Atkins Diet: How effective?

[Panakk]

Has anybody done the atkins diet and how effective is it?

 

[Urinal Mint]

I will find an article for you naming every reason NOT to do the Atkins Diet... hold on.

UPDATE: Unfortunately the article I wanted to point you to isn't available online, but it can be found in the May 2001 edition of Muscle Media magazine.

Basically the article talks about how bad it is for your body to cut out all the carbohydrates... you absolutely have to eat a balanced diet, and you can and will lose weight if you just change the foods you eat. You never ever have to cut carbs out of your diet.

Me, I lost 32 lbs in 3 months on the Body for Life diet... you can find more information about this at bodyforlife.com if you wish. I will stand by this diet for the rest of my life, because now that I eat the way I was originally intended to, I can't do it any other way.

Best of luck! PM me if you have any questions.

 

[jemcam]

It works very well. I did it, but it's hard. I was surprised to find how much I craved carbs after a week. No bread, crackers, pasta, milk, and most of all, beer. I lost 10 pounds in a week, but I got so tired of eating nothing but eggs, meat, and cheese. Gives you really bad BO too.

 

[ElFenix]

its effective if you want to lose a lot of water. thats what a whole lot of the diet is. low carb diets are effective if you're a varsity swimmer or something and need 5000 calories, theres pretty much no way you can get that many from carbs. but if not you should probably eat more vegetables.

 

[vash]

Atkins diet works very well, but it is very difficult in the first few weeks. Some people swear by it and have lost pounds and/or diseases by it. Other people find that having too much of that diet will hurt you more than it will help you. If you are serious about losing weight, try "The Zone" by Dr. Barry Sears. Its similar to the Atkins diet, but not quite as extreme in terms of how much/what kind of carbs to eat.

I've used "The Zone" to take off a lot of weight with minimal excercise and it could work for you.

vash

 

[montanafan]

I've never used their diet specifically, but low-carb diets do work for some people. Low-fat works for others. You just have to find the diet that is the easiest for you to stick with.

If you do decide to try to put your body into ketosis, make sure you're in good shape first and then expect to have some not particularly pleasant side effects.

 

[aimn]

I always get sick when I go on the diet. Everyone I know that uses this diet gains there weight back and has to do the diet over and over. I think that it is hard on your body.

 

[Rage187]

It works, but it is really important to start a good eating habit after the diet..


The no pasta thing just pissed me off...


I have to have pasta once a day at least...


And no I'm not fat

5'7 142

I also have a fast metabolism, so w/ the atkins diet I was always hungry..

 

[Panakk]

thanks guys. i guess i need to look around for a while before i decide on it.

 

[BDawg]

Research it a lot before you commit to the Atkins Diet. Most Doctors are strongly against it. It has been known to cause health problems. Just beware.

You can loose the weight if you eat a healthy diet and exercise!

 

[MrBond]

My Dad is on it. The stuff he eats makes me ill just looking at it. Think fair food, three meals a day. He'll fry up 4 eggs, cover them in cheese, and pour the damn thing onto his breakfast plate and eat it. He's lost weight, but Lord knows how much he's hurting his blood vessels. You think he'd know better...his Dad died of a heart attack and his brother almost died due to one. I've tried talking to him about it, but apparently the love of his children doesn't matter, he has to keep those precious 20lbs off.

I mean, if you can be strict enough to eliminate carbohydrates, why the hell can't you be strict enough to limit portions and eat a healthy diet.

 

[kami]

Funny how everyone thinks its just meat eggs and cheese. They didn't read the book. You're supposed to eat a LOT of vegetables (greens mostly) and you can have some fruit likw strawberries and raspberries.

 

[MrBond]

He will eat veggies on occasion. But last night, I made stir fry, and he didn't eat it in favor of some reheated pot roast, because "the vegetables have carbohydrates".

And he read the damn book...

 

[kami]

You are still supposed to have carbs damnit...you just have to limit them. And 90% of your carbs are supposed to come from veggies.


