If diets were religons, this guy would be Hubbard

[InnerBrat]

My sister, whom I happen to be quite fond of, has just recently started on the Aktins diet.

Doesm anybody knw anythign about it, specifically, how eating lots of fat is supposed to help her lose weight, and are fears linking it to scurvy founded?

How do I tell her she's an idiot without actually telling her she's an idiot (to which she won't listen)?

[Joe]

I don't know much about these diets.

It is true that you're likely to consume more fats on the Atkins diet. However, you will also likely consume more positive calories (calories that have something positive to go with them, like protein) under this diet than negative calories. Carbohydrates tend to be more negative.

And the fears about scurvy are unfounded, as long as you make sure to get some Vitamin C, be it through a supplement or an ocassional orange.

[Darth Wong]

My sister, whom I happen to be quite fond of, has just recently started on the Aktins diet.

Doesm anybody knw anythign about it, specifically, how eating lots of fat is supposed to help her lose weight, and are fears linking it to scurvy founded?

How do I tell her she's an idiot without actually telling her she's an idiot (to which she won't listen)?

My brother's a fitness trainer and rants about these high-protein low-carb diets all the time. Basically, the deal is that you pump yourself full of high-protein foods even if they're fatty because you get most of your weight gain from carbs, so if you cut down on the carbs you'll still lose weight.

What they forget to mention is that protein is harder to metabolize and your body will be working overtime to digest this food. It forces your body into a wasting state where it starts rapidly consuming its fatty deposits.

However, this is not a healthy condition, and it can cause serious problems with your internal organs. According to this article from HeartInfo.Org, we are talking about "muscle breakdown, dehydration, headaches, nausea, and kidney problems." How much is weight loss worth?

[Joe]

How much is weight loss worth?

Quite a bit, if you need to lower your weight in order to be healthy.

[Darth Wong]

How much is weight loss worth?

Quite a bit, if you need to lower your weight in order to be healthy.

Sacrificing your health in order to improve your health is a pointless exercise. There are better ways to lose weight, and after he gets off the diet, he'll balloon right back up to his previous size.

The human body gains weight until it finds a state of equilibrium based on food intake and activity level. If he wants permanent weight loss, he needs to make permanent adjustments in his food intake or activity level or both. That's the deal, and if he doesn't like it, too bad. Fad diets don't work in the long run.

[InnerBrat]

Hmmm...

Unfortunately she's had an unhealthy relationship with food for about a decade now (N.B. I do not think she's fat - she has a slightly high BMI, but is not obese), and this is just the latest one.

So, to her, weight loss is probably worth it. It makes no snese that an intelligent, sensible biology teacher would do this to her body, though.

Apparently body image confidence is not genetic....

[Darth Wong]

Hmmm...

Unfortunately she's had an unhealthy relationship with food for about a decade now (N.B. I do not think she's fat - she has a slightly high BMI, but is not obese), and this is just the latest one.

Whoops- I thought it was a he, not a she. Anyway, it seems impossible for women nowadays to be content with their bodies. Rebecca thinks she's too fat, and if you've seen the pictures on my website, she's obviously not fat at all. All I can do is keep telling her that it's just not true.

So, to her, weight loss is probably worth it. It makes no snese that an intelligent, sensible biology teacher would do this to her body, though.

Apparently body image confidence is not genetic....

As a man, the subject of female body image confidence is a grand mystery to me.

[Sokar]

The whole Atkins thing is bullshit, regrettably its well pubished bullshit so lots of folks fall for it.
A good friend of mine has struggled with his weight for the better part of his life and was turned on to the Atkins diet a couple of years ago. At first it worked wonderfully and he lost like 85 lbs, but its not a way to 'keep' the weight off. As soon as he went off of the full on diet , even a limited amount of carbs caused him to gain back almost all th weight. He's learned his lesson finally and is now on the one path to physical fitness, eat right and exercise, and lo and behold, it works

Tell your sister that there is no miracle cure all for weight loss, other than a sensible diet and exercise. All things in moderation and try to avoid lots of processed sugars, one thing our bodies NEVER had to contend with until 150 yeas ago was refined cane sugar.

[Wicked Pilot]

Tell your sister to exercise. It reduces stress, improves fitness, and can be fun.

[Trytostaydead]

Carbohydrates are GOOD for you in the first place, fat is BAD for you.

The key to weight control/loss is not a miracle formula, it's a balanced diet and regular exercise.

Fat will block up your guts, causing increased stool transit time which results in a build up of toxins that can cause problems and most likely cancer down the road.

[Rye]

Tell her the sad state of the matter is that exercise is the best cure of fatness, everything else is just a lazy man's route out of exercise.

