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Vegetarian Atkins Diet
Last year I tried to lose weight on the Atkins diet and succeeded in losing 21lbs which I was thrilled about. However I have since put it all back on (the story of my life) as the lure of bread and pasta was too great.
Being a vegetarian on the Atkins diet is extremely difficult because most vegetables are banned in the first two weeks or so while you try and cut out carbs completely. Bearing in mind that a vegetarian's sources of protein usually contain carbohydrates as well, it means that the diet gives you very few choices as to what you can eat.
Luckily I embarked on this diet with a workmate who was also a vegetarian and we supported each other, but after doing a lot of initial research we decided to jump straight to the maintenance part of the diet immediately or we would have died of boredom let alone starvation!
Our shared lunch changed from our usual brown wholegrain roll and spicy parsnip soup to a shared 6-egg scrambled egg with cream and cheese stirred in. We were pleasantly surprised to find that this did keep us fairly full for the rest of the day.
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My breakfast was a delicious smoothie made with blackberries, tofu, full fat greek yoghourt and a splash of milk to thin it a little - of course I could just have eaten it with a spoon instead! Occasionally I had veggie bacon (from health food shops and some supermarkets) with a fried egg which also makes a good main meal if you increase the quantity of each.
Main meals were mainly quorn chunks with a sauce or any other quorn based products from the local supermarket. Tofu, whilst being a good alternative choice was something I never had as I just don't like it.
I must have gone through a farmer's field-worth of broccoli and cauliflower as these were the vegetables with the least carbs as recommended by the official Atkins Diet website. For variety I would cover them with a cheese sauce that was really nothing more than melted cheese with cream stirred in.
For snacks I ate nuts and chunks of cheese - eaten very slowly.
Personally, I would say that if you have a strong will and something special to lose weight for, then the Atkins diet is very effective, but for long term weight loss I think as a vegetarian, a low fat diet is much easier to stick to. I have a good selection of low fat vegetarian recipes for starters.
Since finishing with the Atkins diet I have found some nice lo-carb recipes which I wish I'd had access to then and although I haven't tried them, they do come recommended by other dieters.
Find out more about diet and nutrition in general on the All Info About Diets and Nutrition site