats and eggs are consumed from zero to a couple times a week



Wine is consumed in moderate amounts but regularly, on daily basis, with meals.

Plateau on South Beach Diet

The South Beach Diet is the lost moderate of all recent fad diets. One of the most attractive (and fulfilled) claims the SBD author Dr. Agatson made was "the belly fat goes first". Why? Because this diet works mainly by removing all bad carbohydrates from your menu and those bad or refined carbohydrates cause the so called "apple" shape body type when most of the fat concentrates around the middle. This belly fat Dr. Schwarzbein (The Schwarzbein Principle diet) called "insulinometer" because this fat goes insulin resistant first. Remove the bad carbs and "insulinometer" reacts first making the belly fat go.



But most people have another fat, which is evenly spread all around the body under the skin. This fat isn't that sensitive to the bad carbs, it is rather calorie-sensitive. Strict low carb, higher-fat diets insure lower calorie intake by lowering appetite but not the South Beach, which limits fat intake while allowing more carbs than the body can automatically handle. At this points, calorie intake is necessary and this is a weak point of any diet.



There's lots of anecdotal evidence that people stalled on diets that don't emphasize high enough fat intake, succeeded on higher-fat diets, for example, see bantadiet.com

Snack ideas

A snack that's good for one of the diets can be completely wrong for another. Low fat dieters snack on fruits and vegetables while low carb dieters go for nuts or cheese.



An example of snacking on the South Beach plan is a celery stick with a wedge of the Laughing Cow cheese. The Zone diet's author Dr. Sears considers a handful of soy nuts an ideal snack.



The latest addition to diet bestsellers, Sonoma Diet, offers 1 slice of whole grain bread with 1 tablespoon of peanut butter for a snack.



The entire Atkins' Fat Fast "emergency" plan (for the metabolically resistant) consists of snacks such as, for example, one ounce of tuna salad with two teaspoons of mayonnaise served in one-quarter of an avocado.

Atkins diet and the Ketogenic diet

The Ketogenic diet has been in clinical use since the 1920s for treatment of childhood epilepsy but it could not make its way to the general public as a weight loss program because it was very hard to comply with. However, for decades, the bodybuilders used it and demonstrated highly reproducible fat loss results, while sparing and increasing the muscle mass.

Dr.Atkins, designing his famous diet, made it user-friendly but for a price. Without professional supervision, Atkins dieters too often stop losing weight at different points of the program. There were mostly two reasons for the failures.

One reason was the illusion (usual for dieters) of complying with diet rules while in fact cheating them. Another one was more serious and diet-specific. It's the fact that Dr. Atkins left the true amount of carbohydrates (the one going into the blood) uncertain. Almost 50% of food protein (unlimited by Dr.Atkins) is being converted into blood glucose. Without taking this amount into account, one can't tell which biochemical pathway will take over -- fat burning or fat storing one. You should also count protein and fat grams -- but their ratios, as well.

Low carb bread on Atkins induction

You know that Atkins inductions phase allows you to have 20 carb grams - and sometimes, you are tempted to use them for something like low carb bread. It's "only" 6 Net carb grams a slice! Why cant I have three of them? I still stay on the wagon!



In a way, why not, just once in a while? But think about it this way:



I packed cup of cut lettuce, including crisphead types, contains 1.15 carb grams and 0.77 g fiber = 0.38 Net carbs - plus vitamins, minerals, antioxydants and other phytonutrients.



A two-cup bowl of Greek salad has 4.95 Net carb grams and lots of beneficial nutrients!



There's no nutritional facts for Orowheat's low-carb bread even on this company's official website but other low carb breads looked very poor in essential nutrients. So you can have you bread but beware - instead of what?