Having said that, it is possible that a low-carbohydrate diet helps you to lose weight by increasing your body's metabolism, which means you burn more calories sitting at your desk or sleeping at night than you might burn with a high-carbohydrate diet.
Exactly. Or as my grandfather would say....push away from the table. And while you're pushing away, do a few crunches!
FR post: What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?
page 6 of NYTimes article (6 of 8)
That, however, raised the question of why such a low-calorie regimen would also suppress hunger, which Atkins insisted was the signature characteristic of the diet. One possibility was Endocrinology 101: that fat and protein make you sated and, lacking carbohydrates and the ensuing swings of blood sugar and insulin, you stay sated. The other possibility arose from the fact that Atkins's diet is ''ketogenic.'' This means that insulin falls so low that you enter a state called ketosis, which is what happens during fasting and starvation. Your muscles and tissues burn body fat for energy, as does your brain in the form of fat molecules produced by the liver called ketones. Atkins saw ketosis as the obvious way to kick-start weight loss. He also liked to say that ketosis was so energizing that it was better than sex, which set him up for some ridicule. An inevitable criticism of Atkins's diet has been that ketosis is dangerous and to be avoided at all costs.
When I interviewed ketosis experts, however, they universally sided with Atkins, and suggested that maybe the medical community and the media confuse ketosis with ketoacidosis, a variant of ketosis that occurs in untreated diabetics and can be fatal. ''Doctors are scared of ketosis,'' says Richard Veech, an N.I.H. researcher who studied medicine at Harvard and then got his doctorate at Oxford University with the Nobel Laureate Hans Krebs. ''They're always worried about diabetic ketoacidosis. But ketosis is a normal physiologic state. I would argue it is the normal state of man. It's not normal to have McDonald's and a delicatessen around every corner. It's normal to starve.''
Simply put, ketosis is evolution's answer to the thrifty gene. We may have evolved to efficiently store fat for times of famine, says Veech, but we also evolved ketosis to efficiently live off that fat when necessary. Rather than being poison, which is how the press often refers to ketones, they make the body run more efficiently and provide a backup fuel source for the brain. Veech calls ketones ''magic'' and has shown that both the heart and brain run 25 percent more efficiently on ketones than on blood sugar.
Bingo.
The Atkins Diet should be renamed "The Diet For People Who Want To Lose Weight AND Sit On Their Asses".
Atkins works, but I have a more enjoyable way of losing fat when I need to - smoking crack (that works, too).
If folks would just walk three miles an evening instead of soaking in the Jeopardy/Wheel of Fortune Power Hour, they'd never have to waste money on diet books.
Having said that, it is possible that a low-carbohydrate diet helps you to lose weight by increasing your body's metabolism, which means you burn more calories sitting at your desk or sleeping at night than you might burn with a high-carbohydrate diet.
Do the research...the high-carb diet coincides with the Agro push for corn and other related products. 6-10 servings of grains a day?!?! C'mon, the studies on saccharin were a joke, just like the "food pyramid"!
Check your food at the store...look at the proliferation of corn syrup...even in items that DON'T NEED IT!
This also coincides with the increase in Type II diabetes, now being found in CHILDREN!
Think about it...we are the strongest, most prosperous Nation in the History of the world...and NOW the Government wants us to switch to an "agragian" Third-World diet?
Talk about keeping the masses fat, dumb and happy...
All part of the "Bread and Circuses" plan ...