Hey you all, i am a atkins virgin, and starting this diet was the best thing that ever happened to me, but i am a confused woman ,i am on the induction and plan to stay on it for at least 4 months, and at the momment i keep on reading about your 20 grams of carbs should be veg, but what happens if you dont eat ve, yes i know it is bad but i dont eat salads or green veg, so i am getting 15-20 grams of carbs through other product, for instance hot dogs, and meat products but i am being very strict counting them on my fitday,i have lost 11 pounds in 9 days and dont think it is water lost as i came straight off a low fat diet onto the atkins,please please please help me, :daze :, thanks alot, be good, roch.

Hi Roch!

I guess that would all depend on what your goal is. If it's just to lose weight, that would work. If you want to lose weight and stay healthy, that's not going to work very well in the long run. It's also going to get very boring after several months of just protein foods.
Dr. Atkins discourages the use of processed meats that contain nitrates and fillers and says to limit their use and encourages intead the use of pure unprocessed meats instead. As for the veggies, you really do need them for the best health. Veggies have fiber which you won't get from meat. They also have nutrients and phytochemicals that are important for good health.
Surely you can find a few veggies that you can at least tolerate. Tastes change when you follow low carb for a while; you might be surprised to find out what you now like that you didn't before; experiment with veggies that you haven't tried before. If all else fails, a nice cheese sauce or lots of butter and other seasonings can do wonders for veggies. Even my kids will eat spinach when I cook it with bacon and add parmesan cheese to it.

You don't like any veggies at all? Not even green beans?

The problem with no vegetables is that you are not getting some very important nutrients and you are also not getting enough fiber in your diet. Please make sure you are taking a multivitamin and you might want to add some kind of fiber replacement.

One thing I noticed after being on the way of eating (woe) for a while is that my veggies taste entirely different. I like veggies anyway-but I have noticed that lettuce tastes sweeter and the other veggies I eat just plain taste better. Perhaps after a bit, you could try some and see if your tastes have changed.

You can cook your veggies with butter, cheese, oil, fat and cream now. Maybe that will help.

I do understand not liking certain foods and having to make changes to this eating plan because of it, though. I don't eat meat and that has provided some interesting but doable challenges for me.

Maybe someone can come up with some good suggestions for you or maybe a recipe that you might like.

I am glad that you are losing weight! Feels good, doesn't it?

Hey thanks for the reply, as you dont eat meat, do u still fill full after veg, what other kind of protein would u use on the induction, what veg are really low in carbs, but not the leafy greens, coild not eat them even if they are disguised in butter, thanks roch.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Lisa N
[B]Hi Roch!

I guess that would all depend on what your goal is. If it's just to lose weight, that would work. If you want to lose weight and stay healthy, that's not going to work very well in the long run. It's also going to get very boring after several months of just protein foods.
Dr. Atkins discourages the use of processed meats that contain nitrates and fillers and says to limit their use and encourages intead the use of pure unprocessed meats instead. QUOTE]

Hi lisa, thanks for the reply what are nitrates and and fillers are they in hot dog style frankfurters, maybe i could be losing more then, if i cut out these and replaced them with veg would i lose faster, and to tell you the truth my main aim at the momment is to get to 200 pounds then i will be 45 pounds from goal and i will wory about my health intake of nutrients i am taking a multi vitamin and calcium and vit d, as i intend to stay on induction till august, thanks , roch.

eating the veggies is not easy--but i think to lose efficiently, it is necessary. i find that by roasting them in olive oil and sea salt they taste sweeter. i made asparagus that way and it was really good. brush a baking dish with olive oil and rub more on the asparagus, then sprinkle with salt. then bake at 400 degrees F for 15 minutes or so.

another decent one is roasted turnips--do the same thing as above, they come out like kind of like soft french fries. i eat them with cheese sauce melted over them. kind of like cheese fries.

can you do celery? celery is easy to eat spread with an ounce of cream cheese or another spreadable cheese...you could try that maybe.

you can also deep fry kale leaves--they are crispy and taste different due to frying. just wash and dry kale leaves, stack the leaves and roll them lengthwise. slice them thinly into shreds and then heat oil in pan or deep fryer. fry a few minutes and drain and salt them.

good luck

ally

Oh my gosh yes I feel very satisfied. I eat soy and wheat gluten based foods for my meat replacement, and cheese. Both are high in protein-but the soy stuff is pretty low in fat, so I have to make sure I add some to my meal.

