The Atkins diet is one of the best I have seen. I have several freinds who have been on it for at least two years and all have experienced amazing weight loss and increases in energy levels. I tried the diet but cannot stay on it because I have a family history of Poly-Cystic Kidneys and I need to lower my protein levels. However while I did the induction diet and a few months of the maintinence diet I had better energy and lost what little weight I could lose. I had always thought the pot belly was from fat, it turns out it's my X3 sized kidneys pushing my organs out of shape.
I had my cholesterol tested after a month of the diet and the levels were dropping from the rather high levels I had been tested at before the diet. I know others who have tested their cholesterol levels after many months on the diet and they too have had their levels improve dramaticly. Other health indicatiors are improved as well, blood pressure, etc...
The secret to the diet is in its concept of placing the body into its winter mode. For most of us light skinned folk whose ancestors evolved in more northern climes were from areas where you had seasonal variations in the food supply, for half the year they had limited access to carbohydrate rich foods. Thus protein and fat rich foods (nuts, hunting, etc) were the norm for that time of year, and their bodies shifted cycle to adapt and survive. The calorie rich carbos were eaten in the spring and summer while available and turned into survival fat for the lean time to come. When the level of carbohydrate intake decreased the body would go into a fat burning mode (ketosis). If you drasticly cut the volume of food eaten, as most conventional diets require, your body thinks there is a famine and it goes into a special starvation mode, which is why most diets dont work very well or for very long.
Once we became "civilized" we had access to rich carbohydrates year round, however our bodies were still adapted for the winter/summer cycle. While we were working our butts off as an agrarian culture we burned those calories off, but now that we are an industrialized culture we dont get the same level of exercise and our bodies stay in the summer "store up fat for the winter" cycle and we get fat on rich, refined carbos.
So, your choices to lose weight, as they always have been, is intake less calories or ouput more activity. The Atkins diet doesn't avoid this cycle in some magic way, it simply limits the intake of calorie rich carbos and takes advantage of a natural body cycle to burn off the existing fat reserves the body has. Of course you still need to exercise, Dr. Atkins says that in his books, and you must take vitamin supliments in the induction and weight loss phase. Of course once you get into the maintinence phase you can eat something like 100 grams of carbos each day, thats 3 sodas, or a couple peices of fruit, or even a samwich or two depending on the bread.
So the question is, which is more logical, working within the physiological methods the body uses for survival, or starve yourself?
Outlaw |
