What Foods Can Be Eaten on the Atkins Diet?

The Atkins diet is a low-carb diet that helps people lose weight by changing the way the body uses fat. There are four phases to the Atkins diet, each of which allows more carbs to be eaten. The first phase, which lasts two weeks and is called Induction, allows for very few carbs. This is the hardest part because carbs are in almost all of the wood we eat on a regular basis.

Breakfast

The only traditional breakfast foods you can eat are eggs, bacon and some sausages. You can make omelets but don't add a lot of hard cheeses. You can also have some low-carb fruit such as blackberries and raspberries. Other than this, you can have the standard Atkins food which is any meat at any time.

Lunch

You can eat as much fat and oil as you want. You should still choose what is healthy, but for the Atkins diet to work there are no limits on fat and oil. For lunch you can have salads that contain the following: alfalfa sprouts, celery, cucumbers, lettuce, radicchio, olives, radishes, bell peppers, rosemary, thyme and oregano. You can also consider putting tuna fish or chicken salad in a lettuce roll-up or low-carb tortilla.

Dinner

For dinner you will want to stick to meat, chicken, beef, seafood and pork--almost any meat. But don't put your meat on bread. This may seem odd or even hard at first, but you just have to accept it, if you want to follow the diet.

As for sides, you can have any of the previously mentioned salads. You can also have asparagus, greens, sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, water chestnuts summer squash and spring onions.

Basic Food

You need to remember that you can eat oils, fat, meat, cream, cheese and butter. If you stick to the Atkins plan you will need to permanently eliminate milk, white rice, white bread, white potatoes and pasta made with white flour.