Posted on 02/10/2004 6:51:53 AM PST by ClintonBeGone
NEW YORK - Dr. Robert Atkins, whose popular diet stresses protein-rich meat and cheese over carbohydrates, weighed 258 pounds at his death and had a history of heart disease, a newspaper reported Tuesday.
Atkins died last April at age 72 after being injured in a fall on an icy street.
Before his death, he had suffered a heart attack, congestive heart failure and hypertension, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing a report by the city medical examiner.
At 258 pounds, the 6-foot-tall Atkins would have qualified as obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (news - web sites)'s body-mass index calculator.
Diet is one potential factor in heart disease, but infections also can contribute to it.
Stuart Trager, chairman of the Atkins Physicians Council in New York, told the Journal that Atkins' heart disease stemmed from cardiomyopathy, a condition thought to result from a viral infection.
Atkins' weight was due to bloating associated with his condition, and he had been much slimmer during most of his life, Trager said.
The medical examiner's report was given to the Journal by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a group that advocates vegetarianism. The medical examiner's office told the Journal that the report had been sent to the group in error.
There was no immediate response Tuesday to a call seeking additional comment from the medical examiner's office.
The diet guru's widow, Veronica Atkins, was outraged that the report had been made public.
"I have been assured by my husband's physicians that my husband's health problems late in life were completely unrelated to his diet or any diet," she told the Journal.
Last month, Veronica Atkins demanded an apology from Mayor Michael Bloomberg after Bloomberg called her late husband "fat."
In April 2002, Atkins issued a statement saying he was recovering from cardiac arrest related to a heart infection he had suffered from "for a few years." He said it was "in no way related to diet."
LOL Yup.
Is Dr Dean off his circumcision soap box?
LOL you are very good at making a point. Very good advise. Just curious, say he (or someone) did have excessive arterial plaque and discovered that in a pre-exercise physical. Does that mean he'll never be able to exercise, or do they just put him on some anti-lipid med and monitor him?
High association with weight and weight loss, "Fat, Fair, Fertile, Female and Forty"--
For a while they tried to pin gallbladder disease on Atkins, but since a lot of overweight people get it, and a lot of people who've LOST weight get it, they couldn't make it stick.
I know nothing about diets. I've never been on one, and don't plan on going on one. But this one actually makes sense to me in some respects.
Early man was a hunter/gatherer. That means that a great deal of his food intake came from meat and animal products, and from relatively low carb foods such as wild vegetables and fruit. The carb explosion didn't really happen until our ancestors became farmers and started growing grains and high-carb vegetables like potatoes. And of course, there really wasn't a lot of sugar around until recently. To me -- and this is just pure layperson babbling -- this suggests that we evolved to handle a high meat, high fat, low carb diet.
One slightly less theoretical bit of support for this is some of the cultures in Africa. I've been to Tanzania and seen how the native Masai still live. They live almost entirely off animal products, like milk and meat. Not much cultivation at all. A high protein, high fat, low carb diet. And they all looked like some pretty healthy people.
Anyway, this is just unsupported opinion. But in terms of a "gut reaction" to whether this diet is crazy, I think its worthwhile considering the foods on which our ancestors survived.
Cantaloupe, berries, kiwis, tomatoes--depends how many carbs you can have. If you are just starting, you really have to watch the first few weeks.
I remember my carb-driven appetite in the beginning weeks--wow. My whole orientation toward foods is completely different.
I am a competitive body builder and have done it many times [drug free] and won countless awards and titles.
At no time is a bodybuilder to go carb free. Not 12 weeks out. Not 8 weeks out. Not 4 weeks out. Not one week out.
I have had to drop to 100 grams per DAY the last week before a contest to hit my weight. And everybody thought I was nuts. I did hit my weight and win second place in a regional show, but still I could not get a pump backstage to save my life.
A standard, basic bodybuilder's diet at the end is chicken breast, broccli and red skinned potatoes seven times per day.
And FYI, eggs, even egg whites, are a no-no in the last stage of the diet because of the high sodium content.
And carbing up does not take place two days before a contest. Only the night before and the morning of a contest.
Elite Bodybuilders...eliminate ALL carbs for the last 2-3 months before a show
That is pure bs. And since the most 'elite' bodybuilders are on 'roids, this is especially untrue. They can consume many more calories than a natural bodybuilder because of the drugs.
Ah. That would be the Atkins Diet of no carbs that doesn't exist, but those who don't know the Atkins diet keep inventing.
That one?
Dan
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