[seanrobertson]

The whole Atkins thing is bullshit, regrettably its well pubished bullshit so lots of folks fall for it.

I don't think it's bullshit at all.

As a lifestyle, it's intolerable and, yes, the results are misleading...the initial diuresis throws most people off.

But cyclic ketogenic diets, which is really how most use Atkins' diet, are very, very effective.

A good friend of mine has struggled with his weight for the better part of his life and was turned on to the Atkins diet a couple of years ago. At first it worked wonderfully and he lost like 85 lbs, but its not a way to 'keep' the weight off. As soon as he went off of the full on diet , even a limited amount of carbs caused him to gain back almost all th weight. He's learned his lesson finally and is now on the one path to physical fitness, eat right and exercise, and lo and behold, it works

As soon as? How long did it take him to regain the weight?

A lb. of fat contains about 3,500 kcal. You can't magically gain a tremendous about of bodyfat unless you're simply consuming too much food.

Tell your sister that there is no miracle cure all for weight loss, other than a sensible diet and exercise. All things in moderation and try to avoid lots of processed sugars, one thing our bodies NEVER had to contend with until 150 yeas ago was refined cane sugar.

Most simple carbs, especially when your body isn't going to use them for fuel (usually after dark), aren't a great idea for the weight conscious, yes.

But I do agree that someone needs exercise (primarily weights IMO...cardio's good for the heart, but it takes a LOT to make for worthwhile fat loss), and their diet should be something they can "live on" for most of their lives.

[Lord Poe]

Ladies and gents, I'm a moon-sized 425 pounds right now. I've been on the "Weight Watchers" diet for some time now, and lost 50 pounds initially.

Currently, my weight is on a yo-yo cycle and I can't get past 420. But its nothing to do with thyroid, being "big boned" or anything else. Its ME not following the diet program correctly-i.e-being LAZY. Weight Watchers WORKS , you just have to keep at it. I've been doing it for a year, and this is the longest I've ever held on to a diet.

I also understand that I'll have to do this diet FOREVER, so I'd better get used to it soon. But when you're a stubborn fuck like me, it takes a while. The Atkin's diet attacks your system. WW does not. BTW, Jared from Subway didn't find some magical food in sandwiches. He basically starved himself every day. I converted his diet to WW stats, and he was undereating by about 15 "points" per day.

This DOES work, too. I was sicker than a dog about a week ago, and ate as little as good old Jared. I lost 12 pounds in a week. Again, not recommended, but I'm tempted to try it for a while. Just no one tell my fiancee, my mom, my sister......

[Gil Hamilton]

The Atkins diet never struck me as very useful, since it's a major crash diet. I've never really bought into miracle diets.

The way I've always stayed in shape is a good 5km walk/jog on a regular basis with my dog Joey, make use of the local indoor pool, basic exercises, and that. It works for me. Funny thing is I never really lost weight. I've been known to lose a pants size and gain 2 pounds for it. *shrug*

[seanrobertson]

My brother's a fitness trainer and rants about these high-protein low-carb diets all the time. Basically, the deal is that you pump yourself full of high-protein foods even if they're fatty because you get most of your weight gain from carbs, so if you cut down on the carbs you'll still lose weight.

More or less, yes, only the emphasis is more on fat consumption than protein--about a 75/25 split (yes, it's nasty).

The idea is that carbohydrates spike your insulin levels which, even in a caloric deficit, leads to fat retention (not wholly true in all cases, but it can make for slow fat loss).

When you eliminate them, your body needs an alternative source of fuel. Fat's less efficient, but after you've eliminated or reduced carbs to trace levels for a couple of days, your body begins using that fat and burning it as ketones.

Now that you're in ketosis, you still have to be wary of just how much you're consuming--energy in, energy out--but fat's burned at a much more dramatic rate than on most conventional diets; i.e., the very high-carb, low protein, low fat variety a'la the "food pyramid."

Your brain prefers glucose as fuel, and some of the protein you eat on such a diet is actually converted to as much (especially when your ratio of fats isn't high enough and, in which case, you're no longer in ketosis). So it's no surprise that ketosis usually makes someone feel like utter shit. There's a big initial water loss which usually entails someone's electrolyte balance getting all fucked up, which does not help.

But after a week or so, you feel much better. It becomes not so much the inefficiency of your fuel as the taste of the shit...anyone who thinks they can eat lots of eggs, bacon, beef, and so on *without condiments* and carb-laden side-dishes needs to put that to the test and do a round with Atkins' KD.

That's why I would never have someone follow that diet for very long periods at a time. I'd probably do it in a cyclic manner, allowing the dieter to carb load for a couple of days every two weeks or thereabouts.

