you think the Atkins diet won't work and his ketosis theory is BS. At this point I don't know what to believe, but have you read his book? Why do you think his ideas are false?
It's not that it's BS or false, but it is hyped and biased in his favor, of course. They make money off of it.
There are healthier ways to go about this. Keep in mind that this will be pretty much a life long regimen for you. You are going to forever change the way you eat and look at food. So, ketosis, though you could stay in ketosis for years, isn't going to give you all the benefits of a healthier diet long term.
I was on the Atkins diet and went into ketosis and burned fat and all that good stuff some years ago, BUT the more I researched this, the more I saw there were much better alternatives.
Though I weight train, I'm no body builder, yet body builders are way ahead of the general public, and even the medical field it seems, when it comes to how to burn fat and build muscle. They're the experts. They've been on top of this for years.
So I started following what they do, and it's rather simple. Eat healthy. Your body works a certain way with foods and when you help it along that path, you get the results, or close to it, that you're seeking.
You need to understand how the human body works.
One thing I don't really want to do is restrict calories too much, I would rather try and lose weight by exercising or by more exotic means like ketosis, because I know if I just restrict calories my metabolism will slow and I will be worse off than before.
The general public goes on crash or fad diets and basically starve themselves. Then they rebound and gorge and gain all the weight back plus some. This is not what calorie restriction is about. That's the general public being misinformed, naive and doing stupid things, like always.
Calorie restriction to lose fat is about calculating first how many calories you need to take in to maintain where you are now (your Basic Metabolism Rate or BMR), and limiting your intake per day to around 10 to 20% less then that. Not enough to throw your body into "starvation mode" where it gets triggered to slow down its metabolism, horde fat and makes it very difficult to lose weight, but enough to have you burn more daily then you take in, which is key.
That's your first step. Your body will eventually loqwer its metabolism anyway, but then you'll shake things up by changing some things around. I'd recommend you read Tom Venutto's ebook "Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle".
Then from that total daily calorie count, balance it between protein, good carbs and essential fats. Take a daily multi vitamin as well and fish oil supplements.
Divide that calorie count into 5 or 6 portions per day and you have your meals. Prepare them in advance so you don't spend all your time cooking.
You can substitute a protein shake for a meal every now and then.
Here's my daily routine:
Wake up, have a protein shake. The body needs protein at breakfast. It's like having a milk shake every day!
A few hours later, three eggs, cooked in Pam (I should include carbs with that, so sometimes I have an apple too). You could use olive oil, but I'm trying to keep oils out as much as I can, even the good ones.
Lunch and dinner is usually tuna, flank steak, chicken breast, salmon, with green vegetables and some wheat pasta. Spices and seasoning add a lot of taste without carbs and calories. You could also have salad as your good carbs, just avoid the salad dressings and mix your own or season to taste. You can eat as many veggies as you like, there's no way you can ever eat enough of those to get fat. And no alcohol! Even alleged zero carb liquor does really get converted to sugars all the same, and the body burns alcohol before it burns fat. So if you're having even low carb beers or zero carb vodka, anything you eat will be stored as fat rather then burned because the body will switch to burning the alcohol instead.
Before bedtime, I'll have another shake. Helps preserve muscle while I sleep.
I'll snack on an apple sometimes, unsalted almonds other times, organic peanut butter other times.
Once in a while, when I want a treat, I can eat whatever (as long as its not like a whole chocolate cake, but a reasonable portion of something), or eat out for dinner, so I never feel deprived. The trick is not to do that almost every day.
I work out three times a week.
I never go hungry. Now, when I start to feel hungry, I know it's because it's meal time. I actually ate more and lost weight.
When I went off Atkins and started this regimen, I lost 16 pounds, and went from 21% body fat to 14%. I lost 13 pounds of pure fat. Plus, now I was eating healthier.
I plan to build muscles as well to hopefully counter some of that slower metabolism, if I do have to restrict calories.
The thing is, you need a caloric surplus to build muscle. You can gain some muscle if you work out during a caloric restriction, but it's difficult to get much bigger. But it's still important to weight train if nothing else but to help offset the muscle loss you will experience.
And what will happen is, you will appear to be bigger, because as you lose the fat surrounding the muscle, your muscles will become more defined ("cut"), and you will appear better toned.
When you get down to an acceptable body fat percentage, then go into caloric surplus to get bigger. Then cut again. And so on, until you have sculpted the body you want. Your mirror will let you know how you're doing.
