Your wife is an extremely brave, smart and intelligent woman. You will be disappointed if you don't do this with her, but it may not be the right time for you. See answer 2 below. Your wife will be an inspiration to you as she WILL look so good by the time you start you'll be chomping at the bit. ;-)

I highly recommend this diet as a lifestyle change because once you lose the weight on a controlled carbohydrtate diet you can't just go running back to the same diet you were eating before. You will gain it all back. That's how you got where you are in the first place.

Honest answers to your questions:

1. I started the Atkins plan April 20th, but I can see myself on the Atkins Maintenance Program for the rest of my life. An athlete that trains for 45 minutes a day, 5 days per week can consume 60g-90g of carbs per day and maintain their weight. This can be adjusted higher or lower depending on how much you train. See http://atkins.com/...2002/5/28-99286.html and http://atkins.com/...003/5/16-246111.html

2. You might feel like crap for a couple of days during induction (the first two weks of Atkins.) After that, it's heavenly bliss as you watch the weight burn off. There's no time like the present, but if you're starting heavy duty training to peak, think about a period of time that you use as down time to start. When you start, be sure to drink plenty of water and take high quality multi-vitamins AND multi-minerals. This is very important as your liver will be working overtime processing the fat as fuel and regardless of your current or future diet, supplementation assures your cells 100% nutrition.

3. Studies go both ways. Trust yourself, not some doctor who doesn't know you from Adam. I've decreased my overall cholesterol from 236 to 207 and my triglycerides from 261 to 98 with Atkins and no drugs. Fat ingested on Atkins is burned as fuel. Carbohydrates not burned as fuel are stored as fat on high carb diets. Lance Armstrong or other elite athletes can consume 6000kcal per day because they need it. These elite athletes have very little bodyfat. Remember that photo of Tyler Hamilton? This guy's a rail!

I'm currently at 174 lbs. from 198 lbs. My total body fat has gone from 20% to 14% (25 lbs.) My goal is 10% body fat or less. People I know have mentioned that I look like I'm losing weight. My wife called me skinny the other day and to stop losing any more weight. These comments are awesome to receive and inspire me to continue my healthy, new lifestyle regardless what the studies say. Also, I'm never famished as I used to get on a high carb diet.

As for training and racing, I have exceeded all my expectations on the regimen. I've set running PRs, continue triathlon training and plan on racing Cyclocross this fall while training for the California Int. Marathon, Dec. 7.

I'm no expert, but it's worked for me. Any more questions, don't hesitate to ask!

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Sean

thanks! i will now ponder even further. keep you posted.

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customerjon @gmail.com is where information happens.

Dont do the Atikins diet. If you havea few minutes, read the info from Phil Kaplan's site- http://philkaplan.com/.../atkinsrevisited.htm

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Jason Goldberg
FIT Multisports

ah, yes. the respectful phil kaplan. his opinions have been debated no less than atkins. of course, selling his own fitness/weight loss program would be no reason to write negative articles on atkins, nor all the other diets he poo-poo's on his site, would it?

what I've learned from reading a lot is that no one, not even supposed scientific experts, really understand the human body completely. just look at the food pyramid. how many times has it been revised?

so, the debates will go on -- who knows how long.

I'll admit uprfront that I've never tried Adkins, but much of the verbage and claims sound identical to so many other diets. It all just seems like people are overly complicating a very simple formula: If you want to lose weight, eat fewer calories than you burn. Period. Endurance athletes need carbs. If you are restricting your carb intake, your endurance performance will suffer. If weight loss is more important to you than performance in triathlon, and you really want to do Adkins, go for it. I'll tell you that I lost 50 pounds in 9 months eating a diet consisting of 70-80% carbs by training 8-10 hours a week.

"Fat ingested on Atkins is burned as fuel. Carbohydrates not burned as fuel are stored as fat on high carb diets."

This is a bunch of crap. If you're sitting on the couch all day, it doesn't matter what you eat unless you're starving yourself. Anything will turn to fat. If you're an active triathlete you will burn carbs and fat for fuel and lose weight if you're managing your caloric intake to about 500 calories less than what you're burning.

The more I ask my professors about this is that there is little doubt that the diet works, and believe it or not it does help your lipids in your blood.

Answering your question I don't think that the diet has really been around for 20 years.