What they forget to mention is that protein is harder to metabolize and your body will be working overtime to digest this food. It forces your body into a wasting state where it starts rapidly consuming its fatty deposits.

Which is good to a point. We don't want that extending to lean body mass, nor do we want someone to be sapped of energy (which they will be if they don't follow a proper ketogenic diet and eat LOTS of fat).

However, this is not a healthy condition, and it can cause serious problems with your internal organs. According to this article from HeartInfo.Org, we are talking about "muscle breakdown, dehydration, headaches, nausea, and kidney problems." How much is weight loss worth?

Well, to some extent, every diet will cause catabolism and dehydration. There are ways to avoid losing muscle, such as not dipping the calories too low, and I have to say that with some experience CKDing, I've never had headaches, nausea, or kidney problems. (The dehydration is unavoidable when you're stripped of carbs and your glycogen stores dwindle, but that's the point at which one makes a concerted effort to keep, among other things, their potassium consumption up.)

CKDs are very effective in burning a lot of bodyfat fairly quickly, but they're too damned hard to stick with for very long. How Atkins could have people follow such diets for many weeks, months, and even YEARS on end blows my mind...I would go crazy. Two months of the shit, even with carbing periods every weekend, would be enough to make me nuts.

[Queeb Salaron]

My mother weighed about 350 lbs. at her heaviest. She tried everything, from WW to Jenny Craig to the Atkins diet, all the while exercizing. She got down to about 320 over the span of a year, but her health was just terrible. She was constantly short of breath, high blood pressure / cholesterol, etc.

She ended up having Gastric Bypass surgery, which essentially makes your stomach the size of a golf-ball, and a year later had shed 100 lbs. She recently celebrated two years, and is now down to and maintaining a weight of 175 lbs.

Doctors make this a last-resort, of course. When the diets and exercize don't work, surgery is the only option.

I don't know why that is relevant, but it seemed worth mentioning.

[seanrobertson]

Carbohydrates are GOOD for you in the first place, fat is BAD for you.

Bodyfat is beyond a certain threshold, definitely. But dietary lipids/fat are not inherently bad at all. (Just from the vantage point of your sex drive alone, try a very low, low fat diet for a few months and see what happens. You'll find that a reduced testosterone level is to blame.)

Nor is it so simple that all carbs are good for us, all the time.

Food, exercise--these things are contextually-dependent. It's not easy to make generalizations about things that are simply "good" or "bad" for us regardless of circumstances.

The key to weight control/loss is not a miracle formula, it's a balanced diet and regular exercise.

Sure, but a balanced diet as such--especially the one that most of us were taught as school kids--is somewhat flawed. Orbital insulin levels do not good fat loss allow, and the amount of carbs the FDA specifies as "proper" for its food pyramid WILL jack someone's blood sugar on up there. For a dieter, that's just spinning your wheels.

[Cardiovascular] exercise is good inasmuch as I think it gives a fleeting boost to your metabolism, but the actual practice of, say, running itself does remarkably little in terms of kcal consumption. It helps, but not as much as people think...again, one must keep this activity in the relevant context, though; e.g., did our new jogger do anything physical at all prior to hitting the pavement for six miles a day?

Increased lean body mass, however, is a sure-fire way to burn more fat while at rest, and weights are the only efficient means of acquiring that. Anyone can build muscle, no matter their genetic makeup. Men can gain a whole lot. Women a little, but more than they imagine (and they'll still look damn good with it...the only way 99.9999% of women might look masculine is if they injected several grams of anabolic/androgenic steroids weekly in addition to hard lifting).

Fat will block up your guts, causing increased stool transit time which results in a build up of toxins that can cause problems and most likely cancer down the road.

That sounds like a slippery slope, with all due respect.

I had no such problems following a cyclic ketogenic diet, which is a less extreme [though more kcal conscious form of] the diet Atkins popularized. Mind you, I didn't stick with the thing for very long: for one, I was at a fairly lean starting point and only wanted to get leaner for vain reasons; and two, the thing is TOUGH. It's easily harder than any other diet I could imagine, short of just not eating period.

It's not all bad, friends. Trust me. It's more than just a fad, though I do not agree with Atkins' contention that one should stick to a high fat, high protein diet FOREVER. Maybe now that he rests in peace he can, but 'til then, fuck that! Gotta have some carbs, Doc.

[Queeb Salaron]

i just heard that Atkins died today... is that the motivation for this thread??

[seanrobertson]

The Atkins diet never struck me as very useful, since it's a major crash diet. I've never really bought into miracle diets.

