Preparing For A Low Carb Diet Lifestyle
If you are going to be successful with the Atkins diet (or other similar low carb diet), proper planning is of the utmost importance. Provisions of the proper foods you need to take before you embark on your weight loss program is a good way to ensure success, and you can find examples of Atkins diet meals in the Atkins books. There are also numerous other sites and forums online where you can get information on Atkins and other low-carb recipes.
What meals you eat, snacks you take etc. are some of the things you will need to plan when you star the Atkins plan. You cannot afford to leave uncharted, any thing that as to do with what you consume if you are to succeed. The reason why you are in the mess you are in the first place, is because your eating habit was without any form of check.
Just as you have it with other types of diet plans, the Atkins plan also requires some allowance for adjustment. Normal American diets are carbohydrate-based, including foods like spaghetti, meat and potatoes, pasta casserole, meatballs etc. – food that majority of people grew up eating. You can very well imagine that dissociating oneself from such diets won’t happen over night. It is going to require a lot of determination, persistence, and willpower.
There are two different methodologies you can adopt to assist in changing your diet. First, you can replace your preferred foods with ‘phoney’ carbohydrates e.g consuming spaghetti squash noodles instead of spaghetti noodles, or replacing pasta with lasagna made with eggplant etc. low carb replacements for bread and other sugar products are also available.
Another method is to go and learn how to make new recipes that are meat-based, and other low-carb foods. Several types of meat can be incorporated into the Atkins plan, and instead of just eating beef or chicken all the time, you can include lamb, ham, all sorts of game foods e.g pheasants, quail etc. into your diet. Fishes of different varieties can also be experimented with e,g trout, salmon, shellfish (e.g. mussels, clams, shrimps) etc. Do not forget, variety, as they say is the spice of life.
Because you may need to take snacks and in-between meals, it is important that you have some ‘easily prepared’ foods within reach. Good examples of stuffs you can take in-between meals include: thin sliced cucumbers, radishes and celery mixed with lemon mayonnaise. Garlic served on arugula with feta cheese, mushrooms and fried peppers is another acceptable option.
Carry out research to discover other low-carb recipes you can prepare. You need to have a lot of acceptable recipes within your cook book, so you never run out low-carb meals to cook, because in all honesty, at times, the diet can get boring which may lead to burnout. As mentioned earlier, planning is the most crucial step you can take when attempting to lose weight.
When you have numerous and delicious recipe options to choose from, chances are better that you will not easily be enticed to deviate from the plan. Even at the initial stages, when it is usually difficult to adapt to the changes, the extra food options you have would help keep you on track.
With some planning and a little creative thinking, you can always get something nice to eat everyday.