The reason that weight lifters cut down on carbs is that carbs retain more water. The less water that you haev in your body the more cut you are going to look.

The last question. the top 2 causes of death are heart disease and second is all cancers combined. One of the major risk factors for heart disease is obesity and too much lipid/cholesterol in your blood. Now the problem is that you take a lot of the cancers, some of teh major tisk factos is eatign things like meat, animal fats, etc. So something like the atkin's diet is going to decrease the amount of risk for heart disease but will increase your risk of cancer, especially colon cancer.

From what I understand (which is not much about this new diet) is the new South Beach DIet is a version of the atkins diet that decreases heart disease risk while not significantly/perhaps decreaseing your risk for colon cancer.

I'm firmly in your camp. We had this discussion in whole buckets full on rec.sport.swimming (Do a google search if you want to resurrect, disinter, revive those arguments, or simply get informed.) and, I believe, my friend Dr. Larry Wiesenthal (Runnswim) thoroughly discredited the Atkins Diet. Having said that, I suspect that based upon a variety of evolutionary factors that influence current metabolic processes we can eat fewer carbs and more protein without seeing significant changes in our weight provided we are expending the calories that our grandfathers expended. Big IF! (N.B.: See, Friel's "The Triathlete's Training Bible", wherein the author recommends a free range diet, which would include some very lean meats. I have no problem with that recommendation.) The biggest problem with encouraging Americans to eat more protein is that they will go out and eat non-lean meats such as bacon, beef, and lamb. Lipid profiles will suffer and colon cancer, alreadying trying to jump to the head of the class as the leading killer of men, will rise even more sharply.

The exercise side of this equation is an order of magnitude more important FOR MOST AMERICANS, not for you pencil-knecked geeks. :) j/k Exercise levels in this country are at RECORD LOWS.

Here's a bit of evolutionary information you may find important. We are the FAT survivors in a long evolutionary chain of events. We have the genes that will allow us to live through a famine. Our genetic forefathers and mothers lived because they could store fat. Those who couldn't store fat didn't survive and usually didn't pass along their genes. So, the vast majority of us will find it very easy to get fat by eating excessively and not exercising. My personal view is that we eat far, far more than is necessary to sustain us and that most of us (meaning the average triathlete) should be a good 10-50 pounds lighter. When I graduated from high school I was 150 lbs. Today, I'm 172 lbs. I'm a big, fat slob by comparison to my high school numbers. Although, I do carry a bit more muscle today. (he says trying to rationalize his way out of this corner....)

If Taku had put more of his considerable intellect into this discussion I think he could have made a stronger argument against the Atkins Diet. But, he may have more to do than educate the "illiterati". :),

-Robert

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"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." ~Anne Frank

I agree... My personal view is the Atkins diet is straight up disgusting. Having watched people eat bags of cod cuts with a can of diet soda I can certify that it is very hard to watch. But there is little doubt that it works which places you in a bad situation.

There is little doubt that heart disease is the number one killer of people in the united states. Number two is all cancers.

Now is we were to focus on one disease heart disease would be it. Now the risks factors for heart disease are, Obesity, Dyslipidemia (high cholesterol and lipids) sedentary life style, and the unchangable family history. Now Atkin's addreses the first two of these. Recent research has shown that the high protein diet will work for a variety of reasons which I can explain if you want. It will also decrease yoru lipids in your blood for a variety of endocrinological reasons, whcih are complicated and not fully understood.

Now if you do some logical reasonsings. If you decrease the risk of the number one killer you by mathematical definition are increasing the risk for the number 2 cause, provided that doesn't change.

The Atkin's diet does decrease the risk of heart disease by decreasing the weight and lipids in your blood. I have heard anecdotally that people are able to exercise more because of the weight that they have lost which addresses the rd risk factor.

In my mind there is also little doubt (thouh little evidence) that Atkin's dieters are at additional risk for Colon CA becuase of the large amount of red meat that they are eating. However Colon CA has some great advantages over Heart Disease in that with colonoscopy it is very treatable and curable in its early stages. Weight loss, and correction of atherosclerosis is much harder to do.

Yes atkins will increase the risk of Colon CA
Diets like the South Beach DIet which address the specific negatives of the atkin's diet may be a better version of the high protein diet
Yes atkins works for decreasign the risk for heart disease, I believe that even at a higher risk for colon cancer you need to address the larger problems first.

