Put On Your Low-Carb Colored Glasses

A lot of people fail on Low-Carb, Keto or Atkins because they lack information. Dr. Jason Fung started asking his patients to fast because when he put them on a low-carb diet, they were coming back and reporting that they had given up bread and started eating pita bread. He would have his patients fast for three days right away— without doing Keto * Low-Carb and getting in ketosis which would make the fast painless.

We need to get to the point that we pick up a package of processed food, gaze at the ingredients list, and right away spot the ingredients that make the food not-for-us. We need to be able to look at a recipe and spot which ingredients are full of carbs. We need to put on our low-carb colored glasses.

The way I learned to do that is that I had an old copy of Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution (1972.) I got it in a thrift shop in Iron Mountain, Michigan, at a time when low-carb and Atkins were considered just an old fad diet. There is a chapter in that book called: The Revolutionary Never-Hungry No-Limit Steak-and-Salad-plus Diet. (There is no chapter number in that edition, but there is an index in the front so you can find the chapter in question.)

This book chapter is essentially a diet sheet, probably based on one Dr. Atkins handed out in his practice. It tells you which foods you can eat in unlimited quantity, which ones you can have in restricted quantity, and which ones were out-of-bounds. I read that chapter multiple times until I had the content almost memorized, still read that chapter from time to time, and therefore I pretty much know what foods I can and can’t have. You need to learn that, too.

I prefer this old Atkins books to newer books because it is very practical for patients that didn’t keep food diaries, consult carbohydrate gram counters, or use modern apps to calculate macronutrient percentages. It doesn’t have you counting your carb grams, which means you are not tempted to give up your salads and your cheese and heavy cream rations to use those carb grams on a tiny portion of a high-carb food you are addicted to.

UNLIMITED FOODS

These are mostly zero-carb foods, and as such are mostly meats, poultry, fish and seafood. Eggs, which do have less than 1 gram of carbs, are also included as an unlimited food. Butter and fats, salt, pepper and spices, and water and carb-free drinks are also unlimited.

LIMITED FOODS

You are allowed the juice of ONE lemon or lime, four ounces a day of any hard, aged cheese, 4 teaspoons of heavy whipping cream.

FORBIDDEN FOODS

These are the foods that made you sick, or fat, or carb-addicted in the first place. Bread, biscuits, candy, cookies, bananas, baked beans, milk, macaroni and potatoes, among other things. You need to learn what these are— by reading the list in the Atkins book, and by reading labels in the grocery store. If that new ‘high-protein’ cereal has more grams of sugar than Froot Loops, we need to give it a pass. 

OTHER RESTRICTIONS

Many people on Keto * Low-Carb have given themselves many other restrictions— they don’t eat soy products, or green beans or alfalfa sprouts because they are ‘legumes’ just like baked beans, or they abhor ‘canola’ rapeseed oil. Sometimes the additional restrictions are based on good science. Other times they are arbitrary— such as not using butter or heavy cream because Paleolithic man didn’t keep dairy animals. Don’t jump in to following a rule just because you heard it on a podcast or read it in a keto online forum. Ask for the peer-reviewed scientific study that backs the new restriction up.

YOUR ASSIGNMENT:

Get out your copy of Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution (1972,) if you don’t have one, buy one. Find the chapter I mentioned above and bookmark it. Every morning for two weeks, start your day by reading this chapter through. You might each day pick out one kind of allowed food to buy and eat— things you already like and something new. And pick out each day one food from the ‘forbidden’ list, look up the carb count to see why it is so bad, and perhaps find substitutes for the ones you love the most.

Have you had any difficulties learning the rules for Keto * Low-Carb? Have you made mistakes and learned better? What makes you stick to it even when it’s hard? Drop me a comment!

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Starting on Keto? It doesn't come in a pill

Recently I was exploring the products in the Dollar General store in Stephenson, Michigan (USA.) I noticed, not far from where the few Atkins diet products were kept, there was a bottle of pills labelled ‘Keto.’

‘Keto’ is not the name of a fast-weight-loss gimmick pill! ‘Keto’ is short for ‘ketogenic’ which is the name for an EATING PLAN (or lifestyle) which puts your body into a state of KETOSIS.

Scientific research shows that the state of ketosis can have health benefits of many kinds. It can help with brain conditions such as epilepsy and Alzheimer’s Disease, it can help diabetics control their blood sugars, it can help in treating cancer and may show promise in reversing diabetic kidney disease. And, oh yeah, it helps people lose weight without feeling hungry or deprived. 

This is the first post in the Starting Keto series. 

The first popular ketogenic eating plan was published by Dr. Robert Atkins in Doctor Atkins Diet Revolution in 1972. It actually advised that people test for ketosis daily! It allowed unlimited amounts of zero-carb foods like meats and fish (and eggs, which aren’t quite zero.) Other allowed foods were limited in quantity, so one could have about 20 grams of carbohydrate per day in the initial phase, called Induction. 

Many ‘keto’ advocates, such as the podcaster Jimmy Moore, started out on Atkins. Many started when the common name of the eating plan was ‘low-carb’ rather than ‘keto.’ 

There are also diets which claim to be low-carb diets but are not. Dr. Atkins warned in his first book about it— there were diets such as the Drinking Man’s Diet which restricted carbs but allowed you 60 grams of carbs a day— enough to keep you OUT of ketosis. Today, there is a diet called the ‘Controlled Carb’ diet, which allows more carbs at ONE MEAL than I can eat in a day. And it expects you to eat three meals a day, plus snacks! If the 60-grams of carb diets are more moderate-carb than low-carb, the ‘Controlled Carb’ is more of a moderate-high carb diet. 

Because ‘keto’ is often seen as a trendy fad diet right now, it’s very important to get your ‘keto’ information from a good source. Don’t pick up stuff from random web sites and blogs (not even this blog.) You need accurate information, or you will end up like the patients of Dr. Jason Fung who were put on low-carb eating plans but in their food diaries had merely replaced their ordinary bread with pita bread. They were still eating plenty of carbs!

