Considering Atkins

Bleh, Atkins...southbeach....mediteranian. Whatever. Ya'll keep adhering to your apostate diets, I'll keep adhering to the one TRUE diet, peace be upon it, The Twinkie Diet.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html

To go back to the original poster.

I think you have two groups of people posting here.


1. The dieters, who are looking for something magical that works for them, in this case Atkins, but there are many different fad diets, HCG, Paleo, it is hard to keep up on what the flavor of the month is. The bottom line is, if it works for you, and you can loose and keep the weight of, great go for it. The only thing that matters is calories in and calories out. Any diet that restricts calories intake will cause weight loss. But for most dieters it only works for a time, they yoyo in weight up and down, and blame their lack of adherence to their diet, hence they try to have more faith and better stick with it. And like religion, they seem to want to spread their faith.

2. Secondly, if you have health issues, like high cholesterol, diabetes, etc, yes you need to work with a dietitian to come up with a sustainable diet that works for you. Don't try to get this on this board or any website, too much of the stuff is just plainly made up, distorted, and likely will do you more harm than good.

3. In my opinion, for most of us, eating less and substituting healthier items in your diet is the way to go. There is no quick solution for weight loss, and the ones who think they have it are just yo-yoing up and down all the time. Check out "The hacker diet", he said it best. If you got overweight, your bodies control is out of control and you need to keep track of your calories and eat less to keep your weight in a healthy range. So forget about diets, either eat less calories or exercise more to lose more calories. That's it, nothing magically that you need to do.

To go back to the original poster.

I think you have two groups of people posting here.


1. The dieters, who are looking for something magical that works for them, in this case Atkins, but there are many different fad diets, HCG, Paleo, it is hard to keep up on what the flavor of the month is. The bottom line is, if it works for you, and you can loose and keep the weight of, great go for it. The only thing that matters is calories in and calories out. Any diet that restricts calories intake will cause weight loss. But for most dieters it only works for a time, they yoyo in weight up and down, and blame their lack of adherence to their diet, hence they try to have more faith and better stick with it. And like religion, they seem to want to spread their faith.

2. Secondly, if you have health issues, like high cholesterol, diabetes, etc, yes you need to work with a dietitian to come up with a sustainable diet that works for you. Don't try to get this on this board or any website, too much of the stuff is just plainly made up, distorted, and likely will do you more harm than good.

3. In my opinion, for most of us, eating less and substituting healthier items in your diet is the way to go. There is no quick solution for weight loss, and the ones who think they have it are just yo-yoing up and down all the time. Check out "The hacker diet", he said it best. If you got overweight, your bodies control is out of control and you need to keep track of your calories and eat less to keep your weight in a healthy range. So forget about diets, either eat less calories or exercise more to lose more calories. That's it, nothing magically that you need to do.

1. Atkins is not a fad diet. It is a well thought out Lifestyle change.

2. Most dieticians and nutritionists are changing people over to Low Carb eating plans emphasizing whole foods eating. You can't go wrong with eating WHOLE foods and staying away from processed crap.

3. Define what substituting "healthier items" as you go???? If you are saying like many others on this site that substituting a diet coke cake instead of a piece of real, home made cake - then it is actually worse off. Oh, but most think its healthier just all in the name of "lower calories'

I am so glad I don't have to worry about calorie counting and the issues that plague the calorie counters on this site. I would rather blow my brains out.

I am so glad I don't have to worry about calorie counting and the issues that plague the calorie counters on this site. I would rather blow my brains out.

Please don't do that. All my aunts who did atkins have gained the weight back plus some....though when they were doing it they all lost tons of weight and looked great, it wasn't worth what they're dealing with now....more weight and disappointment:(

You can do it w/o atkins:flowerforyou:

the point is: not all people can. for instance, people who are already insulin resistant will do very well on a carbohydrate restricted diet. And, after having gone through all Atkins phases, a person may end up with an eating pattern that isn't so weird, but that contains: a very little amount of carbohydrate from grains, much more carbohydrates from fresh, non starchy vegetables, protein from lean sources, a bit of protein from legumes and healthy fats, perhaps a little dairy and a sensible intake of fruit. all in all, a very healthy way of eating.

