I do not eat a lot of meat have beens nuts chicken fish every other day
Yay so pleased your doctor supports Atkins as so many don’t today my husband went to see his diabetic nurse and there were two other nurses present who all told him the atkins was bad.
He gave them quite a lecture and his numbers, weight, bloods and cholesterol told the story.
Well done for making the soup just bought a slow cooker so I shall be doing all kinds of wonderous things with it.
Good going pixie but what about the days inbetween?
I am a bit surprised at these doctors supporting Atkins, it goes against all the current thinking on eating a varied balanced diet taking in all the main food groups including carbohydrates.
My Doctor like many suggest the way to lose weight while staying healthy is to eat less while maintaining a balanced diet rather than restricting certain foods.
I eat meat one day for proteen meat on the other day
nowbmy weight will start to go after being walk more as time goes on
I am just about back to normal now can do everything i did before i my opp 
This is possibly the right answer but a lot of people have over the years become addicted to carbs and the poison sugar. I know if I had a child now I would never give it sugar right from the start. Sugar has no nutritional value and is directly harmful to your health.
Everyone knows that insulin is given to many diabetics when there own supplies become depleted.
If you eat a lot of carbs such as potatoes, pasta, rice or sugar laden foods you end up with a lot of glucose in your blood, you may think this is a good thing as glucose gives you energy. Not so.
To be useful to your body, blood sugar has sto be tranported to your cells. Think of insulin as the barge that transports it. When it arrives at the cells three things can happen to the glucose it can be mobilized for immediate energy, it can be converted into glycogen for later use or it can be stored as fat.
A carb laden meal or several chocolate bars will result in a high amount of sugar in the blood which will over stimulate insulin production when this happens it causes a drop in the blood sugar levels usually causing fatigue or headahes. The body may attempt to regulate the glucose in the blood with adreniline raising the blood sugar level causing yet another stiff dose of insulin.
For most of us this all happens without too much trouble just the odd fuzzy head or sleepy afternoons but if this happens year after year it will initiate unstable blood sugars and eventually type 2 diabetes.
I can lose weight using the Atkins way of eating I don’t have to worry about portion control and My husband is constanly hungry if he eats less.
The foods we are restricting are foods that our bodies can happily do without.
Meat, Fish, Shell fish, Liver,Eggs, Bacon, Ham, cheese (hard and soft) cream, vegetables that contain no or little sugar including leeks, cauliflower, tomatoes, pumpkin, green beans, strawberries, blue berries
seem to be a balanced varied diet. We just says No to sugary food, most convenience foods.
Once the weight has gone then we add many other foods to the list all will be low GI but our diet will be even more varied.
Cate darlin’ - now you have a slow cooker, go find yourself a decent ‘proper’ butcher, one that sells ‘safari’ meat (Buffalo, Eland, Kangaroo, Kudu, Ostrich, Wildebeeste, Zebra). These meats are, in the main, very healthy, since they contain very little or no fat whatsoever. Once purchased, chop into bite size chunks, marinade in 1/3rds - Balasamic vinegar, Soy sauce, Worcester sauce for approx 2 hours (overnight is even better). When ready to cook, strain from marinade (reserve marinade for gravy later), place in a bowl and add 1 tblsp plain flour and coat meat in flour.flash fry in a small quantity of oil for approx 3 - 4 mins with an onion and some garlic (just to seal the meat). Scoop out with slotted spoon and place in slow cooker. Add vegetables to frying pan (root vegetables are best for this) and fry for a few mins. Add Bisto (powder) and oxo cube to marinade and stir vigorously until thoroughly dissolved. Pour over vegetables in frying pan and heat until gravy begins to thicken. Scoop out and pour over meat in slow cooker. Cook on ‘high’ for approx 30 mins then reduce to ‘low’ and continue cooking for approx 3 - 4 hours. Voila!!! a very healthy stew that smells and tastes fabulous!!!
I have heard it said the house smells wonderful when you have a slow cooker. There are a few things in your recipe that we can’t have as they contain sugar i.e balsamic vinegar and worcester sauce. However I have some shin of beef lined up and a nice pork shoulder for the weekend. We don’t mind the fat so I am looking at a belly of pork which is cheap in Aldi this week.
Cate darlin’ - a marinade of just Soy sauce will not be a strong enough taste - hence my suggestion of a combination marinade. Alternatively half a bottle of a strong red wine would do just as well.