YOUR ASSIGNMENT: If you are thinking of staring a keto *low-carb eating plan, or renewing one you tried  before, your first step is to find accurate information. BUY one of the basic Atkins books— either Dr Atkins’ Diet Revolution (1972) or Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution (1992.) Read it cover-to-cover. Pay special attention to the chapter called ‘The Never-Hungry, No-Limit, Steak-and-Salad-plus Diet’ in original Atkins or Chapter 8, ‘The Rules of the Induction Diet’ in new Atkins— these are the chapters that tell you what to eat and what to restrict on your new eating plan. EXTRA CREDIT: Buy and read both books. After the first read, read about a chapter’s worth of one or the other book every day to help keep you inspired. 

How I learned to Control my T2 Diabetic Blood Sugars

I learned that I was diabetic because my mother is thrifty. She was and is ‘addicted’ to constant doctor visits, and she does what she is told. When she had a bad cholesterol reading, she obediently went on a statin drug— and promptly got full-blown diabetes. 

She controlled her diabetes with pills, got bad low-fat-based nutritional advice, and learned to test her blood sugar every morning with a blood sugar meter. When her ‘health-care provider’s’ corporation moved the patients on to a different brand of blood sugar meter, she gave me her old one because, as someone who grew up during the Great Depression, she wasn’t going to take a thing that was worth money and throw it away.

I tested my blood sugar one day just for kicks— it was over 300. Scary! So I went to mom’s ‘health-care provider,’ a nurse-practitioner, and she put me on Metformin— one of the few diabetes pills that doesn’t make you gain weight.

I had already learned about low-carb living, since I’d bought copies of various Atkins diet book from St. Vincent de Paul thrift shops. I KNEW that my weight problem already showed that my body had a problem handling carbohydrates. 

As a child I had read a REALLY old home medical book my mother had, that had two or three whole chapters about diabetes, which was very keen on the discovery of insulin injections which was new when the writer was younger. I learned that diabetes was a disease where you had to ‘give up sugar forever.’ As I grew older and learned about Atkins and low-carb, I knew that carbs in general were the problem, not just sugar and not just ‘added sugar.’

The Metformin did bring my blood sugars down. I tested my blood sugars about 3 times a day when I was ‘being good.’ I was mostly eating less carbs, but my father had recently died and so I felt I had to go out to eat with my mom a lot. We do not have fancy restaurants where we live; going out to eat meant eating hamburgers, fried chicken or a fish fry. Carb city!

I got a second blood sugar pill added. In time I realized that the only way to get good blood sugar readings was to be on strict keto as well as taking the pills. Which I mostly did.

I had a bad kidney test, and was sent to a series of nephrologists (kidney specialists.) After a lot of angst, my most recent and least competent kidney doctor took me off all meds— she said that the Metformin probably damaged my kidneys. She also said that no diet change would help my kidneys, and that I needed to prepare to go on dialysis. 

I was scared to go off my meds, but I found that going off, while staying on strict low-carb/keto, made no difference. My blood sugar was controlled by my diet, not the presence or absence of pills. And my kidney tests improved when I was strict with my diet. My kidney doctor didn’t believe that result, though my ‘health-care provider’ (physician assistant) did notice that. So I let that particular kidney doctor go though I kept the ‘health-care provider’ (because I’m on Medicaid, I can only change ‘health-care providers’ once a year, and they won’t tell me when.)

I read “Dr. Atkins Diabetes Revolution” when it came out, and the two books by Dr. Richard Bernstein, “Dr. Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution” and “The Diabetes Diet.” Both were very helpful in getting me to get my diabetes under control through diet. I noticed, though, as I grew older the low-carb diet I had been doing for years took longer to take effect when I restarted after going off the diet. Carb binges did more damage, and had longer lasting effects. Just a part of getting older.

The final piece of the puzzle was when I read Dr. Jason Fung and Jimmy Moore’s “The Complete Guide to Fasting.” Fasting brought down bad blood sugar numbers quicker than keto alone. And when I started fasting, already being in ketosis, the fasting was easy. In fact, on a keto diet I often skipped mealtime without thinking about it, if I was already busy with something. 

If you have been diagnosed with T2 diabetes, I hope you will learn to control your blood sugar with your (low-carb, ketogenic) diet instead of with pills that only work for a few years for most people. (My mom, in spite of her carb-filled diet, still gets fairly good blood sugars because of her two diabetes drugs— and since she is 91, I’m hoping the drugs will continue to work for the rest of her life.)

If you are lucky enough, you can find a doctor or a nutritionist who regularly encourages patients to eat low-carb. Ask your current ‘health-care provider’ if they know of someone like this. If no luck, ask your friends if they know of anyone. There are even online lists of keto-oriented doctors and medical people. Look it up, there may be someone good you can get to.

I didn’t have such luck. All the doctors and medical people in my area are part of the same big medical corporation and they don’t seem to have or allow keto-oriented dissenters. So I had to work on learning all about keto for myself through books and podcasts. I did notice that once I lost weight and got better blood sugar numbers on a diet that doctors discouraged me from following, they encouraged me to stick with it.

Atkins Diet Creep: Why Atkins may have stopped working for you

The Atkins diet has helped many people, likely saving many lives. But when some people, advocating for a shiny new diet, list their old failed diets, they list Atkins among them.

Of course some of these people probably just ignored the fact that the Atkins diet is not meant to be temporary, but a way of life, and quit. But there are are other reasons why some people think of Atkins as just another diet failure.

The first is what I call ‘diet creep’ and it can happen on any eating plan. If the diet wants you to weigh or measure certain foods, you do it faithfully for a while, and then you eyeball it. You may start eating a little more of that limited food. And then, a month later, your ‘eyeballing’ adds a little more to the amount. So you are ‘cheating’ on the diet without being aware of it. Think of the Atkins restriction of only allowing 4 teaspoons of cream per day. If you stop measuring and start just pouring in a bit of cream, you exceed your total. Or you follow a low-carb recipe that has more cream in it than you are allowed, and perhaps you still put cream in your coffee.

