First of all.. yes, I have read DANDR.. more than once.. so please don't answer this question by saying "Go read the book." Because I have, and I honestly can't remember seeing an answer to this question. (Sorry.. feeling oddly defensive, dunno why?)

Why is cheese supposed to be so limited during induction? It's carb content is so low.. Monterey jack, for instance, has .2g net carbs per ounce... So, the limit of 4oz. cheese is still less than 1 gram carbs.. Meanwhile, eggs are encouraged.. and just one egg alone is .6g!

Anyways....... just wondering..

Well, assuming you've read 2002 DANDR, the answer is because "most" of your 20 [net] carbs should be coming from vegetables.

If you're doing that... which can mean getting 12-15 net carbs from vegetables (the current guidelines from www.aktins.com), you have a limited amount of carbs left for your other food.

You'll notice in DANDR that Dr. Atkins says to count cheese at 1 net carb per ounce... which for most cheese is certainly counting too many carbs!

And... cheese is binding. If constipation is an issue, then having more than the 3-4 ounce limit of cheese won't be "a good thing".

Also, he found that people will over eat on cheese... and thus, they probably don't eat enough vegetables.

And... a lot of people have issues with too much dairy... so the limit does help with that.

Also, if you use the USDA counter for counting your carbs, you'll see that eggs have a lower net carb count than the .6 in the Atkins carb counter.

Hope that helps!

Thanks for the info.
I dunno, I guess I am very fortunate that I am not at all lactose intolerant........ I did binge on cheese today though (guess Dr. A. was right about that), but I feel great! If I'd binged on cereal, I'd feel like cr@p right now...... so I dunno... Maybe it's different for different people? I guess I will wait it out and see what happens..

Cheese is one of those things I don't have to worry about bingeing on, even though I like it. I don't eat it daily, maybe a couple times a week.

However, I do eat other dairy...yogurt, cottage cheese and heavy cream. I don't eat many veggies at all, just never cared for them that much. So I choose to spend my carbs on dairy. Has worked for me so far.

Just my 2 cents worth...FWIW.

Ron

The Atkins Induction rule is 3-4 ounces per day. Like all the Induction rules, this is not necessarily something that you have to keep in your plan for the rest of your life. :-)

After the first two weeks of limited choices, you'll begin to slowly and carefully experiment, using your tastes and your metabolism to find a WOE that will work for you, for life.

I love cheese but if I eat too much I stall - I don't think it's the carbs, just something else going on there. I don't know if other plans restrict it to the extent Atkins Induction does. I started on Atkins but have moved away from it - I am finding my own way on a cross between PP and zero carb (if that makes any sense at all) Basically just tweaking my own low carb WOE thing to see what works - keeping cheese low (I eat it every day but limit it to approx 2 ozs) seems to help. Just my 2 cents....

It could be an intolerance to dairy.

Sometimes we're intolerant to a food, but since it's "legal", we have trouble believing/accepting that it could be a problem food for "us"... so we stick to eating it, and only give it up as a trial.

If the trial abstinence works, we might get to the point where we understand that "that food" (in this case, cheese), is a food that doesn't work for us, individually.

The cheese restriction was present in the original Atkins, but the revised versions don't discuss limits on cheese during Induction.

Dr. A did mention, though, that for people who have a yeast overgrowth issue (which a lot of overweight people do, because yeast loooooves sugar!), cheese can cause you to stall. In the chapter about troubleshooting/stalling, where he introduces the "fat fast" concept, he mentions this briefly and then moves on to other topics.



Sara