Here is a creation of mine which is fully Atkin’s Diet compliant, looks pretty good and tastes amazing.

Indeed, my girlfriend recently commented that she feels we eat just as well if not better on Atkins Diet than without it because (a) we are able to enjoy some “naughty” things like cream and cheese, and (b) we are forced to create interesting dinners from limited ingredients.

Previously I would never have cooked (or even considered) turnip, and asparagus was just an ocassional veg, definately not an everyday food.

But here we are. A chicken breast wrapped in smoked bacon and baked in the oven at 200′C for around 30 minutes. This is accompanied by lightly boiled, butter-drenched asparagus and a delicious mash made by boiling turnip for 10-15 minutes then mashing it with butter and grated cheese.

Very, very tasty indeed and according to our “back of the envelope” maths, only 6 grams of carbs to giving us an amazing 14 grams for the rest of the day!

Popularity: 16% [?]

This post marks the first in a series of reviews where I will be venturing out into the big wide world, tracking down related health and fitness blogs and then reviewing them here.

I will be honest with my views and the hope is that not only will you, dear reader, find some other high-quality blogs that will help you with your transformation, but that some blogs may be willing to reciprocate and hence I may end up with some new visitors to this blog.

So let’s get started with today’s topic - Diet Blog.

Diet blog has apparently been online since September 2003 so is a highly established diet blog. It has a very  neat, easy to read layout together with some very interesting stories which make this an interesting visit. Clearly very professionally run, it is updated very regularly with new, interesting articles though, for me, it feels more like a “news” site of related articles than what I am trying to achieve here which is more of a journal of my own experiences.

Digging deeper into the archives though, using the Search feature at the top of the page I found some real gems of articles, especially related to the Atkins Diet which is of course a topic of particular interest to me at the moment.

For example in this article from Diet Blog they mention how a study compared fat loss between a number of different diets and that the diet which came out on top was the Atkins Diet.

While this doesn’t surprise me, the thing that did was that the average weight lost over a year was 10.3 pounds. 10.3 pounds? The way things are going for me I will have lost that in the first month! What happened to these people I wonder to make them lose so little weight?

The high visitor numbers to Diet Blog mean that there are plenty of comments present which are excellent as they open up the conversation and allow you to view reader’s opinions rather than just those of the blog author. This gives a nice rounded view of the topic in hand, though of course be aware that comments can be deleted so the blog owner will still hold some editorial control over such things.

For me, the best thing about the blog is the long, interesting list of Diet Reviews (which you can find here) which covers over 30 different diets.

Worth a look for sure, but as I say the style of articles is quite different to those at this blog so feel free to take a look and make your own mind up.

You can visit Diet Blog here.

Popularity: 24% [?]

The last few weeks have been a little difficult. I had to go away on a course for 3 days where they served nothing but “crap” to eat which threw out the diet dispite my best efforts (I took grilled chicken, salad etc with me but then ended up having to go out to dinner every night with other people on the course).

Also we went to a party on Sunday which resulted in me eating all sorts of things I shouldn’t have.

Not great. But the results haven’t been as bad as expected. I honestly thought I would have pretty-much returned to my original weight when I started, but that’s not the case.

To give the Atkins Diet a fair test I shall be carrying it on for one more week as whilst this is officially week 4, the temptations over the last few days have meant that I feel I have only done a week of Atkins over the course of the last 2 weeks.

So carrying on for one more week will lead me to having done a full 4 weeks of Atkins.

On the last Atkins Diet weekly update I weighed 66.9 kg. This time I weigh 66.5kg. So I have managed to lose 0.4kg or about a pound in 2 weeks. Not great, but I still managed to lose weight rather than putting it on.

Interestingly on the 20th of September, after my course, my weight had increased to 68.2 kg, and now has dropped down to 66.5kg so having put on a kilo while at the course I have actually lost almost 2 kg in the week since then. Therefore if it weren’t for the rubbish I ate at the course I would likely be as low as 64 kg this time.

Stay glued for the final Atkins Diet weekly update next week where I will reveal a “final” photograph and my end statistics together with a round-up of how I have found the Atkins Diet.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Thinking about the percentage of the population who are greatly over weight and who either don’t diet, or try but fail made me think about the food we eat.

Why is it so hard to stop eating chocolate for a while? Why are doughnuts so hard to avoid?

A piece of chocolate is smaller than a carrot stick, yet which do you reach for?

