dba

is it me,or is there some academic squabbling going on,that is ultimately leaving the consumer confused? personally,i cant see how NOT eating bread,spuds or white rice can be called dangerous

who knows,but why didnt someone say that Atkins is safer than being 5 stone over weight? maybe it isnt

TelBoy

Previous threads have included all the perceived dangers of low carb diets. Can't be bothered to trot them out again. Search should reveal all you need to know; from there it's a personal choice which side you believe more.

SD

Dave,

It may 'work', but at the end of the day you miss out on some pretty important parts of your diet. Missus is an expert on this stuff and has told me about it in loads of detail, but my brain is like a siv and has forgotten it all now.

I think it's safer to be a little overweight in many cases.

Simon

brickboy

Best diet advice:

Eat less crap. Drink less lager. Do some exercise.

Errrr, that's it. Not sexy, not scientific, but it works ...

LG John

If atkins is done CORRECTLY it is safe...fact! Even the excess fat is probably still safer than the stress put on your heart by being many stones overweight. Moreover, atkins works so if you do it 100% correctly you WILL (99.9 x out of 10) loose weight and once you get to your target weight you move to the maintainance stage of the plan. At this stage you will likely be on a diet that will include a lot of carb in the form of fruit and veggies and even the odd tatty or pasta dish BUT you'll also not be overweight and if you do the excercise as you are SUPPOSED to then you'll be fitter as well.

The problem is most people use the induction (i.e. most sever stage of atkins) as a crash diet! Nearly everything I read about it includes things like, 'only 20g of carb a day', 'cuts carb and hence entire food groups from your diet' - this is plain WRONG!! The induction stage is a 2 week stage to shock you body (remember you body thrives on shock (see bodybuilding threads)) into making a few changes. Thereafter you start to reintroduce fruits and veggies back into your diet.

I'm currently eating like a horse to gain weight (muscles) and I promise that anyone on the later stages of Atkins will be getting a far healthier and more balanced intake of food than me!

Its like all things, its had bad publicity a lot of misunderstanding and has been abused. Read the book cover to cover

gregh

funny that one of the recent 'experts' spouting off about how bad Atkins is was sponsored by one of the produce it suggests you don't eat!

SD

It's very simple. If you have any doubts then go and see a qualified dietician (sp?) or your doctor. I've seen enough evidence that it's not safe and can make you ill (I've seen that in a friend of mine). If you believe the hype then 'fine', but don't just take what the book says as gospel, ask for qualified, independant advice.

Simon.

Tiggs

end of the day it comes down o what you belive...if you belive the human body has evolved to need a daily intake of a massively diverse cross section of food groups then dont do atkins.

personaly i cant see how our requirements could have altered so much in such a short time....i dont imagine early man had fruit, veg, carbs, protein, etc, etc every day.....other animals dont. or is the theory that while we didnt envolve to need it some clever bloke has discovered that if we do mix our foods up we are better than nature intended? doubt it.

NACRO

I can't see why people are obsessed with losing weight. Surely the key to enjoying life and a longer life is to eat well and exercise regularly.
I have a little extra flesh than when I was in my early 20's but am way fitter. I don't smoke, run regularly and eat healthily (including red wine on a regular basis-very good for you!). Peoples obsession with with being stick thin is bizarre. How can image be more important than health?

If you look at Atkins diet in no way could it be said to be balanced.

ChrisB

Not nessecerily stick thin, but "average" or not overweight (given you height etc).

Tiggs

"If you look at Atkins diet in no way could it be said to be balanced. "

so what? who says what balanced is? you mean eat a bit of everything...why? does your car run on a bit of petrol, bit of dirt, bit of soap?

if the human body evolved to need such diversity it was pretty bad planning.

LG John

Nearly EVERYONE will get ill when you first start Atkins! Your body has to make a fundamental switch at the start and it can really fvck things up for a while! You just need to get through it (and yes it can be bad!) and then you'll feel a lot better on the otherside. The first stage of atkins also brakes your addition to many food types and substances....the illness is often you 'coming down'

I challenge anyone to read the 'life-long maintanence' part of the Atkins plan and tell me that is not a balanced diet

FWIW, my current eating plan consists of:

7 - cereal with milk
8 - two bits of toast with peanut butter
11 - sanny (2 bits of bread, usually tuna)
1 - lunch (usually lots of sannys, fajita's, etc)
4 - some peanuts and a can
6 - tea: pasta or chicken, etc, etc (whole mixture of foods)
8 - fruity snack
11 - something totally random before bed

My body is getting a LOT of food and a LOT of nutrients, protien, carb, etc and yet I feel like cr@p a lot of the time. I get big highs and lows and often feel very tired. On Atkins I'd generally only have about 2-3 meals a day with little to no snacking and felt clear headed and full of energy ALL of the time.