Another source of ‘diet creep’ is built in to the Atkins diet: it’s the levels. You start off in Induction, which is about 10 grams of carbs (which you don’t have to count.) Then, level by level, you add 5 to 8 grams of carbohydrate per level, and you stay on the level a week (or more.) Dr. Atkins wants you to continue to test for ketosis with urine strips (the only ketone testing available at the time.) As long as you remained in ketosis, you would lose weight.

Then, when you hit your goal weight, you would add a little more carbs for your maintenance diet, so you got out of ketosis. And then you went on for years.

Only you would get older, and your body would need to revert to a lower carb level. Or else you went off the diet, went back on, but ate nuts and lower-carb fruits because you remembering eating that on Atkins, and so you were at too high a carb level and you weren’t in ketosis so you were hungry and had strong food cravings and were miserable, and so you either overate carbs and thought you were still doing Atkins, you cheated frequently, or you quit altogether.

A third reason is the fact that your body adapts to any weight loss diet, even a sound low-carb program like Atkins. If you were on Atkins and didn’t lose enough weight, there were things you could have done to make it work better:

1. Go back on strict Induction (of Original Atkins, ideally) with no Atkins bars or products and no ‘Net Carbs.’ Measure your salads. Be sure and eat meat with enough fat in it. Get back to the basic meat-plus-salad meals of the Atkins approach and don’t eat low-carb brownies and cakes, and foods full of almond and coconut flours or more cream or cheese than you are allowed in a day. Only gradually add back more carbs to go on higher levels.
2. Try the Atkins ‘fat fast’ diet. There are two cookbooks for this diet by Dana Carpender, ‘Fat Fast Cookbook’ and ‘Fat Fast Cookbook 2'. It’s only a temporary diet but it helps many. You can even go on and off the ‘fat fast’ diet— each week have a few days on it, and then eat your normal low-carb meals.
3. Try real fasting for longer or shorter periods. Jimmy Moore and Dr. Jason Fung have a book, ‘The Complete Guide to Fasting,’ that will help. Fasting has helped me with my weight and my blood sugars.
4. If you cheat regularly, quit. If you look forward to a weekly cheat every week, find a special low-carb recipe that will help. I like the Coco Cocoa Fat Bombs from the ‘Fat Fast Cookbook.’ You might also try those low-carb brownies and other low-carb goodies as a weekly not-quite-cheat.
5. What about trying the Carnivore diet— a meat only diet— for a while? We know humans can live by meat alone because some did, like the Eskimos of the past, and some Arctic explorers who adopted the Eskimo diet while exploring. Later, experiments were done in a controlled environment on a meat-only diet and the men involved not only survived but thrived. I haven't read any modern books on a Carnivore diet yet, I found 'The Carnivore's Manifesto' on Amazon and might buy it when I have money (after this winter. Home heating is an issue.)

Whether you call it the Atkins diet, or a low-carb diet, or ‘the’ ketogenic diet, these eating lifestyles won’t work for a lifetime of better health unless you actually follow them for a lifetime. Don’t give up the tried and true for a shiny new diet that may not be based on good science. Go back to basics, tweak your diet based on newer research and new knowledge, but stick with it. 

‘Required reading’ for Atkins & low carb dieters:

I used to read a chapter of the original Atkins book every morning to keep me inspired, until I knew the book’s whole contents. It’s what many recovering alcoholics do with their AA Blue Book. I also switch off to other sound low-carb books and listen to Jimmy Moore podcasts.

Misunderstandings about the Atkins diet

I regard the Atkins diet, not as a ‘fad’ diet or a failed diet, but as a good start for living a ketogenic and lowcarb lifestyle. But misunderstandings are rife, not just among those actively hostile to Atkins and lowcarb, but among friends of lowcarb eating as well. Consider this quote:

“By eating large amounts of skim milk, lean meat, and protein bars, Atkins enthusiasts were unintentionally stimulating their insulin to the same degree as before.”

    ~~~~ Dr. Jason Fung, ‘The Obesity Code,’ 2016

OK, I admire Dr. Jason Fung. I think he’s really smart. But either he misunderstands what the Atkins diet is and was, or else he was talking about misunderstandings of the Atkins diet among his patients, and was not clear about that. 

The reality about Atkins is this:

1. Atkins does not allow skim milk or whole milk or any kind of milk. In the original ‘Atkins Diet Revolution’ (1972) he makes kind of a big point of that in the book. He does allow 4 teaspoons a day of heavy cream on Induction, the first level of the diet. That is 1 Tablespoon plus one teaspoon.
2. Atkins does not insist on lean meat. He encourages dieters to be shockingly unafraid of fats in their diet. He warns that eating only the lean meats could make the diet harder to follow.
3. Protein bars? What protein bars? When the original Atkins came out, there were no protein bars of any kind on the market. When the Atkins corporation was formed, they did start to make Atkins bars, both ‘meal replacement’ bars and special treat bars. These are not the same as the commercial ‘protein bar’ found today which have lots of carbs, including sugar. (I would not include Atkins products in my diet since they are less-than-ideal processed foods, though I might ask for them if I were too sick to cook and someone offered to get some for me.)

This statement by Dr. Fung would certainly lead the uninformed reader to misunderstand Atkins, though explaining Atkins was not his point in writing that paragraph in the first place. I would advise ketonians to actually read ‘The Obesity Code’ to understand what was meant. And read the original ‘Atkins Diet Revolution’ and perhaps follow that up with reading Atkins’ later books as well, to get a good grasp on what Atkins is all about.

