Originally Posted by Mom53inCA

I want to make a suggestion for people who are new to Low Carb or Atkins and who eat a fair amount of carbs/sugar in their diet: ease into low carb/low sugar slowly.

A few years ago I tried The Sonoma Diet, which is fairly low-carb and allows nothing with sugar (similar to Atkins, no starchy veggies, no fruits, etc). I couldn't do it. After about 5 days I felt like I was going insane. Going "cold turkey" off sugar and most carbs was just impossible for me, and I had a fairly normal diet beforehand.

A few years later, I decided to try a low-carb diet again. However, based on my excruciating experience with The Sonoma Diet, I eased into it. Over a period of a couple of months, I slowly reduced the amount of carbs and sugar I ate until I was eating only around 100 grams of carbs/sugars per day. Then I reduced it down to 50 grams. Then 30 grams. At that point, doing Atkins Induction was not a problem for me at all. I merely had to take nuts and seeds out of my diet at that point. I found that I could stay in induction for more than two weeks without a problem at all. Eating out was sometimes challenging, but planning for it helped.

Not sure how others will view this approach, but it worked for me. Now, if I wind up going off low-carb (for holidays or whatever), I use this approach to ease myself back into Ketosis over a period of a couple of weeks before actually starting Induction again.

By the way, I have never experienced the Atkins/Keto "Flu." But sometimes I do get a headache for a day or two.