Borrow the book and read it and try to understand the science

NACRO

will do- good advice I think that a lot of my concerns are based on the simplistic guides to eating the "atkins way" as I've never read any books on the subject.

By balanced diet I meant doing nothing to excess.

TRIGGER

Getting ill is good for you then is it ? Obviously not. Ketoacidosis is good for the body and more specifically the Kidneys ? Of course not.

There are far better ways to lose weight. If your body can suffer the shock and strain then fine, but many cant.

hail-hail

I'm with you SB, I was on induction for 4wks, lost 1.5 stone, and never felt better in my life, no side effects and barrels of energy. I have now switched back to a normal diet, increased my exercise and am maintaining my new weight.

Never mind the physical benefits, I feel a lot better about myself, I am more confident about how I look, my football is better (well I'm fitter)and I now cycle everywhere in town.

I have however just sold my scoob and bought a merc , so it must have effected my mind in some way.

hail-hail

And here we have the crux of the anti atkins brigade, complete lack of knowledge.

THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN "Ketoacidosis" and "Ketosis"

Ketosis is what your body does on Atkins NOT Ketoacidosis.

LG John

It doesn't make you 'Ill' as such - there are no dodgy bugs in your system that your body if fighting. It just screws up your normal patterns! I suppose we should never go to the gym because that makes you ill. Don't believe me? Take a few months off the gym and then go along and go MAD for a few hours lifting the highest amount of weights you can for as many reps as you can. Now tell me you don't feel like death in the morning!!!

The atkins illness is adaptation just as having sore muscles after months of the gym is your body adapting to a 'shock load' - It normal

Bubba po

Why do people want faddy, stupid diets like the Atkins? - Because eating properly ain't easy! We're tuned by evolution to find high protein, high fat and high sugar foods irresistible because at one time in human history food was extremely hard to come by. Your next meal was far from guaranteed - in fact you were more than likely to become something else's next meal. You spent a lot of energy to get the food, too. Eating items with high food value was crucial to survival many times during an ancestral human's reproductive lifetime. These types of foods came along far less often than run-of-the-mill low value foods, so the balance was kept. These days you can just choose to eat whatever you want, so why NOT just eat the stuff your body is programmed to crave. The Atkins is a godsend to people who have no dietary self-control or the intelligence or attention span to understand anything more complex than a simple instruction. Dumbing down and self-gratification is easy to sell. Now concentrate - here comes the science bit......... [img]images/smilies/mad.gif[/img]

TRIGGER

Ketosis and Ketoacidosis are exactly the same thing - the break down of fats causing a high acid content of the blood.

quote
ketosis - (an acid condition of the blood caused by the breakdown of body fat into glucose energy) places strain on the kidneys...
unquote

This is part of losing the weight but as a Diabetic I happen to know the bad side of making your body do this. I wouldnt risk the damage it can do to you long term.

NotoriousREV

Until half an hour ago I would have agreed that the Atkins is perfectly safe, having not heard the latest reports (I was away on holiday). A couple of months back I had an extremely bad kidney infection, I was off work for a couple of weeks and was in intense pain for the whole time. I was on the Atkins diet at the time and stopped my diet because I knew that the Atkins put extra strain on my kidneys, but from what someone has told me in work, it seems that my infection may well have been a result of me being on the induction phase of Atkins.

For the record, I was happy with the weight loss and found the diet easy to stick to, but if it was responsible for the infection, I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy, I thought my ***** was going to explode every time I went for a pee.

ozzy

you know some people would pay good money for that

Stefan

NotoriousREV

LOL, I'd have given someone my house just to make it stop.

Swelled up pretty big, though, shame I couldn't do anything with it

ozzy

ROFLMAO, at least you'd have impressed the missus. Hope you weren't walkin around the house in the buff trying to impress/scare the neighbours

Might give Atkins a try myself. Purely for scientific reasons of course

Stefan

corradoboy

I've been "doing" Atkins for 10 weeks now, and I have to say I feel a damn sight healthier being 3 stones lighter. I have no desire, and even less chance of ever being stick thin. I just want to be more healthy, and so far, I am. As for it being balanced, it's a lot more balanced than what I used to eat. I don't eat any more meat than I used to, but I do eat a lot more green veg and salad leaves. I actively avoid caffiene, presevatives, sugars and artificial sweeteners and drink more water than ever. Yes I pee a lot too, but you can't make an omlette without cracking eggs.

