Atkins 72, An Alternative Low-Carb Plan

Atkins 72 is still the BEST low-carb diet plan
because it lets you personalize your menu
to fit your tastes and lifestyle!

If you're struggling to lose weight on the current version of the Atkins Diet, you might be eating too many carbs. You could also be eating too much fat, especially if fat is taking up 75 to 80 percent of your daily calories.

According to Dr. Atkins, the program he created in 1972 was "a very low carb reducing diet (and not a high-fat diet as many of my nonreading critics asserted)."

Returning to the diet Dr. Atkins created and used on himself and his patients can get the scales moving downward again, so in this post, I am going to outline everything you need to know to get started on Atkins 72 Induction right away.

I have also included a few sample menus to make the process easier for you.

In Dr. Atkins professional experience:

The 60-gram carbohydrate diets that sprang up in the 60s at the time that he was experimenting with Dr. Bloom's diet (bacon and eggs, meat, poultry, fish, and lettuce salad) didn't cut carbohydrates low enough.

Since the modern day Atkins 20 has increased carbs to include a whopping 6 cups of vegetables per day, on Induction, this is an important point.

Many people cannot handle that amount of vegetables, especially on Atkins Induction.

Dr. Atkins' focus was on eliminating hunger, rather than pleasing society or the medical industry, so the original Atkins diet, often referred to as Atkins 72, begins by placing you at biologically zero grams of carbohydrate.

Dr. Atkins wasn't concerned with whether you reached the magical number of 20 carbs a day, or not. In fact, the lettuce salad offered on the following diet is actually optional.

Atkins just wanted to create a diet that tasted good and wouldn't leave you hungry and feeling unsatisfied.

Biologically zero carbs comes to a mere 10 total carbs a day, what you can metabolize from a 2-cup salad and a few incidentals.

This super-low carbohydrate level that you follow for one week is what made this low-carb diet different and more effective than the other weight-loss diets. 

Basic insulin level falls faster and hunger returns to normal within only a day or two.

The Science Behind Atkins 72

What is Atkins 72?

During the first week of the original Atkins diet, you cut your intake of carbohydrates down to what is considered biologically zero.

That dietary restriction creates a unique chemical situation resulting in the quickest way to lose weight and excess body fat there is.

Excess ketones in the urine are excreted due to the body's inability to store them, and hunger disappears quickly due to a drastic drop in blood triglycerides.

When triglycerides are low, the hormone leptin can communicate with the brain and tells the hypothalamus how much body fat you have stored and is available for use.

The first fuel your body uses for energy comes from the carbohydrates you eat and drink.

If any carbohydrate is available, including carbs from vegetables, your body uses that first, rather than stored body fat. This is the traditional metabolic pathway that most weight-loss diets use.

However, you only have enough carbohydrate stored in the liver and muscle to last about 24 hours, or less.

When you don't eat any carbohydrates, your body is forced to draw upon alternative fuel sources, such as:

• protein/muscle mass
• alternative sources of glucose
• and your stored body fat

Forcing the body to deplete its glycogen stores sets the body up to take a different metabolic pathway because the body won't burn amino acids for energy for more than a few days if there is body fat available.

On Atkins 72, you can be in ketosis in 24 hours.

The alternative metabolic pathway allows the metabolism to predominantly burn fats for fuel, rather than glucose or muscle tissue.

Dr. Atkins considered this a revolutionary idea of his day, especially since he believed that excreting ketones in the urine meant you were burning your unwanted body fat without hunger.

By very gradually adding carbohydrates back into your diet, you can stay fat-adapted and keep your body burning its own fat stores for fuel. This gradual addition of carbs keeps your metabolism stoked, so it can burn fatty acids like a fat-burning engine.

This is what Atkins 72 teaches you how to do.

General Overview of Atkins 72

The first week you enter into an Atkins 72 Induction. The rules and instructions for that first phase of the original Atkins Diet can be found below.

The second week you add a few grams of carbohydrate to your diet, about 5 to 8 total carbs per day, and then evaluate your weight loss and how you feel at the end of that week.

Every week thereafter, you continue to add a little more carbohydrate, 5 to 8 total grams per day, per week, until your weight loss stalls or you begin to gain. This alerts you to your personal carbohydrate tolerance level.

When you gain weight, you lower your carbohydrates by 5 to 8 total grams per day to see if weight loss starts up again. If it does, this is the maximum amount of carbohydrate you can eat per day and still lose weight.

From that point on, you eat less than your maximum level until you reach goal weight.

The Rules of Original Atkins Diet

To do the original Atkins Diet correctly,
you need to know the rules and follow them.

The Diet Revolution Rules (Level One)

1. Don’t count calories.

2. Eat as much of the allowed foods as you need to avoid hunger.

3. Don’t eat when you are not hungry.

4. Don’t feel you must finish everything on your plate just because it is there.

5. Drink as much water or calorie-free beverages as thirst requires. Don’t restrict fluids, but it's not necessary to force them either.

6. Frequent small meals are preferable.

7. If weakness results from rapid weight loss, you may need to add salt.

8. Everyday, take a high-strength multivitamin pill.

9. Read the labels on “low-calorie” drinks, syrups, and desserts. Only those with no carbohydrate content are allowed.

For a more detailed explanation of the above 9 rules, see our post on the 9 Atkins 72 Induction Rules that are still relevant  today. 

The First Life-Changing Week, eat nothing that is not on this list:

Meat: steak, corned beef, lamb chops, tongue, hamburgers, bacon, any kind of meat in any quantity—except meat with fillers such as sausage, hot dogs, meatballs, and most packaged “cold cuts.”