The modern ketonian who keeps up to date will probably add to the wisdom of the Atkins approach by emphasizing ‘real foods’ not processed foods. But when Atkins was written, alternative foods were not available to all, and Atkins was hard put to get his patients lowering their carbs without sending them in a futile search for grass-fed beef and organic veggies. We can add to the understanding given in the original Atkins diet (and avoid being tempted by modern corporate-Atkins commercials that want to sell Atkins products.)

Recommended reading:

Dr. Jason Fung: 'The Obesity Code'

Dr. Robert Atkins:  'Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution'

Gary Taubes: 'Why We Get Fat and What to Do about It' (currently reading)

The No-Breakfast Plan Experiment, Day 3

I've noticed no particular improvement in health-measurements, in part because I haven't been eating many breakfasts before it started. I am being stricter about things like bulletproof beverages and bone broth in the morning hours--- I would consume if I were very hungry in the mornings, but since I've already retrained my hunger away from morning eating, I haven't gotten much hunger yet.

I haven't had any comments to the effect that any of my blog readers are doing the experiment along with me. But that's OK. If you are trying it, and you haven't been on keto or skipped breakfast before, be generous with yourself and allow yourself some bone broth or even a bulletproof beverage. It can help make the No-Breakfast Plan more do-able at first.

Meal planning on keto, the 'Steak and Salad' diet

I’ve seen ketoblogs that offer ‘meal planning’ services. I guess if you need that help and you can afford it, it wouldn’t hurt to support the keto community by buying ‘meal planning’ services. But it’s better to eventually learn to plan keto meals by yourself, based on what you and your family eat, and on any extra diet restrictions you or your family members need to cope with food allergies and such.

To learn keto meal planning, think back. How did you learn about meal planning for a conventional diet (if you did?) In my family, a typical supper had a meat item, one or two starchy-food items (potatoes, bread, buns, rice, baked beans) and a cooked vegetable. Plus a sugar-based dessert, of course.

In keto diets, we can go back to the ‘Steak and Salad’ menu plan of the original Atkins Induction. Dieters were allowed just about any meat or seafood that didn’t contain carbohydrates, or have carbohydrate breading or buns or have bread or potatoes mixed in (like meatloaf from some recipes.) And for lunch and supper every day, you could have a cup of salad, made from the vegetables on a list in the Atkins diet book of 1972. (Later versions of Atkins added more veggies because of ‘net carbs’, a concept many modern ketonians are rejecting.)

For the ‘Steak’ item: the easiest way is to buy a likely piece of meat— a steak, a pork chop, a couple of chicken thighs, fish— and cook it in a simple way, like cooking a steak in a frying pan. If you don’t know how to cook, this is the easiest way at first. I’ve learned that if I happen to buy a cut of meat I haven’t often cooked before, I can find simple ways to cook it by searching online. I also look at an old, rather basic cookbook I inherited from my mother, which usually has at least one recipe for even odd food items like venison or salsify (a root crop.) As you go on in the keto life, you can purchase a number of fine cookbooks that feature low-carb, keto or paleo recipes, and find new, more complicated ways to cook your meat.

The ‘Salad’ item: I’ve never liked salads. My mom used to make salads, and I ate them (without dressing, as we never had salad dressing at home and I never liked it once I tried it.) But a salad wasn’t my idea of food, and I certainly never in my life ordered a main-dish salad in a restaurant. I wasn’t that eager to signal my dietary virtue that I’d give up a meal for a salad. Plus, back when I was a calorie-counter I knew many main-dish salads had more calories and fat than a Big Mac. 

But once I tried Atkins and got on Induction, I ate my two salads a day and liked it. Since I live alone and my salad items or bagged salad goes bad quick, I often sprout alfalfa and other seeds to use as my salad. I often eat my sprouts right from the sprouter, without any salt! Though of course I know salt isn’t bad for you, especially good kinds of salt like sea salt or Himalayan pink salt. 

The Atkins diet instructions also give a list of low-carb vegetables that can be cooked, but doesn’t say whether a cooked vegetable can replace a daily salad or how much cooked vegetable is allowed at what level of Atkins. The original Atkins isn’t big on making you count carb grams, but I think Induction is normally about 20 grams of carb a day, and other levels add back about 5g carbs each. A standard keto diet today is also about 20 grams of carb. But then, salad veggies and low-carb cooked veggies don’t use up that many grams.

I would suggest that for a meal with more variety, you might try cutting the raw salad in 1/2, and using about a half-cup of an allowed veggie for cooked vegetables. So in that case, you could have ‘Steak’ and ‘Salad’ and ‘Veggie’ as your menu items for supper. 

For an even fancier supper, you can have soup as a ‘first course.’ Broth is allowed, and home-made bone broth is often highly recommended these days. You can add a bit of veggies, or some cream or cheese, to make your broth into a soup. If you can handle extra carbs, you might even add bean sprouts or pea or lentil sprouts to create an analogue to bean, pea or lentil soups. (The hard part is finding the carb grams for pea or lentil sprouts.)

What about desserts? There are lots of keto dessert recipes. But I would caution against making any of them a major part of your keto life. Keto desserts nearly always use up some of your carb grams for the day. Many also use sugar alcohols, which they tell you that you don’t have to count. The problem is, that your body may not have gotten the message. It may metabolize some or all of the sugar alcohols. So, daily desserts should no longer be a thing for you. Get to enjoy the tastes of your other allowed foods for a while. Don’t work on your dessert-crafting skills until you have learned to cook or craft the more basic keto menu items.

So: your meal plan is: 

‘Steak’, 

‘Salad’, 

optional ‘Veggie’, 

optional ‘Soup,’ 

very rarely ‘Dessert.'

But how does that adapt for other meals besides supper?

