It has also been shown that a reduction in saturated fats with a low carbohydrate diet also helps temper the insulin response. This has a positive effect on cholesterol, reducing the bad LDL and increasing the good HDL cholesterol levels in the blood.

One of the new the theories of aging suggests that it is the spike in insulin from the intake of too much sugar that leads to more rapid aging, probably due in part to increased inflammation. Also, when your body continually releases too much insulin in response to too much sugar (often consumed in the form of carbohydrates in the diet: bread, pasta, potatoes), the bodies ability to control blood sugar decreases over time. In other words, you become insulin insensitive. When it gets to the point that it is out of control, this leads to the condition known as Diabetes.

The other nice thing about a low carb diet is that it tends to lose fat from the upper body, particularly the stomach. Now who doesn’t love that. Additionally, it has been shown that upper body fat is less healthy than fat from other parts of the body. One study showed that men were 3 times more likely to lose fat in the upper body on a low carbohydrate diet than a low fat diet.

Another problem with carbohydrates is they tend to be addicting, and more people are addicted to them then we care to acknowledge. The addiction comes from the spikes in blood sugar and the spikes in our insulin response to the sugar. It’s like being on a roller coaster. You feel great and high after eating the spaghetti or pizza or bread, but within 1 or 2 hours our body depletes the sugar and we experience a “crash”, which makes us feel tired and lethargic, lacking energy. This makes us want to eat more sugar (carbohydrates). It is a vicious cycle.

Therefore, when we reduce the carbohydrates in our diet, we also reduce our hunger cravings.

Low Carbohydrate diets work well with regular exercise. But don’t go overboard. It is important to include a reasonable, moderate amount of carbohydrates in our diet every day. Just don’t eat too much at once: spread it out throughout the day, and eat more in the morning when you will have time to burn the calories off. Carbohydrates eaten in the evening will tend to make you gain weight.

Any diet that requires you to go low carbohydrate and use only low carbohydrate foods is saying that you need to hunt for vegetables that are low in carbohydrates. You need to use these vegetables in place of your regular foods, including high carbohydrate vegetables. There are many great tasting things that you can do with low carb vegetables.

They can be used in different diet recipes or used in salads. They are great by themselves as healthy snacks and you can also blend them for a nutritious drink. The many websites that give recipes for low carb cooking and meals have many some recipes that will let you use your low carb vegetables.

Imagine turning out a splendid meal using only low carb foods. You can give a magnificent side dish full of low carbohydrate vegetables that have been transformed into a tasty salad. This salad can be garnished with many interesting foods that are also low carbohydrate but taste great by themselves as well, such as fruits, nuts, or lean meats.

For example, you could make a salad from low carbohydrate vegetables and boneless beef, top sirloin steak, fresh lemon juice, gourmet salad greens, medium plum tomatoes, ranch or blue cheese dressing. You can make a seasoning for this salad with dried oregano, garlic and pepper.

As you can now see, there are many ways that you can mix your low carbohydrate vegetables with many other foods in order to make delicious meals for you and others to eat. The main thing to bear in mind is not to put foods like a heavy French dressing on your low carb vegetables. This will turn your nutritious low carb vegetables into a high carb nightmare.

When I first encountered an Atkins Diet book, I was working in an office. I had been working there for five or six years and had accumulated a fair bit of excess weight. I had never been active in sport, but my previous job had me working on a non-local job site, which brought with it a certain amount of physical activity – just enough to hae kept me in reasonable shape. After five years of pen-pushing, I weighed 18 stone 12 pounds (264 lbs or 120 kg), up three stone, and neither I nor my doctor were happy about it.

One day a representative of some accounting firm came in for a scheduled appointment, and, while we were awaiting the other directors, we got to talking about working in an office and its tendency to make one put on a stone or two. He said that he had had the same problem before this new, more mobile, job that he had and that now he made sure he got out of the office regularly and walked everywhere he could, time permitting.

He also said that he’d read an interesting book on dieting while on holiday in the United States and that he would send me a copy when he got back to his home town. I didn’t think anything more of it and never saw the man again. I think his name was Mr. Blackwell.

The book arrived as promised, but I left it lying on my desk unread for months and months, until one day, I had a dentist’s appointment and had forgotten to take a book to work to read while I was waiting – something I always did/do because the magazines are always so old and boring. Anyway, I read 50-60 pages that day and I was mesmerized. I had never been on a proper diet before and I thought I should give it a go. I had stopped eating pastry, cakes and chocolate months ago, but it hadn’t had much effect and my weight was still on the increase, albeit more slowly.

It seemed to me that it was a ‘thinking person’s’ diet There is a huge amount of scope for individual tastes and lifestyles, and self-discipline did not seem to be much of an issue because of that. The book warned of addictions and fads and how best to overcome or prevent them. These did not seem to be an issue for me.

I liked coffee, but could take it or leave it [ED: it has not shown to be quite healthy in most respects)] and I had already given up chocolate [ED: dark chocolate, or more specifically the cocoa found in high quantities in dark chocolate - is one of the most powerful antioxidants ever discovered]. Beer and bread could be a problem though.

The only requirement in the seven-fourteen day induction phase is to eat not more than 20 gram of carbohydrate per day. The book has a clear list of almost every foodstuff and their carbohydrate content. I found it really very easy. In fact, I was eating in a more healthy way in the induction stage than I had been eating before it!

I bought a carton of Ketone sticks from the local chemist to make sure that the Atkins Diet was working and I found that I wasn’t in ketosis [ED: "An abnormal increase of ketone bodies in the blood as in diabetes"] on the third day. It was very gratifying to know that I would be slimming down whatever I did and wherever I was all day long from now on.

I gave up bread (and Guinness!) for a fortnight and felt great. I actually felt ‘springy’ or ‘bouncy’ like a martial artist in the ring before a fight. I had no bother whatsoever staying within the 20 gram limit, although I did miss some fruits more than I’d expected. But I found ways to get around any ‘problem’ that cropped up.

There are hundreds of recipes and recommendations in the book so there’s no need to go into them here. I started eating breakfast before I went to work and dinner in the evenings regularly. I really enjoyed taking care over preparing lunch for work the next day, usually consisting of a salad, some cheese and various nuts to snack on. You can even eat a few strawberries too. In the evening, I would cook up something like a curry (no flour) eating it with green beans instead of rice; or a traditional British meal without potatoes followed by cheese and strawberries and cream. I lost 18 pounds in two weeks and felt better than I had for a decade.