(AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Kim Kardashian has recently shed a whopping 60 pounds following the birth of her son Saint, as Entertainment Tonight recently highlighted.
She dropped the weight on the Atkins diet — which means she ate pork and cheese along the way.
Colette Heimowitz, the nutritionist who helped create her diet, recently spoke to Business Insider about the secrets to her success, and gave us some advice.
Here are some tips she gave us.
1. Don't starve yourself
For starters, Heimowitz advises people to not totally deprive themselves of calories.
"People find that they may lose at 1,200 calories for a little while and then they stop losing and they end to cut back further on calories. Then they’re at 1,000 and then they need to cut back further to continue to lose and now they’re starving all the time, and when calories are chronically low over an extended period of time, you’re metabolism will slow down to compensate," she said. (That's true your metabolism can slow down.)
That's not to say diets should be a calorie free-for-all; they're still part of the equation, she said. "Calories are an important player, but I don’t think they’re the star player," Heimowitz said. On Kardashian's plan, she ate about 1,500-1,800 calories a day, though on Atkins, the lowered carb intake makes the body shift to burning fat instead of sugar.
But there's another reason to not starve yourself during the day, whether you're on Atkins or any other diet: it predisposes you to over indulge.
"When you’re starving nothing will stop you from grabbing a donut," Heimowitz said, noting that when on a diet, you should "never go hungry."
2. If you're doing Atkins, don't make it about the butter-slathered bacon
(Mmm..bacon.Thomson Reuters)
Heimowitz told me that the reputation Atkins has for being a bacon-slathered meat fest isn't entirely true; it's about watching your net carb intake — which is found by subtracting the fiber from your carb intake.
High fiber can come from fibrous grains, like oatmeal — so you don't have to completely eliminate carbs — but you should eat mostly fruits and vegetables, which is a core component of any healthy diet.
3. Follow these 3 core principles: eat adequate protein, high fiber carbs, and healthy fats
(Israa O./Yelp)
So what if Atkins is not for you? Heimowitz has some crucial advice, that, while rooted in her Atkins approach, may work well for most people, regardless of their diets.
"People don’t want to do structured programs sometimes," she said, "so I like to talk about overarching principles of a diet, the overarching principle of Atkins first — adequate protein. Not excessive protein but eat protein at every meals. The next overarching principle [is consuming] high fiber carbohydrates."