The way I've always stayed in shape is a good 5km walk/jog on a regular basis with my dog Joey, make use of the local indoor pool, basic exercises, and that. It works for me. Funny thing is I never really lost weight. I've been known to lose a pants size and gain 2 pounds for it. *shrug*

Sounds good You leaned up and gained muscle. To an extent, a fair amount of LBM is a good thing IMO; when we think about weight-consciousness, we're really thinking bodyfat. There's such a thing as carrying so much muscle that it's plenty hard on the body--and usually the means to acquire as much ain't real healthy either, ask our Efitness "friends," LOL--but that's far from a concern to most people.

Atkins' diet's actually the opposite of a crash diet...he wanted his folks to follow it for a lifetime. EEEEK!

The way I do his diet actually is a sort of "crash," though I never cut calories below a certain level, don't cut them at too fast a rate, and I cycled long periods of ketosis with some high carb days.

Oh well. Joey must be a really good dog to stick with you for 5 klicks, Gil I miss walking my old dog.

[seanrobertson]

i just heard that Atkins died today... is that the motivation for this thread??

I dunno on the last count, but you're right--he died last night I think. I hope the poor guy finally allowed himself some ice cream or something before he fell into a coma

[Gil Hamilton]

Sounds good You leaned up and gained muscle. To an extent, a fair amount of LBM is a good thing IMO; when we think about weight-consciousness, we're really thinking bodyfat. There's such a thing as carrying so much muscle that it's plenty hard on the body--and usually the means to acquire as much ain't real healthy either, ask our Efitness "friends," LOL--but that's far from a concern to most people.

Atkins' diet's actually the opposite of a crash diet...he wanted his folks to follow it for a lifetime. EEEEK!

The way I do his diet actually is a sort of "crash," though I never cut calories below a certain level, don't cut them at too fast a rate, and I cycled long periods of ketosis with some high carb days.

Oh well. Joey must be a really good dog to stick with you for 5 klicks, Gil I miss walking my old dog.

*nod* It's just that I've been 260 lbs for like forever no matter what I do to myself. If I hacked off a leg on night, I'd wake up to find my head be a 3 foot sphere.

And Joey is a good dog, and since he's a young fit cattledog, he can do 5km, plus chase after a tennis ball launched from an atalatle, and still have pep. I, on the other hand, go home, set up the Coca-cola IV, and try not to move for a couple of hours.




Incidently, Late Night had a great quote tonight on a rerun of one of the "In the Year 2000..." sketches.
"A professional soccer team will crash in the Andes mountains. Though there is plenty of food available, the team will resort to cannibalism to stay on the Atkins diet."

[Baron Scarpia]

Another bad side effect of the Atkins diet is the effect on the brain's seratonin levels. Many people who are on it experience significant levels of depression due to the brain's loss of seratonin, something that comes from carbs.

I lost 85 pounds through a regimen of diet and exercise, and I've kept it off (unlike many Atkins followers), because I changed the way I eat and my lifestyle. The key to really losing weight is to change how you live, there are no short cuts or quick fixes.

[Queeb Salaron]

I dunno on the last count, but you're right--he died last night I think. I hope the poor guy finally allowed himself some ice cream or something before he fell into a coma

::Watches that comment teeter on the edge of tastefulness::

::Applauds the balancing act::

::Eats popcorn and waddles off::

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Carbohydrates are hardly good for you. The problem with the Atkins diet is that it's total. Atkins preached the eating of stuff dripping in saturated fat without an attempt to minimize any of the negative aspects of what you were eating (Want a hot dog? Okay. Want a deep-fried hot-dog? Atkins would think that's something other than insane).

What you really need to do is:

1. Exercise. Exercise. Exercise. Over and over and get it in even more. For the really lazy people out there I would suggest putting a stationary bicycle in front of the television. But whatever you do, get at least an hour of some sort of exercise daily. Anything else is insufficient unless your job involves physical labour.

2. A balance of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and meats/dairy products is probably ideal. Avoid sugars (except as received naturally) and processed grains. Do what you can to minimize saturated fat in the cooking process.

3. Brutally prevent yourself from eating sweets and anything else containing processed sugar. Use a sugar-alternative in your coffee if you sweeten it. Etc.

Basically, the idea is that you find stuff which is processed the heck out of - grains and sugars - until all of the nutritional value has ceased to exist. Do. Not. Eat. It. Why can't people enjoy the taste of other foods? A lot of the stuff we have available today for a pittance is fit for kings. Instead people eat twinkees. That's simply insane.

With a few simple steps, and without any diet program at all, you can lose as much weight as you want and stay quite healthy. Of course, it requires discipline and self-control. These things are lacking in many people today, so perhaps it should not be surprising that temptation and lethargy overtakes them.

[Exonerate]

Errm didn't Atkins just go into a coma?

Main thing is still staying active. Of course, metabolism varies from person to person. I can eat like a pig and still not gain much weight...