For lunch, we often pick a lighter meal. Instead of a big piece of meat for the ‘Steak’ menu item, we may add a little chicken or tuna to our salad, or have ‘Soup’ and ‘Salad.’ For breakfast, if we eat breakfast, we often can eat ‘breakfast-y food items like eggs or omelets with bacon or ham. But we don’t have to eat ‘breakfast food’ for breakfast, and if we like breakfast food but are on the No-Breakfast Plan, we can have our low-carb pancakes or our omelets later in the day. Egg based foods, being a protein source, go under the ‘Steak’ part of our menu plan, and cheese or cheese-and-egg items fall in this category as well. Tofu, too. If you eat tofu and know how to make it taste like food and don’t worry about the soy content. 

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The Original Atkins book has a set of suggested meal plans at the beginning of the recipe section. These might also be of help. And there are many cookbook authors--- Dana Carpender, Maria Emmerich--- who have whole books full of ketogenic/low-carb recipes.

Atkins as a ketogenic diet

There is a lot of talk in the keto community about how to show that 'the' keto diet is different from that darn old Atkins. As well as outsiders who say 'that keto diet is just a new name for Atkins,' as if that would be some sort of proof that something was wrong with keto.

The problem is that most people don't even know what Atkins really is. Perhaps they are mislead by the commercials for Atkins brand diet products. But to understand Atkins, go to the source: the original Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution book, published in 1972.

The Atkins approach as outlined in that book is clearly a ketogenic diet. The concept of 'ketones' is introduced on page 12!  Dr. Atkins says, 'Now for a carbohydrate-intolerant Mr Fat to be in ketosis is a signal for rejoicing." He also mentions that when in ketosis, one experiences no hunger.

He defines ketones as little carbon fragments that are the by-products of the incomplete burning of fat, and ketosis as the state in which the person is putting out ketones in the breath or urine.

He also insists that testing for ketones with urine test strips--- the only method available to ketogenic dieters in 1972. He suggests that when your test strips are 'turning purple every day' you can be confident you are in ketosis and so even if you've lost no weight today, you are in fat-burning mode.

In the diet plan--- perhaps a reproduction of the diet sheet he handed out to patients--- unlimited consumption of carb-free meats is allowed, so long as you are hungry. Modern ketonians say to restrict protein. But remember that Dr. Atkins had a practice which included persons who would never read their way through a whole diet book. There were no apps to tell you what percentage of your food intake was in the forms of carbs, protein and fat. And many of his patients had been low-calorie dieting for years, and were used to being hungry all the time when on a diet.

I think Atkins was and is a realistic ketogenic diet for many people. The problem I find is in the levels.

On Atkins, you start out in Induction, where you eat about 20 grams a day of carbs, in the form of two less-than-one-cup salads. Then, each week, you add about 5-8 grams of carbs in various forms--- cooked veggies, nuts, berries.... As long as your test strips are still turning purple, indicating you are still in ketosis, you keep adding until you find a good level for you to keep losing weight. It's only when you hit the lifetime maintanance level that you are allowed enough carbs to get out of ketosis.

Another thing Dr. Atkins book has in common with more modern keto books is that he speaks of many different scientific studies that back up his statements. He doesn't ask us to take his word for it!

One different thing about about this earliest Atkins diet book is that it was written at a time when there were no Atkins products on the market. There were no food items claiming to be low-carb in the grocery store. The early Atkins dieter had to shop in regular grocery stores and eat regular, commonly available food. And the concept of 'Net Carbs' had not been introduced, so people were reducing their total carbs, and not getting out of ketosis by consuming too much coconut or almond flours.

Atkins is, so far as I am aware, the first low-carb diet that taught about ketosis, and insisted that dieters test for it. Where more modern keto diet books are less readily available, or where a dieter lacks the ability to buy such books online or lacks the funds, snagging a copy of the original Atkins book is a good place to start learning about the keto diet. I've been re-reading the book for years, since I've found that when re-starting my diet after a lapse, reading a bit from the book daily helped me to stay on track. And the recipes in that original book are great!

Why are people ashamed of Atkins, or insisting that people on keto be ashamed of it? It's like asking that people with infections be ashamed of taking penicillin, since that is an old-fashioned drug these days. Should we demand a more modern medicine that is trendy, but won't solve our problem? I think not. Atkins is a good basic step --- a keto diet for the common person who is not a medical research geek. Though it certainly turned ME into a medical research geek by the good example Dr. Atkins gave in his book.

Low-Carb Diet: How to Do it Right

Updated 9/26/18

I knew the low-carb diet had finally gone mainstream when General Hospital mob boss Julian Jerome stopped eating carbs. It was about time. Low-carb first became part of American diet culture in 1972 when Dr. Robert Atkins' book, 'Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution' made the best-seller lists. Atkins created the diet for himself, based on things he'd read in medical journal articles, but the medical establishment called him a heretic for not promoting a calorie counting or low-fat approach--- which is also known in medical journal articles as a 'semi-starvation diet.'

Low-carb, also called ketogenic, diets are different from temporary weight loss diets. You have to change your eating patterns for life to reap the benefits.

The problem with low-carb is that everyone has heard of it but precious few people know how to do it. Look at this scene, which takes place at a buffet:

Husband: Look at those bread rolls! Don't they look great?
Wife: We can't have them, dear. We are eating low-carb now, remember?
Husband: Then let's have these buttermilk biscuits, then. Or that corn bread.
Wife: We can't have those, either. They are bread, too. Sort of.
Husband: Well, what can we eat, then?
Wife: Well, how about this mashed potatoes? It's a vegetable. Surely no diet can restrict our vegetables? And this fruit salad--- I'm sure we can have as much fruit as we like.
Husband: What about this macaroni and cheese?
Wife: Well, it's got pasta, but pasta isn't bread. And cheese is a low-carb diet food--- go for it!

