The New Atkins Made Easy (2 page)

• 
It's easy to stick with Atkins.
The process of gradually reintroducing carbohydrate foods while continuing to shed pounds (and, later, maintaining weight loss) is the key to lasting success with
Atkins. It's why so many people consider themselves “Atkins loyalists” who have made the program part of their lifestyle.

• 
Atkins is good for your health.
Study after study shows that eating a low-carb diet improves your cholesterol profile and blood sugar levels, as well as other health markers. Following a low-carb lifestyle can also reverse metabolic syndrome and even type 2 diabetes.

I spent the first ten years of my nutrition career counseling thousands of patients in doctors' offices in the New York City area on diet and lifestyle changes. In my next twenty years as a nutritionist I've been employed in one capacity or another by Atkins. For five years at the Atkins Center I worked one-on-one with thousands of patients to help them slim down and deal with health problems. In the next fifteen years at Atkins Nutritionals, I've observed and advised many thousands of members of the Atkins Community online in their weight control efforts. I think it's fair to say that when it comes to eating habits and weight reduction, I've seen and heard it all. Now I'm excited at the opportunity to be your coach as you transform yourself into the new you. And, as always, you can communicate with me through my blog on atkins.com.

If you're new to Atkins, welcome aboard. And if this is not the first time you've embarked on the program, I promise that you'll find it easier than before. In either case, I'll repeat my original promise: try Atkins and you
will
lose weight.

All you have to lose are those pesky extra pounds. But what you have to gain is huge: for starters, a slimmer figure, renewed energy, confidence, a sense of being in control, and self-respect—and maybe
even a whole new wardrobe. Plus stay with Atkins once you banish your extra pounds and you'll enjoy
permanent
weight control and enhanced health. Your new way of eating will let the new you emerge!

Remember, I'll be with you every step of the way. Now turn the page and let's get down to business.

N
ow that you know how easy, effective, and delicious Atkins is, I'm sure you're eager to get going ASAP, but hold your horses for just a moment. To get fabulous results and get them fast, you need to understand a few basics about how your body turns food into energy—the process called metabolism—and how that impacts weight loss. Some of that energy is used immediately, and the rest is stored. Whether you're brushing your teeth or running to catch a bus, your body draws on that stored energy. In addition to these conscious actions, countless other functions, including breathing, pumping blood through your body, digestion, and powering your brain cells, also call on your energy stores.

Carbohydrate and fat are the body's two sources of fuel. A low-fat diet is inevitably high in carbs, and when you take in more carbs than your body needs, it stores excess carbs as fat. Yes, sugar and other carbs convert to fat! That's one reason it's so hard to lose weight and keep it off on a low-fat diet. You have to cut way back on calories or you'll never burn your body fat. As a result, you're famished much of the time, and not many people can tolerate that for long. If you've tried low-fat weight-loss diets in the past, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

However, if you restrict carbs sufficiently, as you do on Atkins, your body switches to its backup fuel, fat. Doing Atkins rebalances the ratio of fat to carbohydrate, transforming your metabolism from one that
stores
fat to one that
burns
fat. And when you're burning both dietary and body fat, you lose weight. That's the Atkins paradox: you can eat more fat, but that doesn't make you fat. In fact, as long as you control your carb intake, eating delicious fatty foods such as avocado and olive oil enables you to slim down. And once you reach a good weight for your height, build, and age, this metabolic shift will continue to keep you slim. But the good news doesn't end there: burning fat can also usually stop metabolic syndrome, aka prediabetes, in its tracks, and can even reverse type 2 diabetes.

To understand how shifting to a fat metabolism results in weight loss, it helps to compare your body to a hybrid car. When the electricity stored in the engine battery is used up, the car automatically switches over to burning gasoline. Likewise, your body always burns carbs before fat for energy. But when the carbs (in the form of blood sugar) are used up, your body switches over to burning fat for energy. This dual-fuel metabolism enabled our ancient ancestors to survive when food was scarce. But today, because most of us eat too much—or at least too many carbs—there's rarely or never a need to use our backup fuel.