Typical meals for me are :-
Breakfast - full english, omlette, boiled eggs.
Lunch - smoked mackerel, tuna, sardines, cooked chicken, all with a variety of salad leaves, pickles and oriental veg.
Dinner - Pork chops, steak, roasts, korma curry, lamb, usually served with broccolli, cauliflour, carrots, spinach etc. and cream/cheese sauces.
Supper - omlette (if hungry, but usually not)
Drinks - decaf tea/coffee with (unsweetened)soya milk, lots of water.

Everything I eat is fresh, no frozen or packeted products.

Main things I avoid at the mo' are rice/pasta/bread/potatoes, but now I'm near my target weight I shall start adding them to a couple of meals a week.
Is anything I'm doing wrong, my scales don't think so. Nor does my mind or my health. I can now walk further and faster than for many a year, and am now starting to re-introduce vigorous (for me anyway) exercise such as swimming and light weights. The results evident in me have inspired many family and friends to try it too with varying amounts of success due to commitment.

I realise there are health issues associated with this plan, but I beleive that if it is followed well by people who fully understand what they are doing then the risks are far outweighed by the results.

corradoboy

Oops, double post.

[Edited by corradoboy - 8/27/2003 3:42:36 PM]

dba

interesting mix of responses.Telboy,ive read the old posts,i was interested in what people think about the squabblesWe have the best brains in the world working for a century desciding what we should eat and they still cant agree.The US academics have declared the diet safe and nutritionaly balanced,and one UK academic has said "we dont know",Atkins hits the front pages.With several hundred thousand world wide users statistically someone would have eventually died with an illness than could be blamed on diet,and the Atkins diet gets onto the front pages again.Its as if a significant proportion of academia do not want it be safe,because there lifes work will be in the bin.

seems simple to me,its healthier to be at the correct weight and on the Atkins diet than to be over weight.

also,Atkins is very clear on one point,his diet WILL NOT WORK,unless you take regular excersise,and his book goes into quite a lot of detail explaining exactly what that means

LG John

LMAO The atkins diet isn't a fad, the misuse of it made it a fad.

The book is about 200 pages long of science, recipies, evidence and advice on what to do. 200 pages (there or there abouts!)

This is what 90% of the population thinks you need to know to do atkins'

'don't eat more than 20g of carb a day. FULL STOP.

9 words v 200 pages! Atkins WORKS and is SAFE if you do it as per the book - You'll loose weight very fast on the 9 word version but you don't know enough to do it safely and correctly. When I was on Atkins I was doing a lot more excercise than I am now and just now I go to kuk sool 3 times a week for 2 hours at a time and to the gym 3-4 times a week. Oh, and I challenge anyone to tell me that Corradoboy is about to die eating the foods he's listed - far healthier than what I've had on a 'normal' diet this week

joni

My theory goes thus:

The companies and individuals that stand to lose most from Atkins getting the full green light are those who have made the most from producing processed high carbohydrate foods. These can be huge conglomerates or powerful associations such as Kellogs or the British and Irish Millers (examples only)

We heard quite openly from the Potato Federation recently that they were beginning to experience a noticible downturn in consumption due to low carb diets. We also heard that they were to chuck at least a million at "marketing" the benefits of spuds.

It really is no surprise that part of the "marketing" from these vested interests might indeed involve a little cultured scaremongering from qualified nutritionists happy to receive cash for "research" in exchange for dishing out a bit of received wisdom on low fat and high carb healthy balanced eating. After all if you have made nutrition your life and your beliefs and learning have all centred around this 30 year old fallacy, wouldn't you with a clear conscience?

Dr Susan Jebb is a case in point. Check out her backround and you will find close financial links with organisations who have everything to lose from a collapse in carbohydrate confidence, never mind her potential loss of proffessional clout as a nutritionist.

This may of course be coincidental and all the above are my personal thoughts etc. but in this world of deceptive spin I don't think it is unreasonable to suspect the food blue-chips have to discredit Atkins any way that they can.

corradoboy

Saxoboy - Most of the Atkins bashers I've encountered wittle it down to just two words.......JUST MEAT ?!?!?!?

Just goes to prove the average level of ignorance. Most who dismiss it quite simply can't be bothered to read the book. Or any book, probably !