Fat Man Speaks Against New Atkins Diet
Mar 12th, 2010 | 15 responses
I am a grizzled veteran of the weight-loss wars and have yet to win a battle. So, it was with much fear and angst I read today that the famous Atkins diet is making a comeback.
Its reincarnation is “The New Atkins For A New You: The Ultimate Diet For Shedding Weight and Feeling Great,” a best seller in that genre. Folks, it’s a ripoff as are so many diet books. All it does is recommend fewer fatty foods such as steak and suggest more vegetables than the earlier book.
It remains a low carbohydrate, high protein diet in all other forms.
Elisa Zied, a registered dietician and spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association, says the carb intake in the Atkins diet still is too low and a rapid 10-15 pound weight loss in two to three weeks is harmful to one’s health.
She cites studies that prove people who follow diets similar to Atkins regain their original weight and more after three years. Back in the 60s when I followed the Atkins formula, I gained 10 pounds more than when I started in just six months.
The problem I have with the pop culture diet books is they offer a quick fix to reach a goal but upon attaining it, few follow a sensible program to maintain their ideal weight. Anyone staying forever on some of these diets is playing Russian roulette with their liver, kidneys or heart.
Zied offers some reasonable dietary guidelines that mixes foods with low calorie values that include vegetables, starch, fruit, lean poultry, fish and beef and low-fat dairy products. She is a big proponent of soy products. But with the caveat all taken in small portions.
Unless one is in denial, fat people are experts on matters involving the food chain and nutrients each block of the pyramid offer. They’re fat because they eat too much, especially the wrong foods high in saturated fat, corn fructose, anything hydrogenated and as in the case of all packaged foods, sodium — a liquid-retention ingredient used for flavor and preservative.
At one time, I joined Overeaters Anonymous which borrows AA’s 12-step program treating the condition as a disease. After listening to members telling their horror stories, I was convinced obesity is not a disease but a defensive compulsion to eat to feel some good in their sorry lives.
Until a month ago, I hadn’t embarked on a diet for 20 years, didn’t care, until I weighed in with the girth of a defensive tackle trying out for a National Football League team.
Forgive me, I don’t want to sound like a testimonial, but I have subscribed to NutriSystem’s dietary program for diabetic seniors. The initial results are incredible. It is essentially a high fiber, high protein menu low in both calories and “good” carbohydrates accomplished by small portions.
More than losing weight, it has improved my blood sugar readings both before and after meals for the first time in my life. I’m taking much less dosages of insulin to maintain. I feel better and found a new spring in my step.
I must say the menu, with much variety, is not a gourmet’s delight and doesn’t taste as well as it looks on the television ads featuring sports celebrities Dan Marino, Lawrence Taylor and Don Shula.
15 Responses to “Fat Man Speaks Against New Atkins Diet”
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that's great news that you found something that works for you Jer. Keep going!
I have the same 15 pounds following me around too, up down up down. Feels SO much better when down rather than up.
Different people have different experiences in OA as in AA, depends so much on the 'culture' of the different people in each group. I'm for anything that works for each person; to each their own. And I think it's better for many/ most to be with high energy or positive people about most any endeavor. Dont want to go away with more probs than you came with. lol
I think the studies in psychoneurology and neurophsiology are going to give more answers about what the difference is in physiology and brain chemistry between the 'hollow leg people' who eat and eat and never gain, people who have no 'shut down, I'm full signal (or thirst signal for that matter), and people who eat moderately and gain far more weight than 'hollow leg' people, and anorexia which makes a person be repulsed by food and exhibit body dysphoria also, and people who choose mood elevating foods almost exclusively, people who love the smell taste texture of food, others who literally forget to eat and/or are not taken by the sensual qualities of food, and people who are easily able to thrive in veganism, and others not. There is so much to learn yet.
While we wait….lol. You're right; some kind of health sparing and health bringing way of eating. Mindfulness helps too
thanks Jer too for telling us the food is ok in Nutrisystem but not as gorgeous as the pictures.
In the meantime, Atkins is a franchise run by various since Atkins death from an accidental fall on the ice some years back. One thing I've noticed about 'diet books' (I used to have enough to insulate a whole wall…lol) is that the 'founder' of the diet prob needs to be alive to hawk it. Tarnower (murdered by Jean), Atkins long gone now, others who have come and gone… so have their 'diets.'
There’s an interesting post over at the Health Journal Club that makes the case that people should just not eat anything that wasn’t a food 100 years ago. Gets rid of the aspartame, bleached GM flour, high fructose corn syrup garbage they try to pass off as food these days. If interested you can read on it here,
http://healthjournalclub.blogspot.com/2010/01/1…
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I would suggest that your dietitian friend is dead wrong and steeped in conventional thinking, which is also, for the most part, is dead wrong in matters of weight loss and weight loss maintenance.
I say this as a middle-aged, post menopausal diabetic female who has lost and kept off 75 pounds for 3.5 years now. And who has come off diabetes and high-blood pressure meds while doing so. My morning BP now ranges around 110/65 and A1c down to 4.9, which vastly improved lipid numbers. And this was with a high-fat, Atkins-type diet. My diet has evolved from Atkins to a more paleo-type eating pattern (avoiding all food products and eating foods provided by nature in the form that nature provides).
The formula is *not* as simple as calories in vs calories out. A good starting place to read is Gary Taubes essay 'What if it's all been a bit fat lie', expanded into his 600 page 'Good Calories Bad Calories'
I'm with you, VManning…. There is documented credible “science” behind the benefits of a relatively high-fat, high protein, moderate/simple carb diet, and, having read a number of source materials, personally, vs relying on subjective reporting, I am convinced intellectually, which matches my own experience. If one loses weight, improves health parameters, no longer needs mediating medications and is happy doing so, then God bless Atkins! This newest book has the authenticity of amending the original 1972 diet, based on scientific discoveries over the past thirty years. I honestly believe, not only from my own circumstances but those of many friends, that people who don't succeed on Atkins have only themselves to blame – like when I indulged in eating the entire top of my daughter's wedding cake!
If you regain the weight, it's because you ate things that are not good for you on anybody's diet.
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The Atkins diet is widely misunderstood. The main message in what Atkins wrote is to eat nutrient-rich foods. That ends up excluding a lot of the over-processed carbohydrates we're used to eating, but low-carb is a secondary point, and one he relaxes a bit after a few weeks.
As for “russian roulette with your heart,” he was a cardiologist. The whole reason he invented the diet was to help patients improve their blood chemistry, not to lose weight. It worked, dramatically better than the alternatives.
But it was my impression, as Dr. E. suggests, that Dr. Atkins lost control over the Atkins brand. Even a few years before his death, the company was peddling low-carb bagels and other highly-processed monstrosities that it's hard to imagine the author of his book approving of.
Natural vs. artificial certainly makes sense as good nutrition. Other ways I've seen this expressed are to eat food 'as grown' (you should be able to recognize the food that came from a plant, as in a fruit or vegetable or in products made from whole grain) or to stick mostly to the perimeter of the grocery store to avoid the processed foods on all of the shelves in the middle aisle.
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I started Atkins, six years ago. I lost 40 pounds and have kept it off. My blood pressure is great, my LDL is down, my HDL is up. In fact my doctor said he rarely sees such good levels in his North American clients (he's from Africa).
Atkins works for me. It's not a diet, it's a way of eating for the rest of my life. Everyone needs to find what works for them and I'm very glad I found Atkins.
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