So how do you help your body make the switch? Significantly cut back on your carb intake, and bingo—your fat metabolism kicks in. This is the essence of the Atkins Diet: control carbs to burn fat. If this sounds like hocus-pocus, remember that a large and ever-growing body of scientific research supports not just the efficacy of the low-carb approach, but also its safety. For more on the fat-burning metabolism and the research that supports it, see the Afterword, written by Jeff S. Volek, Ph.D., R.D., on page 297.

Have you ever eaten a high-carb meal—think about Thanksgiving dinner—only to find yourself craving another slice of pumpkin pie topped with vanilla ice cream a few hours later? Or maybe you chow down on a breakfast of cold cereal (often containing a lot of added sugar) and milk (full of natural sugar), a glass of OJ (liquid sugar), and a cup of coffee or tea with a few more teaspoons of sugar. This high-carb trifecta quickly boosts your blood sugar level, stimulating the release of insulin to transport the sugar to your body's cells. This perfectly normal process keeps your blood sugar level within a safe range.

If you're young, fit, and have no predisposition to blood sugar issues, you may be able to get away with eating this way for years. (Or not—sad to say, more and more children are developing high blood sugar and even type 2 diabetes.) If insulin overcompensates, after a couple of hours your blood sugar level drops quickly and precipitously. You feel sleepy, jittery, or unable to concentrate. Your body's response to this energy drain is to crave another high-sugar, high-starch, energy-boosting meal or snack. Welcome to the blood sugar roller coaster.

So you give in and have another sweetened cup of coffee or tea to rev up your engine, perhaps accompanied by a doughnut or muffin. And the process starts all over again! You can see why I compare these rapid shifts between energy highs and lows to a roller-coaster ride. But getting off the roller coaster is easy—and I suspect you already know how. By controlling your carb intake and eating high-fiber carb foods with proteins and fats, you smooth out the wild swings and keep your blood sugar on an even keel. By minimizing periods of low blood sugar, which triggers hunger for all the wrong foods, you'll find it easy to stay in control and not overeat. And, thanks to this newfound sense of control, you begin to shed pounds. That's why Atkins is so effective.

Eating processed foods full of sugar hurts you in two ways. First, obviously, you're adding empty carbs to your diet. And you're probably also not eating enough foods full of the vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and fiber that help keep you healthy. We've long known that sugar intake promotes tooth decay and obesity, but study after study also directly links the intake of excess sugar to an increased risk for cancer, diabetes, gastrointestinal problems, eye diseases, osteoporosis, coronary heart disease, and other inflammatory diseases. Excess sugar also appears to affect the brain and has been implicated in poor memory formation, learning disabilities, depression, and even dementia. As you zero in on your goal weight, reducing your risk for all these conditions is also a powerful motivator for continuing to avoid added sugar whenever possible. Sidebars throughout this book detail the dangers of added sugar in all its forms and point out where it lurks and what to substitute for it.

You know fat when you see it. Butter? Check. Olive oil? Check. Ditto with protein, although animal protein such as chicken, salmon, and the like may spring to mind before lentils, tofu, and other vegetable sources. But I suspect some of you may be scratching your head and saying, “So what are carbs anyway?” Here's what you need to know:

• Carbs are found in all plant foods, including grains, cereals, potatoes, bread, and pasta. And everyone knows that sugar, which comes from plants, is packed with carbs. But
all
vegetables, from arugula to zucchini, and
all
fruits are also carb foods.

• Carb counts of different foods vary enormously. Berries are relatively low in carbs, for example, while bananas are at the other end of the spectrum. Likewise, salad greens barely register on
the carb scale, but potatoes and other starchy veggies such as sweet peas are much higher in carbs.

• Lettuce, spinach, and other leafy greens, along with dozens of other low-carb vegetables—we call them “foundation vegetables” to distinguish them from starchy vegetables—make up most of your initial carb intake on the Atkins Diet. (See
page 38
for more details.)

• The amount of carbs (as well as of protein and fat) in any food is measured in grams.

• Usually the higher the number of grams of carbs per serving, the faster and greater the impact on your blood sugar.

• Removing the fiber from food, as is the case in most fruit juice and in white flour and other refined grain products, effectively raises the impact on blood sugar. It's preferable to eat whole fruit and brown rice and other whole grains.