I dont see why people think this is unhealthy. People who follow the diet correctly lose weight (and not just water weight..), lower their blood pressure, and improve their blood cholesterol. Do you need a lot of protein for it to work? yes...but you don't need to eat red meat. What about chicken, turkey, and fish? Eggs in moderation are NOT bad for you either. or look at it this way...

Atkins person: has a burger but has NO bun and only puts lettuce or other veggies on it
Non-atkins person: has a burger with a bun (white flour is terrible for you), ketchup (1/2 sugar), mustard, relish, etc.

how is the person on atkins less healthy?

I'd say atkins is more of a no sugar than a no carb diet. They still emphasize GOOD carbs like vegetables but shun bad carbs such as white flour and sugar. As you go on further in the diet you can eat things such as whole grain bread.

people are so uneducated with the whole thing

 

[vash]

<< He will eat veggies on occasion. But last night, I made stir fry, and he didn't eat it in favor of some reheated pot roast, because &quot;the vegetables have carbohydrates&quot;. And he read the damn book... >>

Ok, that's a bit extreme. Not having any veggies is going to hurt him more than avoiding those veggie carbs. Veggie carbs are 100% good for the body. Some you can do without, but if the veggie is green, you *should* eat it. Try to talk to him some more to try and get him eating some more veggies with his steak and pot roast.

I tend to eat a relatively low carb diet and it keeps my weight off, but I eat plenty of veggies everyday.

Again, look up &quot;The Zone&quot; by Dr. Barry Sears. Not as extreme as Atkins, but much more balanced with it comes to carbs/protein/fat.

vash

 

[abracadabra1]

hmmm...hearing people talk about losing lots of weight by eating eggs, and meat, and cheese, and not exercising is pretty damn disturbing.

unless we're being merely superficial and are not losing weight for the health benefits I don't understand how anyone would ever embark on a diet that depletes your body of essential nutrients and a substance of utmost importance to overall good health and well-being- carbs.

sure, people have found nifty ways to get around exercising and eating right to lose 10 or 20 or 30 pounds, but the fact still remains that any of those individuals are just as unhealthy, and sometimes even more unhealthy than they were before they started their diet.

if you want to lose weight, it's really pretty simple- and you don't have to starve or limit yourself extensively.
1) eat right- 60, 20, 20 (60% calories from carbs, 20% from fats, 20% from protein)
- do not to eat super-fatty foods (e.g. stay away from all fast food, anything fried, candy bars or anything in vending machines including sodas)
- eat lots of fruits and vegetable and grain and poultry
- try not to eat red meat too often (no more than twice a week)
- fish is god's gift to dieters. little or no fat, and the fat that most fish do have is good fats- omega-3s and lots of poly and monounsaturated fats.
2) don't fall for the low-fat FDA gimick of the 80s! (if you eat low-fat foods- good. but don't think this gives you more leeway to splurge. eat the same quantity as you would of the normal food, otherwise you're really not changing the caloric intake).
3) exercise!! (this is extremely important. you eat right, you exercise, you lose weight- simple!)

anyways...it's pretty simple, eat right (don't over-eat and don't eat when you're not hungry) and exercise (cardiovascular! e.g. run, swim, jog, basketball (full court), keep that heart pumping )

 

[luv2chill]

A low carbohydrate diet can be followed without going to the extremes Dr. Atkins proposes. As already mention, the Zone is a much more sensible eating plan (calls for a ratio of 40-30-30 of carbs, fat, and protein).

I believe that carbohydrates do tend to play a big role in why many people are overweight. During the whole low-fat craze of the last ten years people as a whole got even fatter. That's because when you make something low-fat, the process involves pumping it full of carbohydrates. This, combined with the fact that the American diet is already overreliant upon carbohydrates (and mostly refined ones at that) has led to the mentality that &quot;as long as it's low in fat, I can eat as much of it as I want&quot;. Simply not true at all. The surges of insulin produced by all of this carbohydrate ingestion causes a resistance to insulin, meaning that more must be secreted. This has been shown to lead to obesity. Of course, there's also evidence to support that obesity itself contributes to insulin resistance so it tends to be a vicious cycle.

