Posted on 11/12/2003 4:38:02 PM PST by SJackson
Had to respond to this part - can you find me a "diet" where you don't gain it back after you stop dieting?
I've been doing Atkins this past year (lost 25, holidays put back about 10). The underlying aspect to Atkins (and most diets) is a lifestyle change - you need to keep up with your changed eating habits, because that is what caused you to lose your weight (your original habits caused you to put it on :-)
False - the body has NO need of carbohydrates and can survive indefinitely without them.
The body runs out of energy during extended draw, and there have been numerous problems with stones like was mentioned.
Actually during any thing more than 45 minutes of strenuous exercise carbs are a non issue. Run for 45 minutes and your body exhausts its glycogen. You are burning fat. As to the kidney stones - the standard elevated calcium argument that is run out is moot. After 6 or so weeks on low carb levels normalize.
I recommend a balanced diet with no less than 50% carbs and preferred 60%.
I will stick with Atkins and the Eades and Wolfgang Lutz. That diet may work for an athlete but anyone who lives a normal life will steadily become a hog.
Don't be fooled like a lot of people with one-size-fits-all books about weight loss that are written to make money and don't tell the whole truth all the time. They are the illusion of health, not the reality. Short term weight loss is not the answer to good health. And these diets can be nothing else but short term as the longer you stay on these diets, the better the chance of the fore mentioned health problems.
Well my Wife and I have been on the diet 7 years. We both are lighter, have no digestion problems, (at least when my wife is not pregant or breastfeeding) no need for Prosac or Zantac, dramatically fewer headaches, better skin, rock stable blood sugar etc. When we were eating 50 to 60 % carb that wasn't the case.
It is you who has been fooled by one size fits all diets. Fat consumption has fallen from ~40% to ~32% from 1970 to the present with an associate rise in carb consumption. This is a dream scenario for all of your nutrition teachers however strangely enough obesity and diabetes have EXPLODED! By your reasoning things should have gone the other way. But don't let the facts get in the way of a good Hypothesis! Doctor Atkins has been talking about the effect of excess carb consumption for years. What did he say was the ultimate outcome? Obesity and Diabetes. He called it Diabesity. The clowns who said he was wrong want us to cut out more fat and eat more grain!!!! Give me good meat, green and yellow vegetables, dairy and fish thank you.
Read Wolfgang Lutz's book "Life without Bread". The Eades' "Protein Power Life Plan", later Atkins books, Mercola's books including "The No Grain Diet" etc.
I have been reading the opposition for years. I bought the low fat BS. I believed in "the carbohydrate advantage". I was wrong. My wife gave me a book that allowed me to look at the ridiculous Atkins' point of view. It was Protein Power. If she had given me Atkins' book I would not have read it and investigated further. It would have been my loss.
What kind of BS is this. If you go off of any diet IT DOESN'T WORK.
Let me ask you a personal question - are you a vegetarian? a lacto vegetarian? Looking at your links it sure seems that way! Good luck and take plenty of supplements if you are(especially B12 because vegans are universally deficient) Doesn't matter that essential vitamins and minerals are missing vegans say that that is our "natural" diet!
Contempt prior to investigation. You are hopelessly brainwashed and cannot look at the other side. I was there but saw the light. I hope you get the truth so you don't lead anyone else astray.
Good Luck
Spina bifida in babies is linked with cornflakes and white bread
On a whim, I decided to give this low-carb thing a try last April. It wasn't Atkins. But close to it. I simply tried cutting out all processed junk food from my diet (which contains most of the carbs anyhow) and ate only natural foods. I still had carbs, but they came from natural sources like berries, yogurt, nuts and vegetables instead of unnatural sources like cookies, cakes, pies, chips and crackers.
I started losing weight quickly. My energy level also increased dramatically so that I not only was able to start a vigorous exercise program, but I actually wanted to exercise. Now when I sit in a chair, I unconsciously start rocking myself or shaking my legs because I have so much energy built up inside of me (which was something I used to do as a kid). As the exercise increased, the weight loss intensified. I went from 300 pounds to 196 pounds within seven months. (Average weight for my 6'3" frame is 185-190 so I am pretty much where I need to be now.)
Now I'm not saying that this diet will work for everybody. But it did work for me and I know it worked for others. I cannot possibly imagine it being an unhealthy diet because it consists of all the foods that humans have been eating for thousands of years. Meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, berries, nuts, yogurt, olive oil, even beer, wine and whole-grain bread from time to time. On the other hand, all the foods I gave up were only created over the past century. I'm talking all the hydrogenated vegetable oils and the high fructose corn syrups and all those other artificial flavors and additives that are thrown into our (processed) food these days.
Think about what you just said! No matter what kind of diet you are on, you are going to gain the weight back as soon as you go back to your old way of eating! Major DUH! The key to successful weight loss is to make a permanent lifestyle change. Any effort to lose weight through a temporary change in diet and exercise is doomed to failure.
All my efforts to lose weight on the traditional low-fat diets resulted in disaster because I just could not deal with the constant hunger pangs. Okay, call me undisciplined or lacking in willpower, but the bottom line was, I couldn't stick on a low-fat diet. Sooner or later, I'd break down and pig out in a major way, immediately reversing any weight loss (and usually adding to it).
With this low-carb (I prefer to call it normal-carb) diet, the first thing I noticed was that I no longer had to snack between meals because I just didn't get hungry. For breakfast, I'll have a couple of eggs and a cup of blueberry yogurt and that tides me over to lunch with no problem. In the past, I could eat a stack of pancakes or two large bowls of cereal for breakfast and by mid-morning, I'd be starving again so I'd get a pastry or a donut or a couple of bagels. Then I'd be ravenous for lunch!
I'm amazed at how little I eat for breakfast and lunch (my usual lunch is a tin of sardines) and yet I make it to supper with no need to snack whatsoever. The few times that I do snack, I am content with a handful of nuts or a hunk of cheese.
So this is a way of eating I have no trouble sticking with because I don't have those constant hunger pangs anymore.
What I don't respect is his coming into this thread with a bunch of discredited research. Unfortunately I don't have the time and inclination to discredit his copy and paste post. I wish Dana113 or 1114 or whatever her name was was still posting. She had a veritable trove of information with links ready to post on the issue. I just read and eat this way. I stay about 100 grams and weight is never an issue.
Congratulation on the weight loss. It is one of the fastest and most impressive I have seen. My wife is at lowcarbfriends.com and there are a lot of other success stories similar to yours and mine. These are people who bought into the lowfat thing (I did 8 years ago!) and thought they didn't have willpower. I know you have never opened a huge bag of chips for a few and found yourself finishing it a few minutes later. I however have. I went on this diet, got into ketosis, and the cravings disappeared immediately. Suddenly I had "willpower". I have extreme "willpower" on other issues - just ask my wife! However give me a box of special K cereal and I will empty it and look for more! A baked potato! I eat one and I am hungry a half hour later. A big serving of rice, the same thing. I seem to be able to eat small servings of rice and not be bothered however.
The truth about the trash that is given out as food in our culture is coming out. I am sure Redwood doesn't eat trash but I still would not be able to handle the 250+ grams of carbs he is eating and not gain weight or constantly be hungry.
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