Finally I have to confess that I am not an expert on the atkin's diet but from my conversations with people that knkow much more about it, my understanding is that people on this diet are supposed to eventually bring fruits and vegetables back into the diet as they approach their goal weights.

We aren't going to resolve this protein vs. carb argument here. I'm sure that in a few years we will all have a better understanding of metabolic issues.

Beyond the carb/protein debate is the safety of our food issue which is briefly discussed in a post here. This is very interesting stuff for those of you who want to eat untainted fruits, vegetables, meats, and dairy. http://www.cnn.com/...esting.ap/index.html

But, now that you mention colonoscopy, I just had one done. Truly revolting experience for any male, let alone a heterosexual one. :), However, after checking around with my friends, who never discuss this sort of thing understandably, two of them had polyps removed after their colonoscopy and they were both extremely pleased that they put up with the minor pain (air into the rectum) for the peace of mind. Ditto here. I was free of polyps and disease and would highly recommend this procedure to all men over 50. My doctor told me that the Veteran's Administration has seen a very large increase in the number of cases of colon cancer. Accordingly, they now screen more aggressively for the disease. I was actually told by the VA that I WAS having one. :), My doctor would not take no for an answer. I guess urologists are assholes for a reason. :),

Best Regards,

Robert

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"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." ~Anne Frank

Anyone who is doing Atkins needs to read the first chapter of his book. You need to get baseline labs done and serial labs to follow kidney functions. Ignoring this part of the plan is a fairly dangerous plan as some people can not handle the dietary load on the kidneys. As with any diet a Dietition is always a good source for help. G

Taku, your unbiased, medical community views are appreciated. With obesity at such an all time high, I'm surprised it hasn't been classified as a public health emergency. Physical beauty truly means more than just looking good.

As for cancer, some biologists believe we all have cancerous and pre-cancerous cells in our body from birth and humans get cancer when our immune systems can no longer keep these cells in check. So their theory is to nourish ALL cells of the human body with supplementation because people have such poor diets and even if they had a great diet, the foods of today don't contain the same density of nutrients that fruits and vegetables did 50-100 years ago. This has yet to be proven scientifically and that bothers me. Research is being done on how to TREAT cancer, not how to PREVENT cancer. So I'm going to continue to pee bright yellow and blissfully waste my money on supplements in the hopes that I can do more myself to prevent cancer than the medical communtiy is doing for the world.

What's your take?

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Sean

Well lets put it this way, "IF" Dr. Aktins was on to something with diet and nutrition, instead of going on Oprah to sell books, why was he not given the Nobel Prize? Surely if he discovered the cure-all for health and weight loss he would be given such a prize, but he wasn not. Instead, before he died, Atkins tapped into a $35 billion a year industry with scores of products, including cookbooks, energy bars,pills and even diet-oriented ocean cruises....makes me think... and don't forget that the "great" Dr has had his medical license suspended briefly in the past. Aktins touted that with his "great" diet You can take in more calories than you can on other diets and still lose weight. You can go to restaurants, order from the best of the main courses. It will correct diabetes, hypertension, most of the risk factors for heart disease, gastritis, esophageal reflux disorder, headaches, and a variety of other problems." He admitted, however, that there was no evidence to back such claims. Personally, I'm surprised he did not suggest it would retard aging, improve one's 10K times and enable better bowel movements!

All in all, Dr. Atkins was a great commercial success but it's likely that he did more harm than good. His diet remains unproven, it is at odds with nutritional science and it almost surely is quite dangerous. With his considerable resources, it's a pity he did not do more to promote independence from diets and pills (which would not have been self-serving, since he marketed so many pills himself), more to encourage personal responsibility, more advocacy for reforms in the health (sickness) care system and more to promote vigorous daily exercise.

As a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist who deals with nutrition on a daily basis with my clients and athletes, this is my .02 rant.

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Jason Goldberg
FIT Multisports

Nice argument! One of my friends, a former world powerlifting champion, trained on carbs when all his buddies and competition were downing protein shakes by the gallon. He won, they didn't, which may only suggest the benefits of a high carb diet, but it certainly is not anecdotal evidence I would IGNORE.