This, as you may have guessed, is NOT the way to do low-carb. In order to do it right, you have to get a sound low-carb diet book with good instructions on how foods fit in to the low-carb eating plan. In this plan, there are three classes of foods:

1. Foods to eat freely: meats (beef, pork, lamb, venison, chicken, turkey), fish and seafood (salmon, tuna, cod, smelt, perch, shrimp--- all kinds except clams, scallops and oysters), eggs, mayonnaise, butter, coconut oil, olive oil.
2.  Foods to ration: salads, non-starchy vegetables, heavy whipping cream, cheese, nut products such as almond flour, coconut flour. (A good low-carb diet plan will tell you how much of each you are allowed.)
3. Foods you may not eat: bananas, figs, candy, cake, bread, muffins, pasta, milk, pancakes, corn, cornstarch, sugar, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, jam, honey, potatoes, raisins, sweet potatoes, yams, sweetened yogurt.

The low-carb diet is a trade-off. There are some foods you just cannot eat at all--- unlike the calorie-counting approach where you can have tiny portions of such food. In exchange, there are foods you can eat without restrictions.

When you are consuming no more than 10 or 20 grams of carbohydrate per day, your metabolism changes. It stops running on glucose--- sugar--- and starts running on ketones. Ketones result when your body is running on fat instead of sugar. It's very healthful, not just for weight loss but for many other conditions. A ketogenic (ketone producing) diet has been used to treat epilepsy for decades, and helps in diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer's disease, autism, kidney disease, and other conditions. Read 'Keto Clarity' for more information, much of it contributed by doctors.

When choosing your Basic Diet Book for your eating plan, beware of these things: first, some 'low-carb' diets are not low carb. They just reduce your carbs a little. So you don't get the benefits of a low-carb/ketogenic diet.

Also, the Atkins approach has steps. You start at a healthy 10 or so grams of carbs, and then after two weeks you start adding more carbs back. This triggers your food cravings for carb foods and can lead to food binges on carb foods. This is why people go off Atkins and swear it didn't work for them. Advice: ignore the instructions for the steps, except that if you are healthy you might try the first one or two addition of 5 more carb grams, which you can use on nuts or more veggies or certain fruits (berries, mostly). Don't go full on for adding back carbs if you want to keep losing weight and gaining in health.

The 'Carbohydrate Addicts Diet' is a plan to avoid. On it, you eat two meals a day of low-carb food, and one reward meal in which you can eat any foods you like, so long as you finish the meal within one hour. This plan doesn't work on some people at all, and with others it works initially but then quits working. It can lead to food binges on carb-foods. Remember, for most people who go on diets, carb foods are like alcohol is to an alcoholic. They must be avoided.

The Paleo diet is NOT a low-carb ketogenic diet. It does not restrict fruit consumption, for example. The book Neanderthin is a more low-carb approach to the Paleo diet, but even there you will have to get another eating plan to provide your carb restriction plan. It adds more restrictions to the diet--- you will have to give up cream, butter and cheese--- but some people like a low-carb Paleo approach. As long as you are keeping your carbs low enough, the Paleo approach may be right for you.

Some recommended diet plan books:
Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution
The Diabetes Diet
Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It


How to use the diet plan books: Buy one or more of the books above. Everyone should probably have a copy of the original Atkins book, even if your eating plan is based on The Diabetes Diet. Read them cover to cover. Find the section of the book that is the 'diet sheet' --- that sums up what foods you can and can't eat. Make two copies of it. Keep one in your billfold or purse. Put the other up on the refrigerator or somewhere else handy in the kitchen. You can put it on the inside of a cupboard door if you like.

There are also videos at KetoWhiteBoard.info which are by health podcaster Jimmy Moore, author of Keto Clarity. They are highly recommended. And on the sidebar of this blog there are links to the Jimmy Moore podcasts, including Livin' La Vida Low-Carb, which will also help you get informed.

Make a point of reading in your diet plan book for ten minutes every day. This will keep your enthusiasm up, and it will help you remember all the things you need to know about your new diet.

You will also need other books for your low-carb/ketogenic lifestyle. Books like Keto Clarity which show you the benefits of the diet. Recipe books, like those by Dana Carpender.  But you don't need all that to start with. I started out with just the original Atkins book which I bought at a St. Vincent de Paul thrift shop, which contains a recipe section in the back. Later, I added an early Atkins recipe book.

Have you ever tried Atkins or another low-carb diet plan? Did you commit to it as a lifelong eating plan? Did you try it for weight loss or for one of the other health benefits? Are you still on it? Do you think it helps you?

Broth of Life -- bone broth from a powder

I love bone broth, and I know it's good for me. I can even have a cup of bone broth when I'm fasting (according to The Complete Book of Fasting.) I really try to have a cup of bone broth every day.

But--- making a batch at home takes two days. And it's hard to buy soup bones around here. And sometimes, as in last year when I was sick for about a month, I just can't do it.

When I was visiting Bob Martin's blog I saw an ad for Broth of Life dehydrated organic bone broth. I went to Amazon.com to purchase it. And saw it was 31.99 for a 1.6 ounce jar. But I bought it anyway, in the chicken broth. You can also get lamb or beef broth.

When I got it home and made my first cup, it was bland and watery, even though I added Himalayan pink salt (1/4 teaspoon.) And the powder did not dissolve all the way. So--- I read the directions. It said one teaspoon of the broth powder to 100 ml of water. So I tried measuring the water.

100 ml isn't much. I poured out 200 ml and turned  the measuring cup around to find it was only 3/4 of a cup. So I guess 1 teaspoon is not enough for a full cup.

Because of the undissolved powder bits this morning I soaked the broth powder in the water for 15 minutes, then heated in the microwave. Even though I stirred a lot, there were still a few undissolved bits. Tomorrow I think that I will soak it in HOT water for 15 minutes and see how this goes. But the 1/4 cup of salt was the right amount. A little less than the sodium amount in grocery store broth powder. But it tasted salty enough.

Even so, Broth of Life has its place. What if I get sick again? The broth powder is expensive but at least it isn't too much of a trial to make a cup of broth with it.

I think homemade bone broth is better, though. I just used up the last quart of bone broth I had in my freezer so it's time to make more.  But when I run out of my Broth of Life I'm sure I will buy another jar of it.

