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Atkins Induction is just the strictest part of the Atkins Diet. It is the starting point of Atkins that causes you to drop weight fast. It is almost impossible for someone who has been eating the Standard American Diet for years to tackle right away. I personally could not do it consistently and that is what lead to the invention of The Gradual Diet.
Basically I eased into Atkins slowly. I started by eliminating wheat products like bread and baked goods and went from there. I tried Induction a few times. Induction is the strictest and hardest part of the Atkins approach. If you are good at Induction then the Ketogenic Diet is for you. The goal of Induction is to bring on a state of Ketosis, which means that you are burning your own fat for energy, rather than the glucose (sugar) in your blood. Induction is supposed to last for 2 weeks, followed by slowly introducing healthy carbs back into the diet. I was able to do it for about a week at a time.
One thing I want to point out about these low carb diets. If you eat healthy and clean, that is, low carb and no processed foods to speak of, you are by default on a low calorie diet. That is why there is no need to count calories on any kind of low carb diet. Just wanted to throw that in there for all you calorie counters.
Also, if you find yourself becoming constipated from this radical change in your diet, then you can supplement by drinking psyllium fiber which is available almost everywhere. Just try to find the non-sweetened, non-flavored powders. Yes, this involves reading labels. You should be getting good at this by now. I personally use psyllium fiber from Vitamin World. It’s usually in a container as a Colon Cleanse or similar. It all works the same way. It bulks up your stool. Walmart also has one that is plain psyllium husk under their own brand name. I drink it every morning mixed with bottled water and a packet of Spenda. You don’t actually need it every day. I take it 4 times a week. Some days I skip and it is still working the same. Because of this supplementation, I have nice comfortable bowel movements and large tight stools.
Now, here are the rules of Atkins Induction:
No alcohol. None. For 14 days. This was the hardest part for me. Also, no more than 20 grams of carbs per day. You will learn to embrace hunger as a feeling. After a day or so it goes away. Just think of it like this. When you feel a hunger pang, a pound of fat is being melted away. Embrace your hunger pangs for now.
This is how Atkins Induction is accomplished:
Eat no more than 2 to 3 cups of salad vegetables a day, or other low carb vegetables. Your meals should totally be clean protein and healthy fats.This includes all meat, raw nuts, cheese, olives, heavy whipping cream, eggs and all other low carb foods. And of course healthy fats such as coconut oil, olive oil and European butter. Also, you should buy some Ketone Testing Strips at your local drugstore. You will use these to test whether you are in Ketosis or not.
Do not skip any meals. Atkins has always been an “eating” diet. You lose weight by eating properly, not by starving yourself. During Induction you should not consume any fruit, bread, pasta, grains, starchy vegetables, flour, sugar or beans. Don’t eat nuts or seeds during Induction. Do not drink milk or other soft dairy. Yes, I know this is strict. Focus on a good future outcome rather than the current sacrifice. You can add nuts and cottage cheese back in later. You can still use butter and salt and eat hard cheese with your meals. Drink water all the time. At least 8 glasses a day. When you want more flavor than plain water, make some green tea. No sweeteners, not even Stevia or Splenda right now. What we are doing at this time is going cold turkey against all sweet flavors. This will really help you give up all sugars and teach your body to be more sensitive to sweet tastes and flavors. In the future when you are Keto-adjusted and sugar free, you will really be amazed at all thesweetness and flavors found in vegetables and dairy foods. You will actually be able to taste trace sugars in foods. Natural flavors of raw foods will just explode in your mouth. Fruit will taste so sweet, just like sugar to you. It’s amazing how your tastes change over time.
Most of the 20 grams of carbs that you eat during induction should come from greens and raw or steamed vegetables. As you know, I prefer a mix of Kale and baby spinach, boiled down in the rice cooker or on the stove. Be sure to save the liquid. It makes a nice addition to green tea. The low carb vegetables I like in a raw state are celery, broccoli, cauliflower, green and red bell peppers, radishes, brown mushrooms, sliced zuchinni squash and avocados. Yes I know, avocados are technically a fruit but 1/2 an avocado is allowed once a day. About 6 grams of carbs. It’s very important to know the exact carb count of every vegetable and any food that you are eating. You can find this information easily on the Internet. Remember, meat has no carbs.
During Induction you do not eat any fruit whatsoever. I know this flies in the face of conventional wisdom, but conventional wisdom has been wrong about many things for a very long time. The reason you do not eat fruit during Induction is so that there is no source of sugar coming into your body that would trigger a glucose reaction. Also to increase your sensitivity to sugars. The goal of Induction is to induce Ketosis or Lipolysis, the burning of your fat stores. Lipolysis, more commonly known as Ketosis, is the process that occurs when your body burns fat for fuel rather than glucose.
The Ketone test strips that I previously mentioned are strips that you pee on. They measure the ketones your body is producing that have spilled over into your urine. If you are showing any color at all beyond the starting color, a very light beige, then you are in a state of ketosis. This is a good thing. You can buy these testing strips without a prescription at any CVS Drugs or Walgreens. If you are in ketosis you are burning fat. This is what the Keto Diet is all about. Any color of pink to purple means that you are in ketosis. It really turns me on to pee on a strip and see it turn a nice shade of purple. It’s really easy to slip out of Ketosis. You have to be really strict at least for a couple of weeks for Induction to work. You can lose up to 10 pounds of fat during this phase if you are careful and really strict with yourself.
Here are the foods to avoid during Induction:
All fruits, sugar, flour, breads and baked goods, oats and all other grains, all pasta, corn and corn chips, popcorn, carrots, beans, rice, potatos and potato chips, candy, milk and all dairy products except cheese. Any foods or liquids containing high levels of carbs. After Induction is finished you will have lost anywhere from 5 to 10 pounds or more. This is the rapid part of weight loss on the Atkins Diet. It’s amazing how fast you lose weight on Induction. I was not able to finish the entire two week period. That is where the idea for The Gradual Diet came from. I tried Induction over and over again with varying results. It did help me lose weight but I felt like I was starving.
I think the flaw in Induction is that it is just way too strict. So I softened it down by trading off the fast weight loss with a gradual approach. This is the way I eat. It’s from lessons learned from doing Atkins Induction, coupled with my detailed research on the Paleo and Keto diets. Occasionally I will become strict with myself and stop eating nuts or dairy but after a while I introduce these foods back into my diet as my hunger waxes and wanes. But overall I am eating healthy foods. I am totally grain free and 99 percent sugar free. I avoid all processed and packaged food except for sardines, olives and pickles. I guess cheese and yogurt would be included here also. But mostly my diet consists of meat and fish, vegetables (raw and cooked), eggs, raw nuts, cheese and dairy. I do drink clear diet soda and chew sugar free gum. I use Truvia and Spenda and drink coffee and tea. Some nights I will drink a good Scotch on the rocks or have a few glasses of red wine. But mostly I drinkwater. A lot of water every day. So yeah, I break the rules of Induction but I eat a high fat, low carb and moderate protein diet. HFLC. High Fat, Low Carb.
My body has become very sensitive to foods and I do not react well to sugars and carbs at all anymore. I instinctively eat clean and natural foods. You will become this way eventually also if you gradually adopt a clean diet which is what I am presenting to you. You will lose a lot of weight over the next 8 months or so then it will slow way down. This is very common on this diet. I have maintained a healthy weight eating this way and I am still slowly losing weight.
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