Anyone who starts eating according to their previous pattern after having restricted their intake of anyone will gain weight back. It's not typical for Atkins that that should be happening.

We don't have to argue Atkins. There is no scientific data supporting it.

The high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet popularized by Dr. Robert Atkins Diet Revolution has been the subject of heated debate in medical circles for three decades. Now, preliminary research findings at Duke University Medical Center show that a low-carbohydrate diet such as the Atkins Diet can indeed lead to significant and sustained weight loss. .... patients’ cholesterol levels improved by the end of six months ....

We don't have to argue Atkins. There is no scientific data supporting it.

I don’t believe you for a second, in fact IMO you are intentionally misleading. If anyone doesn’t know Mr. Jknops2 is a biologist and I believe works for the University of Nebraska. I only mention this because as such he should be able to easily look up any research on the Atkins diet and would know there are indeed studies backing up the Atkins diet. Like this out of Duke University.

The high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet popularized by Dr. Robert Atkins Diet Revolution has been the subject of heated debate in medical circles for three decades. Now, preliminary research findings at Duke University Medical Center show that a low-carbohydrate diet such as the Atkins Diet can indeed lead to significant and sustained weight loss. .... patients’ cholesterol levels improved by the end of six months ....

And the TONS of studies you can find here.

http://www.lowcarb.ca/newsmenu/researchfor.html

To be fair I suppose there is a possibility a Biologist at a major University might not have heard of or seen any of these studies,,,,, I will let you decide.

We don't have to argue Atkins. There is no scientific data supporting it.

I don’t believe you for a second, in fact IMO you are intentionally misleading. If anyone doesn’t know Mr. Jknops2 is a biologist and I believe works for the University of Nebraska. I only mention this because as such he should be able to easily look up any research on the Atkins diet and would know there are indeed studies backing up the Atkins diet. Like this out of Duke University.

The high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet popularized by Dr. Robert Atkins Diet Revolution has been the subject of heated debate in medical circles for three decades. Now, preliminary research findings at Duke University Medical Center show that a low-carbohydrate diet such as the Atkins Diet can indeed lead to significant and sustained weight loss. .... patients’ cholesterol levels improved by the end of six months ....

And the TONS of studies you can find here.

http://www.lowcarb.ca/newsmenu/researchfor.html

To be fair I suppose there is a possibility a Biologist at a major University might not have heard of or seen any of these studies,,,,, I will let you decide.

OK, I do have access to primary literature and to pick on the Duke article that you mention, there is a follow up note:

Fleming. Am J M 2003, 114, 78. Caloric intake, not carbohydrate or fat consumption, determines weight loss.

This states the following:

"Because the average caloric intake reported in the study was 1447 kcal/d and the estimated caloric intake entering the study was 1905 kcal/d (an estimate that I consider relatively accurate since the mean entry weight of subjects enrolled in the study was 191 _ 24 lbs), then the caloric deficit was 400 to 450 calories per day, which would result in 0.8 to 0.9 lbs of weight lost per week, regardless of fat intake.

"it is clear that the total cholesterol level fell by an average of only 11 mg/dL, while the LDL cholesterol level dropped by an average of only 10 mg/dL." "Furthermore, only 1 subject had a cholesterol level <195 mg/dL while following the prescribed low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet."

"The results of the study by Westman et al. confirm earlier findings that reduction in total caloric content is the key to weight reduction and subsequent control, and that the effect of either high-fat or highly refined carbohydrate diets can blunt the potential benefits obtained with caloric restriction"


I stand by my point that there is no credible evidence, just crappy misleading websites. And no, I do not have time to read all those articles.