Started Atkins

Today was the day that I went on the induction phase of the Atkins Nutritional Approach (fancy word for “diet”).

I have been overweight for a number of years — probably since about junior high. At my worst, I was up around the 290lb range. Given my family history of lovely things like diabetes, I figured I should do something about it while I’m still young enough to do it effectively. Last year, I undertook my own approach — basically eat less, excercise more. I had gotten down as low as 240lb and dropped about 4-6 inches off my waist. Then I hit a wall with the diet and exercise and stopped doing both. I realized that I needed help.

For me, the Atkins approach makes lots of sense. The induction phase basically changes your metabolism from burning the sugar in the food you consume (i.e. carbohydrates) to burning your stored fat (i.e. ketosis). During this phase, you can basically consume all the eggs, meat, fish, and foul you want. None of this stuff has carbs. You get your carbs from nutrient-dense veggies, some of which aren’t allowed during induction. However, you can’t consume any fruit, sugar, bread, or anything else containing large amounts of carbs. You also can’t have any caffiene or aspartame-based sweetners–no Diet Vanilla Coke and no caffinated coffee.

Once you’ve moved along into ketosis and have been in ketosis for a long time–long enough to lose a good chunk of weight, then you start slowly adding carbs back in until you figure out how many carbs you can eat and still lose weight. The last few pounds get harder and harder to take off. At the end of it, you’ll know how many carbs to eat a day to maintain the weight.

When I weighed this morning, I weighed 252lb. When I’ve made it through this eating plan, I hope to be below 200, maybe about 180-185. We’ll see.