Atkins Diet

FL270

New Member
OK ... I'm curious ... mrivc211 mentioned in his "death thread" that he was on Atkins. I'm about ten days in to it myself, and wondering who else has done it and what kind of luck you've had with it.

FL270
 
I did it for a week and a half...didn't make it too far. I lost 10 pounds so it was working for me, but I had a hard time with the lack of beverage choices. I hate artificial sweetener.
 
Lost 50 pounds in about 6 months.
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But, it was coupled with a lifestyle change, too, went through a divorce, started playing tennis 3-4 times a week and no home cooked meals lying around the kitchen when I come home anymore!
 
Well I have pretty strong opinions about this and any other diet. I won't go into all the details cause I don't want to offend any one, but if you make lifestyle changes by using portion control, balanced diet, exercise, etc. you will lose more and keep it off and be a lot healthier in the end, then you will by clogging your ateries with fatty, protein only foods. You are going to have bowel problems and heart disease if you really make this type of diet a "life long" change.
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Okay, here's the deal on Atkins .

First. It really shouldn't be called a diet. It's a lifestyle change.

I've been on it for about 9 months. I lost 20 some pounds and have kept it off, and I've had a ton more energy and I don't get the 3:00 brain fog anymore either.

It works very well, but you have to do it as the book tells you. You can't just stop eating carbs altogether, nor do you have to.

It works.

To the person who hate artificial sweeteners: try Spenda it tastes like sugar. I hate Nutrasweet and Sachrine, they both taste funky to me, but Spenda doesn't.
 
I've done Atkins, and each time I do it I find that the lack of carbos just kills me every time I work out. I've done it a few times now, and every time I bag it after about 3 weeks. It definitely works, but I just don't have enough fuel for exercising when on Atkins.

I'm a meat eater, and always will be, but (for me at least) my body needs at least *some* carbs to really function properly. Keeping the carbos down but not eliminating them entirely works alot better for me.
 
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Well I have pretty strong opinions about this and any other diet. I won't go into all the details cause I don't want to offend any one, but if you make lifestyle changes by using portion control, balanced diet, exercise, etc. you will lose more and keep it off and be a lot healthier in the end, then you will by clogging your ateries with fatty, protein only foods. You are going to have bowel problems and heart disease if you really make this type of diet a "life long" change.

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I have to disagree with this. The only time fatty foods result in cholesterol problems is when you raise your blood sugar and therefore cause your body to produce insulin, which is the stimulant to store fat and leads to cholesterol buildup and artery hardening problems. In the absense of blood sugar, your liver infuses glycogen in your blood stream, which cues your body to burn stored fat and burn any carbs in your system. Cholesterol passes through your system with no adverse side effects.

Over the course of my diet, my cholesterol LOWERED from 204 to 163! No bowel problems and I've never been healthier. This diet has been studied at length by the Mayo clinic and deemed to be healthy, IF FOLLOWED. If you cheat, which a lot of people do, then you're asking for trouble. Only if you eat a diet high in fat and pair it with foods high in carbs will you experience the side effects you've mentioned.

In the absense of carbs, its a great and safe diet.

I ditto what you said about requiring a lifestyle change, though. Any diet will just be followed by a gain if you don't make permanent changes in diet and lifestyle. Otherwise, you're right back to where you started. "If you keep on doing what you've always done, you'll keep on getting what you always got."

I've transitioned to a "normal" diet now, and watch fat grams and calories, along with my regular tennis schedule. I've not gained a single pound in over a year.
 
The no-protein all carb diet also works. Why? Because you are eliminating a HUGE amount of food. The other reason it works is because you are starting a diet so all together you will be more conscience of what you are eating. But you can't eat no protein or no carbs forever and once you stop, you will start gaining again. The key to life is everything in moderation! If you have reasonable amounts of protein, carbs, fruits and veggies, and exercise, you will lose weight! Unless you have a thyroid problem.
 
whatever happened to just watching your portions and eating a balanced diet (protiens, fruit, veggies, breads, etc)?
To me, studies aside, Atkins just doesn't seem healthy because you're leaving so much of a normal human being's diet completely out. I know it works. It's an awfully big change to make permanently.

Sarah
 
Hmm. Well the reports of heart problems and bowel problems I got were from people who followed the diet very strictly, exactly as it said. I myself have never done the diet because I can barely force myself to eat enough protein to be balanced. I am sure it is different for everyone. Is it not true that all that saturated fat is going to hurt your cholesteral? That is what I have always read and heard. It may "work", but so does a balanced diet, so why risk the high fat intake, just incase it does have the negative results on you? You NEED fruits to get a lot of the anti-oxidants and other minerals and nutrients. You may not notice now, but I imagine that some day you will have a lack of nutrients from not eating fruit! These are the nutrients that help you fight cancer and other diseases. I guess, for me, I just feel like you should do everything in moderation and make it a life change instead of risking the yo-yo effects and bodt changes you may not want.
 
