Ugh.
Starts out fair. I’m nauseas from the change in my diet. I have no appetite whatsoever, which normally would be a good thing…except here in Atkins land, where the goal is 2000 calories and 20g. carbs/day.
Finally get up, after Keith brings me a breakfast of bacon and eggs (again). We head out to visit a friend in the hospital but get a call as we’re out the door that he’s been discharged. Yay! So, we change our plans a bit and head out to run errands.
Cranky car time, as the two of us are totally feeling the emotional element of changing our diets. We snapped at each other and acted like brats over stupid stuff, but we survived it.
Did several errands, including the market, where we spent $100 on the tiniest cart of food I’ve ever seen for that amount. Steak is pricey. Spices and seasonings are WAY pricey. I guess I got spoiled on the low low cost of high-carb foods.
Started feeling really ill while at the market. Any time I stood still for more than a few seconds, I got nauseas. And then I started doing a big hot flash sort of sweat like some menopausal freak of nature. Keith assured me that this was an indication of my body’s shifting metabolic process. Instead of burning the sugars and carbs in my stomach, my body is burning its stored fat. Let’s hope so!
Anyway, came home and had a series of happy successes, making easy recipes from one of the many low-carb eating websites. I entered my meals into the amazing calorie/carb calculator on another of those great websites and felt like a goddess of low-carb living. I checked my urine with KetoStix and learned that I am, in fact, WAY in ketosis, which is exactly where I’m supposed to be.
Now, all through this, I ended up being in a better mental state about feeling ill, realizing that it was just my body adjusting…which is a good thing.
Then, after a dinner time kitchen disaster that I did not let get to me (I blame it on insufficient instructions for the newbie cook that I am in the recipe itself, coupled with the fact that I am not yet intuitive enough to know how to make up for lack of info), I decided to move forward with another recipe and have a different dinner than I’d planned. Yum!
And then I entered its ingredients into the carb counter. Insert dramatic, suspenseful music. Yup. I doubled the carb count I’m to shoot for each day, during induction. Now, Keith assures me that, even with this higher carb day, I’m still at a lower carb level than I would’ve been on my pre-Atkins days (when I ate very little food…all of it carb-dense). So, I’m blogging now to try and remind myself of the whole day, not just that last little bit. My own “letter to myself” pep talk.
Okay, here’s the thing: I’ve been emailed by several people who’ve read my blog and who want to know more about Atkins. Here are links to the sites that have been a great help to me:
Low Carb Eating
Low Carb Luxury
Calorie King (I actually like this one for looking up calorie and carb counts restaurant foods…it will floor you how much some of your “lite” favorites have)
Low Carb
Atkins Friends
Suzanne’s (the cheapest place I’ve found for the Atkins Advantage bars)
Fit Day (home of the awesome daily counter/goal analysis tools)
There are shopping lists, recipe ideas, etc. But here’s the MAIN thing for INDUCTION (first two weeks, minimum…and possibly as much as the first six months, if you can stand it): no more than 20 grams of carbs per day.
Basically, for induction: no bread, no sugar, no white anything (no potatoes, rice, flour, etc.) and no fruit. That part’s hard for me, as I had become a smoothie junky in the past few months.
Anyway, there are a kajillion sites out there, but these are the ones that have helped me the most. I spent a lot of time doing research on Atkins before choosing it (three months of research…really)! And there are other low-carb plans: Carbohydrate Addict’s Lifestyle Program, The Zone, Caveman-Eating, you name it. But Atkins is the grandpa of them all…and between Mr. Atkins and Mr. Pilates, I am following the old boys around faithfully.
Enough with the diet stuff!
In other news, it’s raining again in Hollywood. El Ni