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What Really Is
A Healthy Diet?
I Have Had to Re-Think
Which Diet Leads to Good Health
Our local news channels are reporting that Minnesota just lost its number one ranking as the “healthiest state.” The reason given is the decrease in healthy diets and the predictable rise in obesity which has become a frightening health issue nation-wide. The issue is personal for me as well as I have been overweight for a good part of my adult life.
I gained weight with each of my five pregnancies and never made a serious attempt to lose the “extra baggage” until now. So, I’m still carrying “baby weight” though my baby is in his 30’s!
After a few false starts with some of the well known weight loss programs, I have settled on a healthy low carb diet; and it is working! The Atkins Diet is the most well known of the low carb diets and has been both praised and criticized. Critics say the diet is unhealthy and cannot be maintained for a lifetime. Those fears are being proved to be unfounded.
After doing a lot of research of my own, I find that a number of well known medical journals are now reporting that Dr. Atkins was right all along.
How I Got Started
Though I had tried a low carb diet for a brief time many years ago, and knew the basic principles, I wanted to get the newest resources. The first book I bought was
The Atkins Essentials: A Two-Week Program to Jump-start Your Low-Carb Lifestyle
I quickly realized that, if I were going to make a total change in my eating plan, I needed even more recipe ideas. There are now lots of good low carb cookbooks on the market. One of my favorites is
Dr. Atkins' New Diet Cookbook
A Support System
I have never liked weight loss plans that required (expensive!) meetings and weigh-ins. I did realize, however, that the liklihood of my sticking to any healthy eating plan was pretty small without some sort of support from others.
I'm such an introvert that I usually don't mention to anyone what I am attemptimg to do. This time I decided to be up front with friends and family as an accountability measure.
When doing a web search for more information on low carb diets I came across
a wonderful low carb forum.
The forum has threads about
every possible question a newbie might have,
Once you have signed up for a (free) account, you can post any thought or question you have about healthy eating and dieting. There are thousands of people on the forum and they are wonderfully patient and helpful.
Of course there are pages and pages of recipes, including
recipes to use in the initial, induction, phase of the diet.
If you want to explore the science, and affirmations by the medical community, of healthy low carb eating, take a look at
Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes.
Gary was recently interviwed on CNN on "Larry King Live" and did a wonderful job of answering the critics who were brought on the show to create conflict. At the end of the show, some of those who were denying that a low carb eating plan could be healthy, admitted that Gary Taubes book was truthful and that people have been deceived for years about what really constitutes a good, lifetime, diet.
Feel free to
check in with me to see how I am doing on my diet!
Stay In Touch!
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