Fowl: duckling, turkey, chicken, anything with wings like a game hen, but no stuffing.

Desserts: gelatin with artificial sweeteners.

Condiments: salt, pepper, mustard, horseradish, vinegar, vanilla, and other extracts, artificial sweeteners, any dry powdered spice or herb that doesn't contain sugar.

Drinks: water, mineral water, Vichy, club soda, beef or chicken broth, bouillon, sugar-free diet soda, coffee,* tea, and decaffeinated coffee.

Fish: all fish, including canned salmon, tuna, any kind of seafood, including oil-packed and smoked, except oysters, clams, muscles, scallops, and pickled fish.

Eggs: boiled, fried, scrambled, poached, omelet – any style and without limitations.

Salads: two small green salads a day, each less than one cupful, loosely packed, made only of leafy greens, celery, or cucumbers and radishes. Dressings can be made with vinegar, oil, salt, dry spices, herbs, grated cheese, or anchovies. You can also have a sour pickle in place of a salad. Plus green olives.

Fats: butter, margarine, oils, shortening, lard, and mayonnaise.

Juice: juice of one lemon or lime per day.

Cheese: four ounces a day of any hard, aged cheese. No cream cheese or cheese spreads.

Heavy Cream: four teaspoons a day. Cream has less carbohydrate than milk, so don’t use milk in your coffee.

Diet Revolution Salad Material: celery, chicory, chinese cabbage, chives, cucumber, endive, escarole, fennel, lettuce, olives (green or black), onions, pickles (sour or dill), parsley, peppers, radishes, scallions, or watercress.

*Special note on caffeine and diet cola: Because most heavy people have some hypoglycemia, coffee, which contains caffeine, should be limited to six cups a day. If you know you have low blood sugar, it's better to limit it to three.

What Happens After the First Week's Diet?

Most diets are fixed formulas. That makes them short-term and self-limiting. This diet is fixed only for the first week. After that, since it's a lifetime nutritional approach, you can make it as variable as your individual taste.

Dr. Atkins was committed to making this a livable lifetime diet.

"I am letting you select your own variations, within the rules set up by your biological rulebook," he said.

His number one suggestion? 

Put back what you’ve missed the most! 

The idea is to custom-tailor the diet to suit your tastes and lifestyle.

"All that matters is that you add back to your diet a little carbohydrate at a time, and that you stop adding carbohydrate when you reach your CCL."

How to know when to put back a little carbohydrate? Ask yourself:

• Are the ketostix still turning purple?
• Are you not hungry?
• Have you stopped snacking at night?
• Do you have more energy?
• Are you losing weight and/or inches?

Remember that your tape measure will be a more important marker of success than your scale. It's more accurate, and will better reveal the actual fat you've lost, not just water fluctuations.

At each level, you add back approximately five to eight grams of carbohydrate daily for a week, and then you analyze your results.

Most of Dr. Atkins' patients found the best way to handle the second level was to add some cottage cheese on the side of their meat and salad. But alternative choices might be:

• sugar-free cheesecake
• more salad
• nuts
• fruits like berries

Or anything else you like. You could also choose from a lengthy list of vegetables, which I have included below:

The Diet Revolution Vegetables (not for level one):

Shish Kabobs waiting to go on the
grill: chicken, zucchini, onion, peppers

In addition to the salad veggies listed above, you could also have five to eight carbs of:

asparagus
avocado
bamboo shoots
bean sprout
beet greens
broccoli
brussels sprouts
cabbage
cauliflower
chard
Chinese cabbage
eggplant
kale
kohlrabi
mushrooms
okra
onions
peppers
pumpkin
rhubarb
sauerkraut
snow pea pods
spinach
string beans
summer squash
tomatoes
turnips
water chestnuts
wax beans
zucchini squash

Sample Menu, Level One:

The following sample menu was Dr. Atkins recommendations for week 1:

Breakfast: scrambled eggs with spicy ham, diet revolution roll and butter, bouillon, coffee, or tea.

Lunch: cold cuts sandwich on diet revolution roll w/ mayo or mustard, 1 cup of salad (loosely packed), oil and vinegar dressing, or a dressing from the recipe list, raspberry gelatin, diet soda, coffee, or tea.

Dinner: chicken soup with matzoh balls, your favorite cut of steak, caesar salad with caesar salad dressing, gelatin, diet soda, coffee, or tea.

Snack: pork rinds, stuffed celery, diet soda.

Sample Menu, Level Two:

And these are his sample menus for level two:

Breakfast: lox and stuffed onion omelet, caraway diet revolution roll with cream cheese, bouillon, coffee, or tea.

Lunch: avocado stuffed with crabmeat, tossed green salad with dressing from recipe list, diet soda, coffee, or tea.

Dinner: mixed grill with garlic butter sauce or Béarnaise sauce, tossed salad with french dressing, gelatin parfait with whipped cream, diet soda, coffee, or tea.

Snack: assorted smoked fish, hard cheese, diet soda

Okay. There it is -- "By the Book!"

If you'd like to get a full week of sample menus for Atkins 72 Induction, then I highly recommend you check out our quick-start keto guide for Atkins 72.

It includes 7 days worth of menus, recipes, and a shopping list along with valuable tips and tricks for making your Atkins 72 Induction successful.

Additional Atkins 72 Articles You May Want to Read:

What is Atkins 72?
Why is the Original Atkins Diet Better for Weight Loss?
Personalize Your Low-Carb Diet Plan with Atkins 72
Atkins Induction Diet: Which Version is Best?
Three Ways to Jump Start Ketosis