How do you restore your body's sensitivity to insulin? Stop stuffing your face with carbohydrates. This doesn't mean that you have to go for total elimination (which actually isn't even possible unless you ate nothing but meat--even egg whites have about one carb gram per egg). Atkins thinks Ketosis is where it's at but a lot of the other low-carb plans don't think entering ketosis has many benefits (by the way, ketosis is the state your body enters after several days of very minimal carbohydrate ingestion... it will switch over to the burning of fat calories for energy. It's not very efficient at doing so, thus Atkins believes that you get more bang for your buck [i.e. your body burns more fat than it should need to calorie-wise because it's not efficient enough]. Other experts say that ketosis' health risks outweigh the possible benefits--it can be dangerous and its side-effects are very unpleasant).

If I were you, in evaluating a way of eating, I'd look at the two extremes (Atkins on one end of the spectrum, high-carb, extremely low-fat on the other) and head right in between them. The reason that all three macronutrients (fat, protein, and carbohydrates) are present in most foods points to the fact that the body needs all three to function correctly. Taking one out almost entirely is asking for trouble IMHO.

Investigate the Zone diet--I think you'll find it a lot easier to stick with permanently (which ideally is what you want to aim for. Dieting for six months and then resuming your previous bad eating habits isn't of much benefit to your body).

The key to success in losing weight is to combine a healthy way of eating with moderate physical activity and adapt them to become permanent parts of your life. Long-term fat loss requires a lifetime commitment.

l2c

 

[Eug]

Why can't people just use the ONLY recommended diet, which is a well-balanced diet with mostly carb calories, some protein and some fat, supplemented with lots of good exercise?

A) It's the best and most effective.
B) It's the most healthy nutritionally
C) It's the cheapest (sources for carbs are cheap, and you don't have to pay for idiotic hocus pocus books)


<< And no I'm not fat

5'7 142

I also have a fast metabolism >>

May be true, but it's your statement can be a bit misleading. An obese person with the same level of activity as a thin person has a HIGHER metabolism. The reason a thin person is thin is because either 1) s/he eats less and/or 2) s/he is more active (and thus has a higher metabolism over the course of a day). ie. If you take two inactive desk jockeys, one fat and one thin, almost invariably the fat one simply eats more, and usually the thin person has the LOWER metabolism.

 

[blstriker]

An all protein diet is based on some screwy science. I heard susanne sommers on the radio (with rick dees the moron on kiis here in so cal) pushing this all protein diet and was trying to explain the science behind it. Her science is all jacked up.

She claimed (as well as all protein diet people) that protein does not cause the secretion of insulin (the substance that causes cells to uptake sugar). So according to her, if you don't have carbs, then you can eat anything and the cells won't take it up and you won't lose weight. That is a load of crap. Almost anything you eat, even proteins, will cause the secretion of insulin into your blood. Crack open any 1st year biochemistry/physiology book and take a look yourself.

How do you lose weight? Just make sure you're expenditures are more than your intake. But nobody wants to exercise and nobdoy wants to cut down on what they eat. There is no easy way out. That's way 99.99% of people on diets eventually gain it all back + some.

A lot of these fad diets will cause you to lose muscle mass in the process, not fat. However, it's your muscle mass that determines your basal metabolic rate and therefore how much energy you burn. As people take a diet, they lose muscle, stop the diet, have less muscle so they gain more weight, repeat cycle. Muscle uses the most energy and you need plenty of it. As you diet, you lose the very muscle that helps you lose weight.

Just eat a balanced diet, but control the amount you eat. Don't snack. Do you really think you can eat whatever you want and still lose weight in a healthy manner? No free lunch buddy. If you think you can, give me a call in 5 years and I guarentee you will not have lost any weight and would have most likely packed on several pounds.

There's a reason why 99.99% of doctors don't recommend an all protein diet. There's a reason that Dr. Atkins has zero respect in the scientific community.