Actually...

As I said if you do Atkins correctly your body will no longer store the fat you consume, but rather burn it. Also Atkins at no point advocates totally eliminating carbs from your diet. Instead he has you give up the carbs which have little or no nutritional value (like white breads and pasta).

Before I started I ate really bad. Since then I've eaten more veggies than I ever have. So now when I go and get a steak instead of having the steak and a potato, I have the steak and a salad.

As far as losing more weight by using portion control and exercise goes, please check out this article from WebMD.

WebMD Article

Also, as far as heart disease goes, my grandfather who ate very low fat all his life ended up with diabetes and needing a quad bypass. After talking about his diet with his doctor they felt that it was because he ate a very high carb diet (he's Cuban and pretty much eats black beans and rice, very little meat). His doctor put him on Atkins.

The problem with Atkins is that there are a lot of people out there trying to "do it", without being educated about it. It is a lifestyle change, not a diet first off. If you're going to do it, it's got to be life long. You don't just jump in and stop eating carbs.

I've strong feels about diets as well. They don't work. This is mainly because diets are temporary in nature. You go on the diet, suffer, lose the weight, and then go off it, and utimately gain the weight back. If you change your lifestyle you'll lose the weight and keep it off, but it take disipline.

It's very interesting, my wife and I have both been trying to lose weight. She's doing it by counting calories and I'm on Atkins. She takes in 1400 calories a day and works out quite a bit. I workout twice a week for an hour and eat around 40 grams of carbs a day. We've both been doing this for about 9 months. I've lost 20 some pounds. She's maybe lost 4 pounds. She even more disiplined than I am.

In the end Atkins or portion control or the cabbage soup diet, you have to choose a lifestyle that you can live with. I love Atkins, can eat most of the things I could before and the weight loss and increased energy is worth every bit of pasta I gave up, but the thing about it is: I don't really feel like I've given up anything.

Later.

Naunga
 
It works quite well, but unless you're the type who cooks all your own meals (or married to someone who does) it's difficult to stick to as the American food industry is so slanted toward carbohydrates in the form of grains, corn and corn byproducts (start looking at labels more closely and you'll discover that nearly all manufactured foods have some "high fructose corn syrup" in them). An interesting aside, anyone notice that the beginning of America's obesity problem coincided with the introduction of the Dept of Agriculture's carb-heavy "Food Pyramid"? The "Four Food Groups" was more balanced but less profitable, which is why it was replaced.

With absolutely zero exercise involved, I dropped around 60 lbs three years ago on a diet of cheese-covered scrambled eggs and bacon, Double Quarter Pounders with cheese (minus the bun), and chicken caesar salads. Once your body remembers how to turn to bodyfat for energy (a process called ketogenic lipolysis), which takes about 3 days (enough time to deplete your blood glycogen stores, while on a diet of less than 20 grams of carbs per day), the weight melts off--quickly at first, then more slowly but steadily. And the bonus is, if you're doing it right, you'll never be hungry as the diet is qualitatively restricted, not quantitatively. You can eat all you want, provided what you're eating is on the "approved" list.

Read Atkins' book and heed a couple of important caveats: A) because the diet has a strong diuretic effect, ya gotta drink a ton of water to keep hydrated; and B) the daily vitamin and fish oil supplements are not optional. Your weight loss will come to a screeching halt if you discontinue them.

As more people go on the various low-carb diets it's getting easier to eat out more regularly and stick to the diet, but it takes diligence. I imagine it's almost impossible on an airline pilot diet of airport terminal food.
 
I can't not have carbs, agh! I like my meats and all, but not enough to have meatloaf and bacon 24/7. That said, I don't see any problem cutting down on Carbs proportion wise.

I think that if people want to use the Atkin, more power to'em! I know people it has worked for, so I can't complain.

I would, personally, that is, go with TheWife's recommendations though. It may be tougher, but it is healthier in the long run. That said, I don't have much of a regimine, but I do know I need to get in shape. Diets (Atkins isn't a 'diet', per se) DON'T WORK.. They make people larger in the long run...

Eat right, exercize, and as soon as I follow my own advice, I'll tell you how it's working
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I can't imagine what a low-fiber diet like that is doing to your colon... blah.

How does the Atkins work for people who actually do want to be fairly active? Do you have the energy for it?
 
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The no-protein all carb diet also works. Why? Because you are eliminating a HUGE amount of food. The other reason it works is because you are starting a diet so all together you will be more conscience of what you are eating. But you can't eat no protein or no carbs forever and once you stop, you will start gaining again.