The problem is that food isn’t *just* food. Food represents things to us.

Besides the actual taste of the food (which is neither here nor there) when you imagine going on a diet and eating lean meats and lots of vegetables, what else do you think about?

Whatever it is, these are the associations we have with food, rather than the food itself.

Maybe you think you will miss out on a Sunday family roast. Maybe you won’t be able to go to the bar after work with your colleagues for a quick drink. Maybe you won’t be able to take your kids to McDonalds without being tempted.

This isn’t the food. This is the association. And it’s leading you to gain weight.

So it’s important to consider this hidden factor in dieting and deal with it face on.

For me over the last few months with a new girlfriend I have enjoyed cooking her delicious, less than healthy meals because I think the world of her and want to see her happy. She seems to enjoy my cooking (someone has to!) so why not treat her?

If I started eating extra healthily (I didn’t do too bad - it was the time we spent together where I ate worse than I should have) I would miss out on this feeling of being a provider. Also, we enjoyed going out to meals as a couple. Not post restaurants - they’re not my style. But simple meals out. It was nice. It was something else to do together.

Now, fortunately, she is as keen as trying out my dieting ideas now I have introduced her to my blog and shown what I have been doing since before we got together.

Suddenly I can now provide bacon and eggs and we can both lose weight together without having to miss out on all the treats available. That’s one of the benefits of the Atkins Diet. And last week we even managed to eat out together though it was a bit of fun finding “Atkins acceptable” meals

Here’s another association I had. I work some crazy long hours with a job and a business. I go to the gym. I run. I have a social life. There just aren’t enough hours in the day for me. So I started to rely on high-caffeine energy drinks like Red Bull. I love them and admit to it. They taste great, and they keep me going when most people would have dropped.

I therefore had another association here - I didn’t think I’d manage to achieve as much without my energy drinks. As it turns out that was complete balony and I’m doing fine thanks - but I wouldn’t have known if I hadn’t tried.

So go facing your associations and break them down to help you lose weight today.

Popularity: 17% [?]

My perception of the Atkins Diet before I delved deeply into the subject to research it for my next real-life experiment was twofold:

Firstly it was very dangerous for you because you lost weight so quickly and ate unhealthily, and secondly that all you ate was rubbish. Non stop fried food.

Whilst there is a tiny amount of truth to both these points it is fascinating how much my opinions have changed since reading the Atkins Diet book and learning what it’s *really* all about.

Indeed, you *can* eat bacon, burgers and eggs till the cows come home but there is a logical, realistic reasoning behind it.

And it’s this - every diet out there tries to limit your calorie intake. Dr. Atkins believes (and there are a lot of slim people who now agree with him) that it is the “junk carbs” like white bread, pasta and potatoes that are causing the problem. By removing these high-calorie elements from the diet and relying solely on fats and proteins to live on the body will naturally go into ketosis and start burning the fat your body has stored for leaner times.

So it is, in a way, a more extreme version of your average diet - like the Body For Life diet.

What’s more, whilst this intake of fatty foods makes sense, Dr. Atkins is keen to mention that there are safety limits of these foods and he is keen to encourage anyone on the Atkins Diet to include reasonable numbers of salads and vegetables in their daily nutritional intake.

Grilled chicken and a leafy green salad. That sounds almost like a Weight Watchers or a Body For Life diet to me. The only difference is on the Atkins you can add some salad dressing if it’s high in fat or sugar-free.

The only thing you count on the Atkins diet is the grams of carbohydrate you consume which makes a pleasant change and is why this diet works so well. Most of the successful diets as of late - Weight Watchers, Slimmers World, Body For Life and so on require very little “counting”. You look at portions, sins and so on. You count in bigger numbers rather than adding up all the calories, fat, protein and so on.

This can rapidly get boring and over-scientific for most people. Indeed, the Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS) rule has never been mroe true than with dieting.

Now, I have few weeks to experiment with the Atkins Diet. I think it’s going to be hard to stick to. But I’m expecting some pretty amazing results. It’s going to be interesting to see how I feel on it - I have heard reports of unbelievable tiredness, bad breathe and so on but onyl time will tell.

But until then I have already changed my perception of the Atkins Diet from a desperate foolhardy experience that can be damaging to your body to one that seems to be based on some pretty sturdy scientific principles.

I can’t wait to see how much weight I lose on it and report back to you!

Popularity: 9% [?]