Posted on 12/05/2002 3:22:43 PM PST by Senator Pardek
Issue settled. The Atkins Diet—the famous high-fat, low-carb regime that lets dieters load up on pork rinds and Scrapple as long as they avoid potatoes and Wheaties—works. The American Heart Association has been wrong all along, as has essentially the entirely American medical establishment. Not only is gorging on fat the key to becoming thin, it's heart-healthy to boot. So say the headlines:
• "High Fat, Low Carb Diet May Finally Be Getting Its Due" (CNN)
• "Fats Win Latest Round in Diet War" (Chicago Tribune)
• "Low-carb Atkins Diet Beats Low-Fat American Heart Association Plan in Head-To-Head Comparison" (CNBC)
• "High-Fat Diet Shows Promise in Study" (AP)
• "Doctors Eat Crow on Banning Celebrity Diet" (The Australian)
The public responded predictably to the pro-Atkins results of an Atkins-funded study last month. Sales of Dr. Robert Atkins' diet book skyrocketed over 900 percent on Amazon.com the day the news broke. Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution has now sold over 10 million copies; according to one Atkins stooge, more than 20 million people have signed on for the diet. Celebrities ranging from callipygian lovelies Jennifer Lopez and Minnie Driver to formerly porky Spice Girl Geri Halliwell to one-man body mass rollercoaster Matthew Perry have reportedly taken the Atkins plan straight to the scales.
And they've all been sold one greasy fat bill of goods.
There are two issues here. One is the effect of the Atkins diet on weight loss. The other is its effect on cholesterol and triglycerides, a group of fatty compounds that circulate in the bloodstream and are stored in the fat tissue.
In the study in question, Dr. Eric Westman of the Duke University Medical Center looked at both. He followed two groups of 60 dieters each, one on a high carbohydrate diet and one on the high-fat, low-carbohydrate Atkins diet. He reported that the Atkins group lost twice as much weight during the six-month study period as did the high-carb group. But this is both unsurprising and meaningless.
Gary Foster of the University of Pennsylvania co-authored a study conducted in virtually the same manner as Westman's. Foster, whose work will soon appear in a major medical journal, provides a simple explanation for the Atkins weight loss. The regimen "gives people a framework to eat fewer calories, since most of the choices in this culture are carbohydrate driven," he says. "Over time people eat fewer calories."
Randy Seeley of the University of Cincinnati co-authored yet another "sister study" with similar results. His explanation is the same as Foster's. Ultimately, Atkins is nothing more than a low-calorie diet in disguise.
In any event, the main issue with any diet—be it Atkins, popcorn, or jelly bean—isn't whether people can lose weight in the short-term but rather whether they can stick to the regimen and keep the pounds off not for just half a year but essentially forever. Yet completely lost in the media mania was that among the 60 Atkins dieters in the Westman group analyzed for weight loss, the dropout rate was 43 percent.
Thus almost half the Atkins cohort couldn't stay with the steak and bacon routine for even six months. By comparison, only 25 percent of the high-carb eaters dropped out.
Moreover, it's generally accepted that drop-out rates anywhere near this level completely invalidate a study because you don't know how all those drop-outs would have affected the result. Maybe those Atkins dieters were quitting not only because of carbohydrate cravings but also because they weren't losing weight or losing it fast enough to satisfy them.
Why would Westman's interpretation be so different from those of Foster and Seeley? It may help to know not only that this particular study was paid for by the Atkins Center, but that it's part of a long-term funding arrangement.
Analyses such as one published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in May 2000 have shown that funding sources do in fact influence study results and the interpretations (or "spin" if you will) of those results. "When the boundaries between industry and academic medicine become as blurred as they are now, the business goals of industry influence the mission of medical schools in multiple ways," declared an accompanying NEJM editorial.
Westman's interpretation, based on his handful of subjects observed over a mere six months, also directly contradicts three decades of randomized controlled studies published in peer-reviewed journals. A review of over 200 of these published last year in a major medical journal concluded bluntly: "The BMIs [a surrogate measure of weight] were significantly lower for men and women on the high carbohydrate diet; the highest BMIs were noted for those on a low carbohydrate diet."
But what about the blood findings? Wasn't it a real shocker that Atkins dieters consuming heavy amounts of fat saw their HDL ("good cholesterol") levels increase by 11 percent while harmful triglycerides fell 49 percent? (LDL or "bad cholesterol" levels remained the same.)
No.
"Often just losing weight alone will cause improvement in triglyceride and cholesterol levels," the president of the American Heart Association Dr. Robert Bonow told me. Since the Atkins dieters did lose more weight than those on the high-carb diet, it only stands to reason that by comparison their blood levels would also improve more.
Says Seeley, Westman's "weight loss data look just like ours and my argument is that the weight loss accounts for the beneficial effects."
Westman told me that he doesn't believe this to be the case, because another study, in the July 2002 Journal of Nutrition, claims to have found a similar improvement on an Atkins-type diet regardless of weight loss. But the same researchers, using the same group of dieters, published another study at the same time reporting that the Atkins dieters lost an average of 7.5 pounds over a six-week period. So again, blood fat levels merely fell with body fat levels.
Ultimately this fat-fest over a single study shows nothing more than the media's amazing ability to pick out and flaunt a will o' the wisp—even to the point that one American network repeatedly used on-the-air interviews from a representative of the Atkins Institute to interpret a study paid for by the Atkins Institute!