I hope he just doesn't get anybody killed in the process of making his big bucks.

 

[Eug]

Good post blstriker.


<< A lot of these fad diets will cause you to lose muscle mass in the process, not fat. However, it's your muscle mass that determines your basal metabolic rate and therefore how much energy you burn. As people take a diet, they lose muscle, stop the diet, have less muscle so they gain more weight, repeat cycle. Muscle uses the most energy and you need plenty of it. As you diet, you lose the very muscle that helps you lose weight. >>

Very true. People get far too caught up in weight. I remember going to gym trainer saying that I wanted to gain some weight, ie. build strength for my sports. She said in all the years she was there, that was the first time she EVER had that request by someone in my situation (ie. not a body builder). Everyone else was obsessed with losing weight. By the way, the BEST shape I was in was back in my later university days. Very active, with good muscle mass. I weighed 70 kg at 5'7&quot;. Now I weigh about the same, but I am in nowhere near as good shape as before. And I eat MUCH less than I used to.

It irritates me to no end when I'm in the locker room and I hear two otherwise intelligent people talking about the virtues about the latest unhealthy fad diet. Just eat healthy food in moderation and get plenty of exercise, and stop those midnight trips to McChokeandPuke, and you'll be fine.

It's sad that North Americans on average have one of the highest caloric intakes in the world, and that we spend more on stoopid diets than many people in other countries spend on food.

 

[LuciferHaze]

All these diets are absolute money drainers! If you want to lose weight then you must eat non-fatty foods so the body will use its store of fat, exercise regularily and get enough sleep and try to eliminate as stress as possible.

 

[db]

Yep, forget the fancy diets.
You need to burn more than you eat, it's that simple.

 

[MrChicken]

I've used a low carb diet to lower my blood sugar levels. I know it sounds unbelievable and unhealthy, but it isnt. It doesnt work for everybody, nothing does. Yes if you stop a diet, any diet, you gain wieght unless you change your lifestyle.

My 6 months try at a low carb diet ended up lowering my blood sugar from 148 to 108, my cholesterol was 140. Not only did it lower my blood sugar, it stayed with a 15 point margin, no more 100-150 point swings. In my informal survey of the &quot;healty&quot; salad and veggie eating joggers no one was close my cholesterol numbers. Along the way I also lost 30 pounds, although I didnt want to. I was able to maintain my wieght somewhat by forcing to eat as much as I could stand. As soon as i started by eating when my appetite called, I lost 20 of those thirty pounds in about 6 weeks, and that is why I stopped the diet. The reason I think it works is simply that protein takes much longer to digest, after a week or so, you simple cant eat a whole lot. Unlike carbs that pass through quickly and leave you hungry soon after.

I never went into ketosis as I kept my carb level above what Atkins asks for in his diet phase, and basically used his maintenance phase where keep adding carbs until you start gaining weight again.

IMHO, all you have do is look at America and what Americans eat and you can see that the &quot;healty&quot; foods are making the country fatter.

People I work with and watch me eat mostly protein and marvel at how I stay thin, while they are eating salads and carbs and getting fatter, and they just dont see the connection. People often say &quot;If I ate like you, I'd be as big as a house&quot;, I'd love to say to them, &quot;You are as big as house, it's the way you eat.&quot;

 

[Facin]

One word:

E X E R C I S E!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Fireman]

A friend of mine who is a personal trainer did the Adkins diet and wrote a paper on it for a college course. Here was the bottom line:
He lost weight.
But he also:
Smelled bad
Was very fatigued
B/P and colest. numbers did not improve
And 25% of the weight he lost was LEAN MUSCLE MASS!!!! Yikes!
These were all verified with tests and bloodwork before and after.
Yes you loose weight, but you also loose muscle. and most people develop very bad eating habbits. When they go back to eating carbs, they mix it with all that high fat protein and WHAMMO!
Listen to Urinal Mint, go to http://www.bodyforlife.com/ and start a good COMMON SENSE life style. Eat healthy and exercize, why is that so hard for people to accept?