I found a basic breakdown of the 4 phases of the Atkins diet here.
Phase 1 is often what many people think of as the main Atkins diet, although it’s actually not. But this involves under 20 grams of carbs per day, high fat, high protein, very low carb veggies.
The veggies part is great, as well as the high protein.
The part that might be a challenge at first in P3 is eating high fat – that is similar to keto of course. High-fat foods mean that the volume of the food you get to eat is low for the total calories you consume (this is because fat is a calorie dense food – there are 9 calories per gram in fats, vs. 4 calories per gram by weight in protein and carbs). Which is why 1 tbsp of olive which is very tiny in volume has 120 calories (or butter 1 tbsp 102 calories) vs if you ate the same number of calories in chicken breast, you’d have a much larger serving size, or 120 calories worth of broccoli again, would be a much larger serving size.
We have found that people stabilize and maintain best when they gradually raise their calories in P3 – this is what we do in the P3toLife Program.
This means that in order for you to feel satiated and like you ate enough, usually, it’s better to include enough veggies/fruit/protein so that the volume of food you are eating feels like enough. Eating only 900-1000 calories of a high-fat diet would be very small in amount of food.
This may be okay for you! And certainly, I think you can probably raise your calories faster/higher if you were indeed following a high fat/less than 20g of carbs keto style diet. But in the end, what I still see happen all too often is that ladies still don’t learn/know how to eat for life- daily living long-term for maintenance, with this approach.
By having a higher carb count – but still from low carb vegetables sources and small amounts of fruit, you get more food, you still stabilize and maintain (actually many ladies continue to lose weight in the first couple of weeks in the P3toLife program), and you feel very content with what you are eating emotionally.
If you follow Phase 2 of the Atkins diet this can likely work as long as you are still aware of your calorie intake in total. The problem I myself faced when going only by “low-carb” as my guiding principle in Phase 3 and regular maintenance in years past was thinking that if the food was low-carb, it was fair game to eat, at any time, in any quantity. I just simply overate. But I’m also the type of person that CANNOT feel deprived or hungry all the time. I just can’t do it. And so eating super low carb foods, outside of lean meats, these foods are then high fat, which means they have a lot of calories for the volume as we discussed so that I would then easily overeat calories all the time.
I finally learned that using more vegetables that contain lots of fiber and water, and small amounts of fruit, really helped me to feel full and satiated, while keeping calories in check, in a way that I could live with long-term and be completely satisfied.
So I hope this helps! So that was my long answer.
The short answer is, yes you can do Atkins diet but what you need to pay attention to is not overeating the calorie dense foods – nuts, cheese, and other high-fat foods. And if you go with induction 20g of carbs or less, this means you will either HAVE to eat more high-fat foods or more protein- those are the only 2 macros left to get the rest of your calories in! :)-
The P3toLife program has a carb level more in tune with Phase 3 of the Atkins diet – and I know it may seem scary to think of trying more carbs, but just remember this is not from pasta or bread – the carbs add up from things like onions, snap peas, green beans, tomatoes and other super healthy veggies that our bodies seem to do very very well with.
I hope this helps you decide what approach you want to try out!