-Robert

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"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." ~Anne Frank

I was rather hoping that his death would allow his insane diet to fade away, but somehow I get repeated e-mail from the Haystacks of the world telling me how wonderful the diet has been for them.

The Atkins diet is nutritionally flawed, and the flaws are potentially fatal.

I am a personal trainer, and I counsel people on nutrition. When someone comes to me announcing that they are starting the Atkins diet, I attempt to reason with them, and if they insist on using the plan, then I insist they find another trainer.

The imbalanced nutrition in this program treats your body like some kind of chemistry experiment. Yes, you will lose weight. Bulimia works too... The Atkins diet is harmful to those who are sedentary, but not all that much worse than the alternatives for the morbidly obese. For an athlete, however, the diminished carbohydrate scenario is just plain nuts.

Do yourself a favor, John, just ratchet your workouts up a bit, cut down on alcohol and starches/sweets late in the evening, and cut back on dietary fats. Count calories and swim, bike run...

I could go on, but it could turn into a book!

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Cousin Elwood - Team Over-the-hill Racing
Brought to you by the good folks at Metamucil and Geritol...

Sorry, Elwood, I don't send e-mails to anyone regarding Atkins unless it's a close personal friend asking me how I'm losing all this weight, looking so good and able to run marathons, do triathlons and race cyclocross with few carbs.

To those of you who think this is harmful diet and a fad, so be it, it's not for you. That's cool. I don't just spew on about something I don't believe in. Hell, until I tried Dr. Atkins' "fad" diet, I thought i was resigned to my genetically predisposed lovehandles forever.

I personally can't justify calling something a failure without trying it or seeing results of friends.

This regimen has worked for me and high carbs and training didn't. Could I have done the carb diet differently? Perhaps, but I was always so hungry with no self control. Now I'm never hungry and don't need the self control to not eat.

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Sean

First of all, I don't believe you will find anyplace where I said YOU were sending me e-mail.

Beyond that, I don't have to try every fad diet to know what it does, that's my business. The Atkins diet is slicing years of your life as we speak. The model is unbalanced, ergo unhealthy.

I'd love to have a crutch or a shortcut to slice off the fat, instead of having to (literally) work my a$$ (or tummy) off. I just have more respect for my body - and too much knowledge of nutritioin - to blithely dive into something as potentially destructive as Atkins.

FYI, I use ephedra (as a decongestant on those extremely rare occasions when I get a bit of a cold) and don't consider it particularly harmful, But then again, I don't use it as a stimulant before a heavy workout, and never would. Point is, I'll take ephedra, because I know what it is and what it does. I know what Atkins is and what it does, and I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.

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Cousin Elwood - Team Over-the-hill Racing
Brought to you by the good folks at Metamucil and Geritol...

Hmmm, first let's define "fad" shall we;

From http://www.dictionary.com

fad (fd)
n. A fashion that is taken up with great enthusiasm for a brief period of time; a craze.

For something that has been around for 30+ years you are going to have a hard time calling the Atkins plan a fad.

As to those of you calling this whole thing unbalanced-blah-blah-blah, I'm sure you are fully aware and fully informed about all the "stages" of the diet, right? You all know of course that the final two stages (out of 4 stages) of the plan (this is where you maintain your weight) is almost identical to the highly touted Zone diet, which is also very close to the "recomended" daily intake by just about everybody. That sounds REALLY out of balance to me and very unhealthy.

I'd give real money to every "expert" out there who talks bunk about the diet, yet just by reading their own words they show how little they know about the diet plan, what it entails and it's reasons for doing things. I mean, have any of you picked up the book and actually read it (careful, those of us who have read the book already know the answer to this question)? Maybe you should pick it up, Amazon sells them for a whole $6, your local bookstore will also have them as well for a low price as well, even if you don't want to go on the plan, have no need to go on the plan, etc pick it up and read it.

Andrew

Haystack,

just for my own education and research, I was wondering if you might be able to provide me with some actual numbers:

Do you know what your BMR is?

Do you know what your average daily caloric expenditure is for exercise?

Do you know what your daily total caloric intake is?

Do you know what your actual breakdown of caloric intake is (% CHO, % P, % F)

thanks in advance.

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Mike Plumb, TriPower MultiSports
Professional Running, Cycling and Multisport Coaching, F.I.S.T. Certified
http://www.tripower.org

Mike,

I don't have those numbers readily available for you, but if you'll be patient, I will. I'll assume a greater number of days averaged out would be best? Quite frankly, i don't think it matters for a controlled carb approach, but I'm game.