Why? Our increasingly obese population is desperate for some magical formula to avoid the physiological law that body fat is determined by calories in and calories out. The media tried to fill the need, but ultimately failed the public. "It just makes people confused and frustrated," an exasperated Seeley said. Yes, and fatter by the day.
I have eaten Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner with Annie, on 3 different dates, and she eats normal, trust me. She even cleans the plate.
Well, a man well versed in the Scriptures! Were I looking for a husband, that would be number one or two on my list of most important qualities. I salute you. :-)
Thanks for the comments on the Atkins.
Hope you feel better soon.
I have eaten Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner with Annie, on 3 different dates, and she eats normal, trust me. She even cleans the plate.
I have a tall thin 49 year old female friend. She eats like a horse -- but runs it off at least 4 miles almost every day.
My dear, weren't you the one complaining above about not being able to get a date? I suspect you are about to be a most envied man.
Do what you think is best for you and your family. All I know is that the low-carb diet improved ALL the risk factors in my blood work from high to BELOW normal, stopped my hair from falling out, brought back my fertility, cleared up my acne and lowered my blood pressure. (Low carb was a complete cure for my PCOS.)
On the other hand, my mother lives on a diet that is 90% refined sugar and is the healthiest 54 year old that I know. My MIL won't touch the stuff, eats the perfect low-fat diet (has for years) and has high blood pressure, joint problems and heart issues.
Why can you not understand the point that this whole subject is frustrating for Atkins supporters? All we get is comments like "exercise!", "push away from the table".
All diets do not effect everyone equally. That is our only point. Most supporters will say, "It worked for me." They aren't insisting that everyone follow their way of life.
For 2 1/2 years I had a roomate in college who was skinny as a rail. I was 30 lbs overweight. I wanted to be skinny like she was, and I was on a limited budget. 80% of the time I ate exactly what she ate since we were sharing meals. Similar portions too, since I was sensitive about being fat. She got care packages twice per month filled with candy and cookies. I ate some, but again because of my weight, it was a much smaller amount than what she ate. We both rode bikes 4 miles per day, and did lots of walking.
I never lost any significant amount weight while living with her, and I never gained any significant amount of weight while I was home with my family. This showed me that we must simply be different types of people.
Most of the people in my family get diabetes if they stay fat long enough. I read the Atkins book and it made sense to me. It worked well for me when I stayed on it. Not being a big meat eater, I think I may have to look into another type of low carb diet. One that is a little less stringent and see if it works for me.
I'm glad you found a way to be better. I have a couple of friends with PCOS.
Well, yeah. Atkins is like any other diet: you can't just go on it for awhile, lose the weight, and expect that it will magically change your metabolism forever so that you can go off of it and remain skinny. With ANY diet, if you depart from it the weight will come back. If I lost weight by eating nothing but lettuce and then resumed eating chocolate cake, I'd gain the weight back, but it wouldn't be fair to blame the lettuce diet. Nor is it fair to blame Atkins if you abandon the diet and then gain the weight back.
I do think there's something to watching the carbs but eating meat all the time gets boring Sure. It's certainly true that eating only meat can be boring, but there are lots of different kinds of meat, prepared lots of different ways. You can also eat chicken, fish, cheese, eggs...
You're only supposed to be on the carb-free part of the diet for a week or so. After that you can start cautiously adding carbs back in. And a piece of cake isn't the end of the world, either. The idea is to avoid adding back the junk carbs that are full of sugar, like white bread, cake, cookies, etc.
Then we appear to have exactly the same point of view. As I already mentioned (but it evidently wasn't comprehended by the poster I responded to above), I'm not "for" or "against" the Atkins diet, and considering its popularity, it must work for not a small number of people. ....And God bless 'em. I was merely commenting on the heated and dogmatic discussion by SOME of the Aktins' advocates. Some.
Oh, please. It just ain't that easy for a lot of people.
My mother, for example. She developed severe arthritis in her hip and spine and wasn't able to exercise at all, except for a few timid bicep curls. She became quite obese, even while eating a moderate diet (and at the time I was living with the woman and shopping for us, so I know what she consumed). She began Atkins and lost nearly 100 pounds, and kept it off.
Or me, for instance. I'd always been slender and fit, but during my second pregnancy I gained 75 pounds. This was in part because my then-husband (a bio-psychologist) agreed with me that if a kind Nature encouraged a pregnant woman to eat anything that can't outrun her, there was a sound biological reason for that fact, and I should indulge it. But after my son was born, I couldn't lose the weight. A personal trainer devised a training program of aerobic exercise twice a day and weight-lifting, but the weight was immovable. I ran far, far more than just twenty miles a week, I assure you. I was scared and frustrated.
Then I tried Atkins. I lost the weight quite quickly. Now, eight years later, I'm still slender but not skinny, 5'10" and 137, though I no longer have time for a complicated exercise routine. And, yes, sometimes I fall happily off the wagon and have a glass of bourbon or a piece of pie, but it doesn't make any difference.
People need to understand that all bodies are not made alike. Some people respond well to a high-veggie diet; some respond well to Atkins. Men are often different than women. Will everyone kindly stop being so hysterical on the subject?
I am a programmer as well and tend to think logically. Unfortunately, the body uses Fat, Protein and Carbs differently. 1000 calories of Carbs != 1000 calories of fat.
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