NOTE: it is recommended by many authorities, when you are first going on keto or on Atkins Induction, or when you are fasting, if you don't feel that great (keto flu) you should drink a cup of broth. But grocery store broth powder is dreadful, full of additives you don't want. Better to get Broth of Life, or make your own.

Making Atkins Diet Revolution Rolls in a Muffin Top Pan

One of the earliest bread-substitutes low-carbers have used is what Dr. Robert Atkins called "Diet Revolution Rolls." The recipe is actually older than that. It's also in the Settlement Cook Book as 'Diabetic Bread.' That book dates from about the 1940s.

The secret of making it is to use a muffin top pan to make it. A picture of one of mine is illustrated. I have two like this one.

This is a Yorkshire pudding pan. It is pretty much interchangeable with a muffin top pan. They are available in different sizes.

Diet Revolution Rolls

3 eggs, separated
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
3 tablespoons of cottage cheese
1 package of sugar-free, carb-free sweetener (VERY optional)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F. Separate eggs. Beat egg whites with cream of tartar until stiff peaks form. Mix other ingredients with yolks. Carefully fold egg whites into egg yolk mixture.

Spray your muffin top pan(s) with olive oil pan spray. Put about 1/2 teaspoon of a good oil (olive oil or MCT oil) into each depression in the pan. Fill each pan with equal amount of batter. Bake for about an hour.

from Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution page 225
Carbs per serving (6 per recipe) .5
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Separating Eggs

I'm old enough to remember when women learned to separate eggs as a basic kitchen skill. NOT ONE SPECK of the yolk can get in to your whites. I usually separate eggs by using the eggshell of the eggs, but using an egg separator is better. My mom got her egg separator from some business that was giving them away, with the business's ad printed on it, but they don't do that these days. I bought one at a store somewhere. Here is what mine looks like:

You have to beat the egg white for minutes, not seconds. If you don't have one of those expensive stand mixers, your arm will get tired. I use a regular electric mixer. I guess you could beat the eggs by hand with a whisk if you are very healthy and can't compel your husband or kids to do it for you. ;)

There are loads of YouTube videos that show you how to make Atkins Diet Revolution Rolls. Before you try making your own, maybe you should watch a few. Here is one:



I have made these rolls in the past, will probably do so again, but I hate separating eggs. At least once I got that fatal speck of yolk into the white and the whites wouldn't whip up. I baked them anyway. They were not great.

I have read a recipe called 'cloud bread' which mostly just stretches the batter from 6 rolls to 12. I've made these, they are flatter but good. I use one 'roll' for the top of my sandwich and another for the bottom.

Cucumber sandwich

Take 2 pieces of the rolls out of the fridge. Put mayonnaise (homemade is best) on both sides. Salt the bottom piece (these rolls are salt-free, so bland). I put seaweed flakes on the bottom as well--- I love seaweed. Put cucumber slices on the bottom piece. Cover bottom with top, eat and enjoy.

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The Sad Truth 

I have made these rolls from time to time for years. But I'm lazy when it comes to separating eggs. Recently I have been working on no-egg-separating rolls, which I will be sharing on this blog soon. But this recipe is a low-carber's staple, and so I thought it best to share it first.

Dr. Atkins Diet Cook Book, 1974

One of my favorite Atkins cookbooks is this, the first one. It was written in 1974 by Fran Gare and Helen Monica. The reason I like it so much is that unlike later Atkins books, it doesn't call for Atkins brand ingredients that are no longer available and were never available where I live. It has to use real food!

It contains several recipes I use a lot. There is the cheese pancakes on page 81. I have a notecard at that page where I cut the recipe down from 6 servings to a single serving. I've tried a lot of low-carb pancakes but this is pretty good.

Another recipe I use is the baked fish loaf on page 140. Again I've cut down the recipe from 6 servings to single serving. My version uses a can of tuna (packed in olive oil, from WalMart) as the fish. It's kind of a replacement for my mom's carby tuna casserole. Sometimes I add a few canned mushroom pieces and a spoonful of frozen peas to the mix to make it more Just Like Mom's.

It also has, on page 238, a hot chocolate recipe that I based my own, much better hot chocolate recipe on.

There are other recipes I haven't yet tried or tried only once. Such as: Mock Potato Dumplings, Devilled Salmon Eggs, Beef Stroganoff, Moussaka, Pasta, Mock Macaroni and Cheese, Brownies, Peanut Butter cookies, several flavors of ice cream.....

The low-carb world has changed a lot since this book came out. But there are a lot of things to try in here. You may have to adapt to get rid of ingredients we no longer think are healthy, such as soya powder. But there is a world of things to try in this book. It's also kind of a must-have for a really COMPLETE low-carb cookbook collection.

How do you get a copy since it is so long out of print? Well, I got mine poking around in used bookstores and thrift shops, but that was a few decades ago. Today I'd look at Amazon.com and Ebay for a copy at a good price. I've seen one at over $100 dollars. Don't pay that! I've ALSO seen copies at around $3. Keep checking the used book sources---NOT the rare book ones, they will be overpriced.

Keeping yourself motivated on a keto diet

Sometimes the keto diet life is hard. Some days I'd rather be able to go out to a restaurant or fast food for breakfast, or pour myself a bowl of cereal. Some days I'm just not in the mood to cook, and clean up, and cook some more.

I need to stay motivated to stick to the diet. One thing that I have learned helps is each day I read a little from a low-carb diet book. It helps me feel like the diet really will work if I stick to it. And it helps me think of the diet as more than just a set of restrictions that make my life harder.

I started doing this when I first tried the Atkins Diet, years ago after having bought the book 'Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution' at a Goodwill store. I still do it today. I have loads more low-carb diet books to choose from. Like 'Keto Clarity' by Jimmy Moore.

Now we have a new motivator: podcasts! Jimmy Moore has podcasts five days a week to listen to--- they can be found in my blog list in the sidebar.