Can’t drink wine yet either but I could use half a bottle of brandy cos that aint got any sugar in it.
Cate darlin’ - Brandy is far too powerful a flavour - it will overwhelm the flavour of the meat itself. You need something a little more delicate.
Only joking UJ I find that red wine vinegar, or whole grain mustard is lovely in a marinade, I could try that.l
I’m not sure a slow cooker would provide sufficient heat to ‘flame’ the meat, Cate darlin’ you’d have to use the frying pan for that. I daren’t use Brandy for cooking at all as I have a very sensitive ‘heat’ sensor in my kitchen, which if triggered, would set off the integrated fire alarm system throughout the building (all four flats). Its loud enough to wake the dead (130 Dbs!!!).
Cate 
as this thread is about diets not exclusively Atkins I will reply and elaborate if I may .
Sorry to disagree but I think the reason Atkins got a bad press was because it wasn’t considered by many to be a balanced diet and therefore not a healthy choice and not because people ‘weren’t doing it right’ .
I actually know a bit about diabetics , my father was diagnosed with diabetes in 1928 on his 21st birthday. He was one of the first people to receive the ‘wonder drug’ insulin and lived to the age of 89 having been told he would not see his 22nd birthday . He almost made the Guinness Book of records as the longest surviving diabetic but a woman in NZ just beat him so I guess he must have been doing something right.
Dad was always very slim and ate a balanced diet of complex carbohydrates/meat/fish/fruit and vegetables. No refined sugar of course but he always had porridge every morning which is considered by many health professionals to be an excellent food for diabetics.
The Atkins diet actually is not a favourite among people who are trying to sell us and particularly our children more and more sugar. The Atkins approach is towards a low carbohydrate diet not a carb free diet taking most of your carbs from vegetables, berries, cheese and nuts.
As I said before people are becoming obese in this country and of course America, this leads to type 2 diabetes and early death. The cause is White bread and all sugars.
I won’t bore you with the sugar = insulin = more sugar story but at the end of the day a diet free of sugar and processed foods is what we should aim for:-D.
My father didn’t eat processed foods neither do I (except tinned fish) and I agree refined sugars and processed food are not necessary. I make as much of what I eat as I can myself including wholemeal bread.
I worked with a girl in the 1990s’ who went on the Atkins diet and had serious problems culminating in a blocked bowel I wouldn’t ever consider a restrictive diet like Atkins.
For me the best way to lose weight is to eat less food of a balanced diet and once a desired weight is achieved to then eat sufficient to maintain the weight loss . Diets like Atkins as well as being unhealthy create a yoyo effect where the weight loss isn’t maintained because people get tired of the restrictions and revert to eating as they did previously.
Here is just one of many articles which agree that restricting food groups is not a healthy way to diet. This is from the NHS Choice…
- Excluding foods is dangerous
Some diets recommend cutting out certain foods, such as meat, fish, wheat or dairy products. Cutting out certain food groups altogether could prevent you from getting the important nutrients and vitamins that your body needs to function properly. You can lose weight without cutting out foods from your diet. The eatwell plate shows the different foods we should be eating.
3. Low-carb diets can be high in fat
Some diets, such as the Atkins diet, are very low in carbohydrates (for example pasta, bread and rice), which are an essential source of energy. While you may lose weight on these types of diets, they’re often high in protein and fat, which can make you ill. Low-carbohydrate diets can also cause side effects such as bad breath, headaches and constipation. “It has been suggested that the high protein content of these diets ‘dampens’ the appetite and feelings of hunger,” says Arens. Many low-carbohydrate diets allow you to eat foods high in saturated fat, such as butter, cheese and meat. Too much saturated fat can raise your cholesterol and increase your risk of heart disease and stroke.
…and one about the problems with Atkins, there are many more I could quote including in the Lancet …
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4814314.stm
…and here is what many would consider to be a healthy example of a weight loss diet …
http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/treatments/healthy_living/your_weight/active_loss.shtml
Cate I am not seeking to disagree with you for any reason other than because I believe Atkins to be a '‘fad’ diet which has the potential to make people ill.
What you are anyone else choose to eat is of course your business but I didn’t feel I could let praise of Atkins go unchallanged
Looking on the ‘What are you having for lunch/dinner’ and noticed that many of us seem to be on diets.
I have in the past been on diets because I had put too much weight on.
