Making it through the first week on the Atkins diet is something to feel good about. This new way of eating started to feel normal by the last few days of the first week. Things were getting easier, and I had some accomplishments that I was proud of.
Two of the beverages that a person is allowed to drink while doing the Induction Phase of the Atkins diet are water and tea. Before starting this diet, I was drinking one or two sodas each day. Within the first week of Atkins I had already gotten used to drinking a whole lot of water, and quite a bit of iced tea. Those drinks were, obviously, much healthier choices than soda.
I did not drink any soda, at all, for seven days straight. I cannot think of the last time I was able to accomplish that. I don’t think I’ve tried to do that ever before in my life. Although I kept expecting to feel the fatigue and headaches associated with caffeine withdraw, those symptoms never appeared.
My best guess as to why is that the amount of caffeine in all the black tea I was consuming was just enough to prevent withdraws. At the end of the first week, I found myself becoming very bored with black tea.
I bought some more when we went grocery shopping at the end of the week anyway, because I have few other choices right now. The black Tejava iced tea that I thought was such a treat at the beginning of the week has become somewhat less enticing after seven days.
At the end of the first week, it was starting to feel normal to eat this way. The food is still interesting, and it all tastes really good. I realized that I had gone from eating mostly frozen dinners to eating fresh foods. I had no desire to return to eating food from the microwave. I didn’t miss it. I was feeling pretty good, and had complete confidence that I would be able to continue the diet through the second week of the Induction Phase.
I avoided weighing myself until really late at night at the very end of the first week. I had a suspicion that I didn’t lose any weight at all. I knew that if I woke up and weighed myself and was still the same weight that it would make it harder for me to buy the right foods while grocery shopping. So I waited.
At the start of the first week of the Atkins diet, I weighed 180.5 pounds. At the very end of the first week, the scale read 178.5 pounds. I managed to lose two whole pounds! The Atkins diet was working for me.
Image by Rocky Lubbers on Flickr