Some days, like today, I get distracted. I'm not feeling well, I'm behind on doing the laundry and dishes, one of the barn cats is refusing to mother her week-old kittens.... My life is pretty stressed today.

But I listened to a fresh Jimmy Moore podcast, I heated up a mug of bone broth, and I got started. I may not LIKE being on Keto today, but I can handle it. Maybe I'll even zip over to the grocery store for something meaty for my evening meal today.

How gluconeogenesis can be a low-carber's problem

In the original Atkins diet book, unlimited amounts of meat were allowed. And for younger dieters this could be a help. Any time you were hungry you could eat something.

But lots of us have grown up since then. And found that Atkins doesn't work as well for us as it used to. Why? Gluconeogenesis.

Gluco
Neo
Genesis

What is that? It comes from the fact that when you aren't eating sugars any more, and are staying low-carb, your body can make its own sugar out of the protein you are consuming. So if you eat too much protein, that can give you all the problems that come with eating sugar. Because your body is turning it in to sugar.

Jimmy Moore says that a good keto diet is: high in (healthy) fats, moderate in protein, low in carbs. Protein isn't a health food! It is actually healthy fats such as grass-fed butters, coconut oils and olive oils that we should be eating more of. (And scientific research backs up this claim.)

But if you cut back on protein--- eat a smaller steak--- won't you be hungry? Well, you have to make sure you are getting enough fat. You can't do low fat and low carb at the same time, it's not healthy.

Fasting and intermittent fasting are one way to help with gluconeogenesis. I don't have much appetite in the morning anyway. So I do Intermittent Fasting and don't eat in the morning at all. If I don't eat anything for breakfast, my body can't turn the protein I didn't eat into sugar.

Morning is also when Type 2 diabetics like me have the highest blood sugars. So not eating at this time when I'm not hungry anyway helps get those morning numbers down.

And not eating in the morning means that I'm only getting the amount of protein from my lunch and/or dinner, and so that brings down my protein total naturally.

It's kind of sad, though. When I first tried Atkins I was attracted by the fact that I could eat something at any time that I was hungry. But now that I am older and diabetic, life is tougher. I have to say no to eating sometimes, and I have to say no to larger portions. But it's the only way I have found to keep my diabetes problems under control.
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My stuff.
Weight: 197
I did my IF until noon. Ate a small helping of carb foods because I had to go to the store and couldn't resist temptation. At least I kept the cheat smaller than usual.

My keto diet experiences

My first experience with a keto diet was sometime in the 1990s when I picked up a copy of Dr. Atkins' first diet book in a Goodwill store in Iron Mountain, Michigan.

I read the book cover to cover and tried the diet. I was so surprised how easy it was to lose weight! The Atkins diet, at least in the Induction Phase, is ketogenic. Dr. Atkins recommended that you run out and buy ketone test strips and test your urine for ketones. That way you could tell if your body had shifted over into fat-burning mode.

After that point I started purchasing any diet book I could find that was low-carb or ketogenic in nature. I read all the info in the books, especially if they referenced scientific studies. And I tried low-carb recipes from a lot of different books.

I lost some weight on Atkins. But in time I stopped doing it. The reason was that it was just hard to find low-carb food you didn't have to cook from scratch. And I had to give up going out to restaurants. There were no restaurants in my area that had low-carb items. And my family members liked to take me out to eat.

I went back on Atkins at some point. I think I was on Atkins for a full year when my father died. But I had to go off the diet at that time because I was eating out with my mother, or eating at mom's house.

At some point, my mother gave me her old blood sugar meter when she got a new one from her doctor. I tried it and found out I had diabetes. My mom's nurse-practitioner put me on Metformin. Later another drug--- I think Actos--- was added.

I found that my blood sugar was only staying under control when I was ALSO doing low-carb. Since the nurse-practitioner didn't care what my diet was, that was working out. Except I wasn't losing weight much, since I was older, menopausal, and diabetic. I was more concerned with blood sugar numbers than weight at this point.

I got a bad number on a kidney test and so had to go to a kidney doctor. And then I had to apply for Medicaid and I had to get a new kidney doctor and new doctor-substitute. One of my kidney doctors took me off all my drugs saying they caused the problem. So I really had to go low-carb. A kidney doctor messed me up by demanding I go on a government approved diet (DASH diet) that did nothing to address my carbohydrate problems. But when I got worse blood sugar numbers she said I could do what worked for me.

I noticed that the more I stuck to my diet, the better my kidney tests were. My most recent kidney doctor told me that diet had no effect on kidney disease. Since I had recently read a medical journal article that said otherwise, and heard about others, she became my former kidney doctor.

I had been collecting cookbooks by Dana Carpender for some time by then. She came out with a new one with Jimmy Moore as co-author. That's how I learned about Jimmy Moore's health podcasts. And when he came out with The Complete Guide to Fasting with Dr. Jason Fung, a kidney doctor (nephrologist), I had to buy a copy.

I feel that I am getting very well read on the science behind ketogenic diets and behind fasting. But the follow-through is hard. I still live alone, don't have a dishwasher or running water in the kitchen sink, and have to drive to another state for a grocery store with good selection.

And so, this blog. I figure if I become a health blogger I will be more motivated to stick to my keto and fasting plan. And if I can help other people to become informed or inspired, that's a bonus. Since I am a Christian (Catholic flavor) I think helping others is cool. So, if I can help you--- maybe answer a question or something--- I will.

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My personal stuff.
On Sept 23, my weight was 199 pounds. (My all-time high was about 255 pounds.) My blood sugars, particularly in the morning, have been BAD. (Not saying how bad.) My blood sugar this morning was still BAD, but was significantly down from the 300+ blood sugars I have been getting in the morning. I have been doing Intermittent Fasting in the mornings, eating only after 11am. I'm trying to hold off until 12 noon every day, and stop eating after 6pm.

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Some books mentioned in this post.