How about cauliflower? It is low in carbs, and you can make a mock mashed potato thing out of them. Cook them up-drain, add a little cream and butter and mash them up! They are also good with cheese or raw dipped in ranch dressing. They are very versatile. I know some people use speghetti squash as a pasta replacement. Eggplant is also tasty-if cooked correctly. I usually wait and have that when I go out-too much trouble for me to cook!

Mushrooms are also very low in carbs and are pretty tasty.

Hi Roch,

I feel the same as you do. As a kid, I never liked veggies, and I've never been able to acquire a taste for them afterwards.

I like corn on the cob with lots of butter, but, naturally, thats the most ripped on veggie by low-carbers, I think. In my view, in Induction, it matters very little how you make up 20 carbs as long as you don't exceed 20 carbs--to be on the safe side. 20 carbs equates to merely 80 calories. We can burn that sitting and watching TV in an hour. So, as long as you don't fill up the net 20 as snack before bed, I think you should be fine.

Having said that, I do agree--however reluctantly--with everyone here who impresses the need to eat veggies for mantanining optimum health. I'm first to admit they taste atrocious. I do force myself to force down once per day a salad, and at least a cup or two of other veggies, like spinach, broccoli, bock choy, or green leaf veggies. I like spinach and broccoli for the high ratio of nutrients to carb ratio. I mean, if we must eat something that tastes bad anyway, mind as well get the most bang for the buck.

Roch...

Unfortunately for you, the veggies that are highest in nutrients and antioxidants are usually the dark green leafy ones like spinach and kale. However...there are a lot of other veggies that are not dark and leafy such as cauliflower, green beans, broccoli, cabbage (okay, this one's leafy, but it's not dark green and it can also be red cabbage), mushrooms, asparagus, avacado, zucchini, cucumbers, peppers and brussels sprouts. Yes, you can get a lot of vitamins and minerals from a pill, but they are not nearly the same quality as those found in real food.



Nitrates are chemicals used to cure and preserve meats such as bacon, sausage and lunchmeats. Fillers are things like bread crumbs, and various other starches and sugars and yes, hot dogs usually contain one or both of them. Nitrates are thought to be carcinogens, so the use of foods that contain them should be limited.




Frederick...I have to disagree with you on this one. I think it makes a great deal of difference to your health whether you are getting your 20 grams (or whatever level of carbs you are at) from veggies and other whole unprocessed foods or using your 20 grams to fill up on low carb junk foods. Which would be better for my body; a serving of sugar-free ice cream with 10 grams of carb or a serving of broccoli with 10 grams of carb (that's a lot of broccoli, by the way)? I think they would both contain about the same amount of calcium, but that ice cream also has a lot of other added chemicals and not much else nutrition wise. The broccoli, on the other hand, doesn't have added chemicals (let's say it's organic for the sake of argument) but it does have a lot of other vitamins, nutrients, fiber and antioxidants that benefit my body. The volume of broccoli that I can have for 10 grams of carb is also going to fill me up a lot more and for a lot longer than that ice cream. Does that mean I'm never going to indulge in the ice cream? Of course not; it's a wonderful treat! What it does mean is that I'm going to make sure that the majority of my carbs are coming from the veggies first.

About your plan to stay on Induction until August: you may get very tired of eating mostly protein if you don't add the veggies.

And your body may adapt to the low carb level and react by stalling even though you don't add carbs. That's one of the frustrating things about staying that low for a long period of time. Also, some people find they lose better if the carbs are somewhat higher - strange but true.

You are asking this 'do I have to eat veggies' question all over the board and most of the answers I have seen say: yes. All the books say 'yes'.

And most of the other questions you ask are in the Atkins book. So how about going back and rereading the book? Once is not enough in most cases. There is so much information in the book that it takes several readings and many times referring back to it.

Sounds as though you are already losing well. Don't wait until you are down to 200 before you start taking care of the health stuff too.

Never been much of a veggie eater, but now find I look forward to them, just for a change of taste and texture. Also, the other night I kept asking my DH, "Doesn't this asparagus taste incredibly sweet?", until he pointed out it was probably because I hadn't had any sugar for a few weeks. I've also found that dressing my salads with just extra virgin olive oil makes me concentrate on the taste of the salad, not the dressing. And cooking almost anything with bacon and parm or topping with a tablespoon of hollandaise will make it yummy!