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I have to disagree again. You can eat as much volume of food as you want on atkins, so long as you keep the blood sugar level low. Its not weight loss based on volume of food. Its completely caused by understanding how the body processes food and what chemical processes cause it to store and burn fat, which is the yin/yang relationship of insuling to glycogen in the bloodstream.

Also, you CAN live on an all protein diet forever. There are lots of examples, aboriginy (sp?) tribes that live totally off meat, eskimos that used to live totally on a diet of fish. Carbs are a non-essential dietary element. Protein, however, cannot be eliminated from a diet. This is not to say that a protein only diet is healthy. That's NOT what the Atkins plan is. Controlling your carbs is the key. You still need variety to insure that you're getting all the vitamins and minerals that will make you healthy.

Lastly, to the post about energy loss, this is a short-lived effect that usually takes about 3-4 weeks to pass. After that, you'll start to see an increase in your energy level and your muscle endurance will increase, leading to better workouts.
 
Well I guess something different works for everyone because after having a baby I was really uh, puffing up. I started eating the right portions, following the food pyramid, and especially watching saturated fat intake. I don't exercise though, which I need to do, but I do housework and chase a kid all day which is quite aerobic. I don't know why your wife has not seen results, I have lost 45 pounds in one year and I have never felt hungry or deprived. I hate seeing people just unloading their wallets for gym memberships, diet books, weight loss clinics, when it seems you should be able to do it yourself! Maybe your wife, even at 1400 cals, is still taking in more then she burns? I do not know, but I agree with Sarah.
 
If I lost as much weight as some people say on the Atkins diet, my body would go into shock.
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I have lost 20 lbs since I got my last medical, and I haven't really changed eating habits at all. I just exercise a lot. Granted I work on the ramp, so tossing 70-100 lbs bags all day long kinda gets the heart rate up.

Want a really good, fun work out? Try playing Dance Dance Revolution. I started playing that about four months ago (my wife got my hooked on it), and I actually wind up more sore and tired after that than I used to after working out at the gym. I'm the dork that had two dance pads for the PS2 AND plays at the arcade.....
 
" I'm the dork that had two dance pads for the PS2 AND plays at the arcade....."

So you're the guy I quietly chuckle at whenever I go to the arcade to ravage the claw machines of their animals.!
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To me, studies aside, Atkins just doesn't seem healthy because you're leaving so much of a normal human being's diet completely out.

[/ QUOTE ]A "normal human being's diet"?! What exactly do you think that is? (Hint: the Industrial Revolution altered the "typical diet" DRAMATICALLY, so you're gonna have to go before then to flesh out the "normal" human diet...and when you do, it'll look an awful lot like Atkins...heavy on the fats and proteins, light on the carbs.

EDIT: Ha! There it is, right in that link:
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Before the advent of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, all people were hunter-gatherers: they gathered various fruits and vegetables to eat, they hunted animals for their meat. Of course, the ratio of meat and vegetables varied with geographic location, climate, and season, people were still hunter-gatherers. Until they began cultivating grains and livestock, they rarely if ever drank milk beyond infancy or ate grains .

With the spread of agriculture, people shifted from nomadic groups to relatively stable and larger societies to tend the fields. Culture and knowledge flourished. People also began consuming large amounts of grain, milk, and domesticated meat. And they became more sedentary as well.

With the industrial revolution, the diet changed even more dramatically. Beginning around 1900, whole grains were routinely refined, removing much of their nutrition, and refined sugar started to become commonplace. Reflecting on the changes in 1939, nutritionist Jean Bogert noted, "The machine age has had the effect of forcing upon the peoples of the industrial nations (especially the United States) the most gigantic human feeding experiment ever attempted.

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Just wanted to add two things:

1) I hope my posts didn't come off as confrontational. Its hard to have voice inflection or body language on the net. So, I'm not attacking anyone, I just hate it when people attack atkins as "unhealthy" based on misinformation. Which leads to my second point...

2) You really need to read and understand the Atkins plan. As has been mentioned, you eat TONS of vegetables on the plan. You just have to be selective about what you're eating so as not to take in too many carbs and drive up your blood sugar.

WAY too many people proclaim they're "doing the Atkins thing" and try to totally eliminate carbs from their diets. Hey, if less is good, none is better, right? Wrong. You need balance and variety in your diet for this plan to work. You really have to read the book and follow it. But, alas, most people are too lazy to read a whole book, much less do what it says. That's why we end up fat and looking for a quick fix to begin with.

Bottom line, if you read the book and do what it says, there's absolutely nothing unhealthy about it. In fact, I believe its the most healthy lifestyle you can adopt. And clinical studies are continuously backing this up, which is why you're starting to see all the low carb foods pop up, much like the low-fat craze in the 80's, which didn't work at all!

Well, gotta run, time for a cheeseburger!!
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