Afternoon All

Seems odd to be asking this question so early, but I decided to give Atkins a try, with just having known a little from conversations and rapidly read the book and got prepared on the sunday for the monday.

Because I'm too scared to weigh myself and because the scales I own don't go high enough I am working a little blind but have faith that if I follow the plan - all will be good. I haven't deviated so far (only 16 days I know) but as usual life is coming along and I need to be able to navigate events - saturday night's dinner and sunday lunch both went well but I have anotehr big event coming up at the end of the month that it might be harder to aviod alcohol. Lots of it over a 4 day festival.

Has anybody else been in this positon? Did they just keep to low carb and drink - chances of getting any veggies without pasta/noodles/bread at this event are few. So my carbs will be from cream, cheese and what I can take such as olives.

Thanks

You could take a variety of cut-up veggies that you can eat raw with a dip of some kind, or some salad veggies like mushrooms, red/yellow peppers, radishes, cucumber etc and buy meat from the hog roast stand (assuming it is that kind of festival) or burgers and ditch the buns.

Unless we get a heatwave (I wish ) they would keep reasonably fresh in an insulated bag. Leave the salad veg uncut till you eat them and they will stay fresher.

The thing that kept me away from alcohol while in full-on weightloss mode was the fact that it is likely to hinder any losses while the body uses the alcohol as a preferred fuel.

If you do decide to indulge do bear in mind that it will probably hit you harder than before you lowcarbed it (lowcarbers are cheap drunks! ) so do make sure you are among friends who are willing to keep an eye on you, so you don't wake up in the wrong sleeping bag surrounded by empty dorito packets in the morning!!

alcohol itself is lowcarb, its all those nice mixers we like to add to it. (no beer isn't lowcarb) Do a search on the internet so you can make wise choices if you are choosing to induldge. Bear in mind that, while drinking, you may be more tempted to carby foods. Yes I know that may sound odd but I have in the past been known to have the oh well what harm will that chip and dip do, i've been good all week. Harm is it puts me back in the cycle of eating carbs.

That being said, this past week I have had wine, One was for my anniversay dinner the other was at family celebration. I did limit myself to just one glass and I did well with that. (by one glass i mean about 5 oz.)

Gin and slimline tonic water, whiskey and Coke Zero and vodka in a grapefruit flavoured s/f sparkling mineral water! All low carb. I had these on a weekend where I had a few drinks with some friends and didn't feel as though I should sit out on the fun! (Please don't let me be lectured on the 'you don't need to have alcohol to have a good time!) Snacked on lots of slices of ham, some chicken chunks in piri-piri seasoning and some pork crackling! All good and totally within my daily allowance. And the next day when everyone went to McDonalds for the usual morning-after-the-night-before hangover cure (although it was more like mid-afternoon than morning when we got there!) I ordered a grilled chicken salad and a quarterpounder with cheese (no garnish) and binned the bun! It's not that hard to make this WOE work if you just stop and think about it for a bit!

Thanks All.

Well what do you know - heatwave occurred.

Ate some celery and cream cheese, olives and then from the festival burgers and chicken and pork kebabs!
Had vodka neat or with diet Pepsi.
Struggling to find nitrate free pate too - just bought 2 packs, both have nitrates. Is it that important? Most pork products in uk seem to have sodium nitrate.