Another Attempt at Carb Reduction

I’m fairly sure I have lost a little weight this week but it’s not much (less than a pound) and I am going out for a meal tomorrow night so that could potentially set me back. Even though the Paleo / Primal diet is not necessarily a low carb diet, when I read about the diet in relation to weight loss the message seems clear – it’s all about insulin and thus carbohydrate intake. Over the last few weeks I have made dramatic improvements to my diet – cutting out entire groups if food with only a few very minor exceptions and yet I have lost very little weight so far. Even though fat loss is a secondary concern – I still would like to drop the bulk of my excess fat in time for the summer!

It is possible that I am insilun resistant. I may also have unlucky genetics and not have a very good metabolism. I feel as though I want to find out for sure by lowering carbs to a low enough point to force my body into burning fat and seeing if the fat loss improves further. It should do but I have never managed to get the carbs low enough to try it properly.

Enter Atkins…

One of the podcasts I listen to is by Jimmy Moore who lost over 180lbs on the Atkins diet. His podcast is recommended by many Paleo people which is how I found it. Listening to his podcast over the last few weeks has made me interested in giving the Atkins diet (which would still be Paleo in the initial phases) a try. This is tough for me to think about as I have always held an extremely negative view of atkins, thinking of it as a harmful short-term crash diet. However, rather than just pass judgement on something that I know absolutely nothing about, I decided to actually read the book – so I did!

I can see where my skepticism and misinformation came from. I have heard horror stories of people who feel awful, have headaches, no energy, bad breath and basically feel so terrible that they cannot stick to it more than a few days. I also was under the impression that the carbs were so low that you could not possibly get enough nutrients from your food. Now that I have read the book, I can see where these ideas come from and I also feel a lot better about trying it.

The 4 Phases of Atkins

One thing I never realised is that Atkins is a diet which is separated into phases. The most restrictive one is the first phase, known as induction. For most people this is only for 2 weeks and the idea is to force your body into switching its primary fuel source from glucose to fat. It is in this phase that most people have difficulty but this 2 week induction is just that – an induction and it is not the whole diet. Also, I don’t actually think I’d experience many of the symptoms.

The worst symptoms that I hear about are those people having energy crashes and headaches. This comes not from the lack of carbs as such, but from withdrawl symptoms from the sugar. Most people have radically high levels of sugar in their diets and are addicted to it and cutting it out completeltey in all forms (this diet is super-duper strict; absolutely no sugar of any kind allowed) will trigger withdrawls. I’ve already done that – even before I started on Paleo per-se, I started to drop my sugar and I had a headache for 3 days. That was over a month ago and now I very rarely eat sugar of any kind so I don’t see this being a problem for me.

Secondly, some people experience tiredness and lethargy but this is often attributed to a lack of nutrients in the diet. Atkins expresses the importance of getting the carbs from vegetables. (No fruit in the induction phase). I have already done a food plan for the first few days to see just what I’d be able to eat for 20g carbs and I was surprised to find that I struggled to use up all 20g! All the time I have been on Paleo I have been averaging around 70-80g a day but they have come from not just vegetables but also fruits & starches such as potatoes. With those removed completely, my first few days on Atkins will increase my vegetable intake evn higher than it has been so far! This seems like a good thing to me! I’ll supplement with a multi-vitamin to be sure.

The other phases increase the carb count slowly, introduce additional food groups one by one such as starchy vegetables such as carrots, parsnips etc, berries, nuts & seeds, legumes and finally grains. I would most likely not opt for grains as of course they are not Paleo.

Will This Be Easy?

Because I have been doing Paleo for almost 6 weeks now, I have a bunch of recipes that already fit Atkins, I have ditched most of the crap from my kitchen and restocked it with lots of healthy foods. I already keep fresh salads, vegetables, eggs and meat hanging around for snacks if I need them. I have already lowered my carb intake and ditched the sugar. This is only a relatively minor change from what I am already doing.

The most difficult aspect that I can foresee would be eating around other people. When I am home alone and doing my own thing I am 100% in control of my food and I don’t have to defend or justify my food choices to anybody else. Sometimes I cook for my partner but she wants to lose weight also so she may eat what I prepare or she can just fend for herself heh! If the induction phase lasts just two weeks I will be unsociable for two weeks and not go out for meals. I don’t want to add any additional difficulty to the most restrictive phase.

Currently if I eat out or go to somebody else’s house, I eat potato which allows for a fairly ‘normal’ looking meal and it would not be obvious that I was eating radically differently to most people. This is not going to be an option on Atkins. Potatoes are absolutely not allowed in the induction phase and in later phases they can only be introduced much later down the line after other food groups such as nuts & berries.

After that, I am not sure what I will do if I am going round a friends house for dinner for example. The biggest problem that I can see with this diet from other people’s viewpoint is that carbs make a very cheap filler for expensive meat. I can’t go to a friend and demand to eat steak & fresh salad when a pasta bake or risotto is much cheaper. Unfortunately one single meal that is high in carbs can set back the process by upto a week. I will have to take each day as it comes and just see what happens. But first, I need to get through induction!

I’ll be doing my 6th weekly weigh in on Monday and I will also re-do all measurements at this time and some additional ones such as thigh as well. The Atkins-Paleo experiment starts Monday.