I start on Atkins tomorrow, and have spent the day surfing around and reading up on the programme, plus printing out some information. My question is should I buy a book, or can I do this just off the Atkins site and with the advice and support of all you great people? I'm particularly confused about how to count carbs, would a book explain that to me?
Thanks in advance for your help.

Hiya Pinky, welcome!

Yes, definitely buy the book. If you want to do Atkins, Dr Atkins New Diet Revolution (DANDR) is the one you want. It's about $21, but well worth the money. I frequently refer back to mine. Yes, a lot of the info is on the net, but we are not always online. It's also a whole lot quicker to just look something up in the index than to trawl through a website or two.

In DANDR, Dr A explains exactly what you can and can't eat during Induction. You can either go by what he "prescribes" or you can also count carbs.

Do you know about www.fitday.com ? In case you don’t, it's a free site where you can keep track of your carbs, calories, fat etc.
This thread Fitday.com How To's gives some hints on making it a bit easier to use.

All the best to you, Pinky!

Rosebud

Personally, I think the Atkins site has enough information. At least for induction, anyway. I refer back to the forums or articles on the atkins site and generally any questions I have are answered.

Thanks to both of you. My problem is that I live in a small country town and books of that type aren't readily available. I am going into town on Wednesday though so I will check out the book.
I am really excited about starting this new programme. It seems made for me, as I can easily live without bread, pasta, rice potatoes etc, but love my protein and my cheese and almost all vegies. This forum is amazing too, what a great help to those of us starting out especially.

I've read the book and been to the site. My personal opinion is that the book except for a few pages (which that info is at their site) was a bunch of blah blah blah junk. Really drawn out and a lot of stuff I really didn't need to know. But that's just me.

pinky, you can order the book over the internet.
Just go to Amazon for example and type in Atkins.

I agree with LC. The book is mostly Dr. Atkins defending his WOE instead of explaining it. You can get a lot better information if you research it yourself online.

To be honest, I'd not only recommend reading the book for your chosen plan, but several others as well if you really want to gain a good understanding of low carb and how it works.
While it's true that the internet is a great place to find information, it's also a great place to find misinformation, some of it so subtle that it's hard to spot unless you already have a good understanding of what you are doing and why.
Of course, it's always your choice whether or not you choose to read the book or not, but it's been my experience from reading posts here that those who are the most successful at low carbing have read at least the book for their chosen plan and often quite a few more besides.
What may seem to be unneeded information to one person may actually be quite interesting and helpful to someone else.

i would buy a book if i were you..(dr.atkins new diet revolution - as rosebud says) try to orderd it on amazon or atkins site..(i bought it on amazon. i am living in italy. i could not buy it here.there is no translation to italian language)it's the truth that are to many explanation (but i think that is very interesting to know what is happaning to yout body) but you can also find carb counter and lots of recepies. i found it very usufull. i found some good advice regarding supplements (vitamins, coq10, l-carnitina.....) and metaboic resistence. (for example, i am not losing weith for 20 days, so tomorrow i will start "fat fast" as a book suggest)