Currently I try to keep my total daily carb at about 20g. The very real possibility is that my total daily caloric intake is far less than what it was 6 months ago. However, this wouldn't have been possible on the same diet I was on. I just had far too many cravings to eat when I shouldn't have. This regimen greatly reduces them and that, to me, has been the magic bullet.

I hope you'll be objective in your conclusions.

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Sean

A SHAM diet
A dangerous trend
Lunacy

Take your pick, I like fad, because it is appropriately deferential.

Yes, I am aware of the stages. Skip to stage four, and just do ZONE.

Yes, I have read the book, as I try to read most of the fad diets so that I can explain to my clients why NONE of them are worth 2¢

Want to lose weight?

1- Control your caloric intake
2- Increase your caloric expenditure
3- Maintain balanced nutrition

There, and you didn't even have to pay for that sound advice, nor spend days reading it in detail.

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Cousin Elwood - Team Over-the-hill Racing
Brought to you by the good folks at Metamucil and Geritol...

>>Want to lose weight?

1- Control your caloric intake
2- Increase your caloric expenditure
3- Maintain balanced nutrition<<



Amen to that brother-

The whole thing is that I tell all my athletes and clients, there is NO SUCH THING as a diet. There are only lifestyle changes. When people say that the are going on a "diet" be it Atkins or anything else, they are already telling you that they will eventually be comming off their "diet" setting themselves up for failure and disapointment.

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Jason Goldberg
FIT Multisports

"I could go on, but it could turn into a book!"

I am no publisher, but I could consider becoming one if the book is good. Let's talk!

There is a pretty fair amount of nonsense in this thread so I don't mean to single out jasonogk, but this quote in particular shows a misunderstanding about science in general and the science of nutrition in particular.

1) Nobel prizes in Physiology and Medicine for the past 30 years at least aren't given for particular subjects like diet, or even a specific disease. They are awarded for work leading to very basic discoveries in how cells and organisms work. Nobel prizes in Chemistry are sometimes awarded for discoveries in how biologically interesting molecules work, but we're not talking carbohydrates versus fats, we're talking "the elucidation of the enzymatic mechanism underlying the synthesis of adenosine triphosphate." Diet and nutrition isn't the type of basic research that would likely be considered for a Nobel.

2) The lay view is that the acceptance of a scientific theories depends only on experiment. In practice, this isn't true in any field, but it is especially not true in medicine. There are always practical considerations. You can't do extremely expensive experiments, unless the question is extremely important. You can't do experiments on well humans unless there the safety of the participants is guaranteed. To test the safety and effectiveness of something like a diet requires many experimental subjects and a long time. The result of these and related constraints is that many theories that may be true are never tested, even if many (or most) scientists believe that they are probably true.

3) Given that there is only a limited budget for scientific research from the federal government or other disinterested parties, much of the research that does get done is funded by interested parties - the drug companies, the medical device companies, the cosmetics industry and the diet industry are examples. Almost all parties in this particular debate have some financial stake. A by product of this is that research in these fields is not very reliable, at least in the early stages.

4) The science of nutrition is nowhere near a closed book. Some of the claims on this thread are as bogus as other posters claim Atkins' are. It is all well and good to have learned something and to believe that it is true, but the Aktins diet is still open to debate. Atkins went against the received wisdom, so people didn't bother to test his theories. It was easy to pass him off as a quack, and people weren't eager to expend the large amounts of money and effort to test his (possibly dangerous!) theories. This is starting to change, because the diet seems to work for many people, and the possibilities that people were worried about don't seem so likely any more. Several large scale studies of the Aktins diet have begun, but it could be years before any results from these studies are known, and in all likelihood these will not be the definitive so more work will be needed.

I am not a proponent of the Aktins diet, and I think that the supporters have a lot of work to do to show that it is safe and effective, but I am also skeptical of the counter claims, many of which are only supported by tradition, received wisdom and the political influence of the farm state voters.

Ray

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Ray

Dr. Atkins ran a diet/weight loss center for over 30 years and, to my knowledge, published NO studies which followed his patients for more than 1 year, looking at either sustained weight loss or overall health.

Take from this fact what you will.