…I put to much weight on because I ate too much for the amount of exercise /activity I took each day.
…I ate not because I was hungry but through boredom /to fill a need/ the desire to have the sensation of eating something :-).
Once I realised this fact I found that I could help myself by eating small balanced meals and providing healthy options to eat at the moments when I felt I had to eat something.
Each morning I sliced a variety of health foods fruit in lemon juice or carrot sticks/celery sticks/cucumber/ and put them in water a jug of water ready to eat instantly instead of turning to more fattening options.
This made dieting much easier for me
Eat less, exercise more! We all know that - Ialso am not a fan of faddy diets, however there is a bit of truth in all of them.
If I cut out bread and potatoes and limit my carbohydrate intake I lose weight. Not only that, my continual heartburn stops!
I saw a dietician many years ago when my weight ballooned last … my ‘diet’ was Maximum of two slices of bread a day, no potatoes, pulses, rice or pasta. Grill instead of fry, lots of vegetables and fruit. Half a pint of milk, one ounce of butter no cheese. Of course no snacking!
I lost three stone in three months! Of course I was 14 at the time, and those days of rapid weight loss have gone!
Read an interesting article about weight gain in older ladies, evidently we ‘lay down’ reserves of ‘brown fat’ as we get older, this is to see us through old age. This takes time to shift and we have to be patient. Chaps on the other hand do not have this ‘brown fat’ and they lose weight quicker than us gals!
well Atkins is working for me Im happy to say, as stablelady pointed out low carb is the way to lose weight and that is exactly what Atkins is.
Before I answer Meg re: her opinion that Atkins is a ‘fad’ diet I would just like to say that I have no confidence whatsoever in health professionals and their thoughts on losing weight. In March 2007 I was offered an appointment at the Weight Management Clinic at the Hope Hospital to meet with Dr C Weinkove.
I was thrilled I thought finally I am going to get help losing weight. I attended the appointment at 11 am and was surprised to see rather a lot of overweight people all waiting for Dr Weinkove and all our appointments were for 11am. There were about thirty of us.
We were all herded into a smallish room and sat down infront of Dr Weinkove who looked at us and smiled. Good morning he said, I want to tell you that when you start my Lipotrim diet you will eat NO solid food until you have lost all the weight you need to if it takes six months or 18 months you will not eat solid food.
Some of the people were diabetic, some had heart disease and varied illnesses requiring that they lost weiight. We were all obese some worse than others.
Now over the years I have done a great deal of research into dieting and how our bodies metabolise food. So, I wanted to get up and walk out but I didn’t I stayed and listened to all the crap this man in the name of Health Professional spouted.
He offered what I can only say was an expensive liquid diet that would play such havoc with a metabolism and stomach as to make a person dangerously ill. The worsed thing was of course as soon as the person began eating again the body would assume that it had been in a famine situation and everything would be turned back into fat and the fat cells would quickly mulitiply.
I have the very affronted letter that this so called doctor sent to my Orthpaedic Surgeon saying how I had walked out, showing no interest in his low calorie diet and had not contacted them since to make one.
I was angry then and am angry again while thinking about this quack and the poor unsuspecting people who gave him money for his damned Lipotrim diet thinking that because he was situated at the Hope Hospital and that the appointment was made by the NHS, that the diet was genuine and healthy. Whereas in point of fact it was just a money making scheme by a private consultant using his buddies in the NHS for referals.
Please don;t quote or talk to me about Health Professionals they don’t know what they are talking about when it comes to losing weight.
http://www.atkinsdietbulletinboard.com/forums/main-atkins-diet-forum/57176-i-am-bit-cross.html
Everyone is different, what I eat may not work for others … I do a low carb diet but definitely not Atkins, just slightly similar.
The dietician I saw firstly measured my joints, pelvis and shoulders -then my height did a sum and told me I should be 10stone. I am 5’3"! She then said that if I fell below that weight it would probably be because I was ill - she was right there!
She then got me to tell her what I normally ate, what my lifestyle was like etc. She then spent some time with me and worked out what I should eat and explained why. Result - success.
I suppose you could call her a health care professional :shock:
You were lucky to find someone like that who took so much care in helping you to lose weight. I have only been offered Dr Weinkove and slimming tablets which made me ill. I am pleased your diet worked. I am amazed that you with all the hard work you put in with the horses ever had a weight problem.