Put 1 pound/500 grams of ground meat or ground beef, 1-2 eggs and your choice of spices/vegetables/cheese or whatever you like to add in a bowl. Blend the ingredients together with your hands. I like to use salt, pepper, tomato cheese, garlic and onion.

Make small cakes or burgers and fry them in a pan.

Aspartame is marketed under a number of different names, some of them including Equal, NutraSweet and Candarel. Due to the bad reputation of aspartame, the producer is planning to rebrand it to “AminoSweet”.

Even though Aspartame was previously listed by the Pentagon as a biochemical warfare agent it has been allowed into food because of financial pressure.

Some of the side effects aspartame can cause is headache, changes in vision, convulsions and seizures, hallucination, nausea and vomiting, joint pain, sleep problems, anxiety, depression, as well as many other problems.

It also contribute to many chronical illnesses such as AIDS, ALS, alzheimer’s, brain lesions, dementia, epilepsy, hearing loss, hormonal imbalances, hypoglycemia, memory loss, multiple sclerosis (MS), neuroendocrine disorders and parkinson’s.

Source: Aspartame: What you don’t know can hurt you

The base:

100-150 grams of butter (at room temperature)
250 grams of ground almonds
(As mentioned above I would also add a sweetener)

The filling:

3 dl of cream
3 dl of  of sour cream
125 grams of cream cheese
1 pack of sugarfree jelly with half the amount of water (should amount to about 4 dl of liquid)

Blend the ingredients for the base well and press it into a springform to evenly cover the tin.

Make your jelly and let it cool. Mix sour cream with cream cheese until it is smooth. Add whipped cream and jelly to your cheese mix and put it in your refridgerator over night. Cover your base with the mix and put in in the refridgerator over night.

I didn’t calculate this myself, but I read that this bread has less than 1 net carb pr slice if you cut really thin slices.

Here’s what you need:
- 6 large eggs (I used 7 medium sized eggs)
- 300 grams of creme fraiche
- 100 grams of ground almonds
- 100 grams of ground walnuts
- 100 grams of ground safflower seed
- 50 grams of safflower seeds
- 4 tablespoons of psyllium husk fiber
- two handfuls of bran fiber
- 1 teaspoon of salt
- your choice of sweetener (I used 3 teaspoons of erythritol)
- 2-3 teaspoons of baking powder (the original recipe uses yeast, but since there is no flour in this recipe I used baking powder instead)

See the google calculator to translate this recipe to ounces or other measurements.

Mix all ingredients together and put it in two silicone bread pans. Bake it in the oven for 60-70 minutes at 160 degrees C/320 degrees F in an oven with convection. I put the whole mix in one bread pan and put it in the oven at 175 degrees C for 90 minutes (with a baking sheet on top of it for the last 30 minutes), but next time I will try using two bread pans to bake it faster.

Instead of posting the instructions here, I am adding a link to a great video I found on youtube.

Ingredients:

- 4 eggs
- 4 tablespoons of heavy cream
- 4 tablespoons of butter
- 1 tablespoon of erythritol
- Pinch of salt
- 1 teaspoon baking powder (could probably be skipped)
- 4-5 tablespoons of coconut powder (it is probably the same as coconut flour, but I haven’t been able to get a hold of coconut flour, so if you are using that, experiment with the amount needed)

Melt the butter and mix with eggs and cream. Add erythritol, salt, baking powder and coconut powder. Whisk it all together. Fry small pancakes in a pan.

I came across this lovely story about the dog Diva that lives with a family in Florida. Their 12 year old daughter, Hunter,  is a diabetic. The dog sleeps close to her and will get up several times during the night to smell her breath. If the daughter’s blood sugar levels are high or low, Diva will alert her parents.

Diabetic service dogs like Diva are trained by All Purpose Canines. There has been a huge demand for these type of dogs, so they have a long waiting list.

Read more of this story at Huffington Post.

Glycemic index is a ranking of how much different carbs affect your blood glucose level. The quicker the carbohydrates can be absorbed by your body, the higher the GI of the food is. The index value is found by giving test persons 50 grams of carbohydrate from a certain food and comparing it to the effect 50 grams of glucose has on the blood sugar. Foods containing only fat and proteins therefore have no glycemic index. Fiber, which is a type of carbohydrate, cannot be digested by the body and therefore does not affect your blood sugar.

Examples of foods with a high GI are white bread, sugar, potatoes and instant white rice. Most vegetables and many fruits have a low GI.

Glycemic load takes both the GI of a food, the amount of carbohydrates the food contain and the amount of that food you eat into account. A food can have a high GI, but a low amount of carbohydrate pr 100 grams compared to other foods. Therefore the GL is more interesting as it tells you something about the total load on your blood sugar.

When your blood sugar increases, your body has to produce insulin to absorb the glucose into your cells. Therefore, the higher glycemic load, the more insulin your body must produce. This is negative for your health and the cause of obesity.

This all may sound a little complicated, so don’t let it confuse you too much. I will cover more practical information and tips in other articles.

Atkins learnt that eating refined carbohydrates such as sugar and flour was the main cause of obesity in western society. When reducing the intake of high carbohydrate foods the body’s metabolism switches from using glucose as energy to burning stored fat. This is called ketosis and happens when insulin levels are low. Carbohydrates increase the glucose level (bloodsugar level). Therefore the body must produce more insulin the more carbs you eat and your body will not be able to use stored fat as fuel.

The Atkins diet restricts net carbs which is carbohydrates that can be digested. Net carbohydrates can be calculated by subtracting fiber from total carbohydrates.

The Atkins diet consists of four phases: induction, ongoing weight loss, pre-maintenance and maintenance.

Induction

The induction phase is the most restrictive phase of the Atkins Nutritional approach and it is recommended to stay in this phase for two weeks. The carb intake is limited to 20 net carbs pr day, which causes the body to enter ketosis.

Ongoing weight loss

During this phase the daily carbohydrate intake is increased by 5 net carbs pr week until you find your “Critical carbohydrate level” for losing weight and your weight is 4.5 kg (10 pounds) away from your target weight.

Pre-maintenance

The carbohydrate intake is increased by 10 net carbs pr week to find the maximum amount of carbohydrates you can eat before you start gaining weight.

Maintenance

In this phase you use what you’ve learnt in the previous phases to maintain your weight.

This is the revised edition of Dr Atkins original book, Diet Revolution from 1972. The book is a must have for people new to the Atkins diet as it explains how and why the diet works for weightloss, how to maintain your weight and good health. It also contains recipes and a gram carb counter.

Read more about Dr Atkins New Diet Revolution

Atkins for life: The Complete Controlled Carb Program for Permanent Weight Loss

This book complements Dr Atkins New Diet Revolution. for people that have discovered that reducing the carbohydrate intake is a healthy lifestyle and want to learn how to eat to maintain or loose weight. The book contains 125 recipes, a lot of menu plans and tips to help you stick to the diet.

Read more about Atkins for life

There are many other books available, both by Robert Atkins and other writers that can be helpful when following the Atkins diet, but since books come and go I have only named the top two books here on this page. Click here for a list of other atkins diet books.