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Summary: People People People
Review: If you like it and it works for you then that is wonderful. If you don't then what are you doing on this page? Sounds like to me you are a vegetarian who likes to preach the dangers of red meat. Eat your carrots and soycurd and let us meat eaters for once enjoy our dinner. It is medically proven that a majority of people do not need to consume carbs. Our bodies simply do not process them like others. We are all different. Embrace what works and go with it. Don't scare people off with your veggie nonsense. We will leave the corn, potatoes and peas for you.
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Summary: You may gain all the weight back and more if you quit
Review: I have tried Dr. Atkins diet before.
Here is my expereince: I lost weight very quickly and was pleasantly surprised. Then towards the end of the first month I noticed that I had more energy (don't know why). In the third month, I couldn't really eat the food I was 'allowed'. Just looking at a beef pattie made me nausous! I did some reading and found out that our taste buds require some carbs to make our food feel palatable. Now I don't know how much of that is true but I couldn't look at or eat that food anymore. It just made me feel turned off from food and sick all the time. So I stopped the diet with a gradual introduction of carbs in my diet.
I found that I gained back all the weight and more on stopping the program.
I suggest you try other Balanced diets (that are recommended by most nutritionists and doctors) first before you try this. Balanced Diet and exercise has made me lose pounds and I haven't gained it back in a year.
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Summary: One Of The Worst Diets
Review: From personal experience with an Atkins type of diet I have to say this is one of the worst diets out there. Not only is it VERY unhealthy, high animal protein (which is full of saturated fat)with little or no essential carbohydrates. You loose muscle and have little energy with a low carb diet which can have serious negative health effects. After loosing weight --the diet was so restrictive that when I reached my goal weight I quickly gained all the weight back and then some, which all landed in the unhealthiest areas -- my midsectionI suggest anyone looking to loose weight should exercise, eat in moderation and try a vegetarian diet which is the healthiest. By doing this I have lost weight and have kept it off with no feelings of depravity at all. Read These Books: Turn Off the Fat Genes : The Revolutionary Guide to Losing Weight --by Neal, MD Barnard Foods That Cause You to Lose Weight : The Negative Calorie Effect -- by Neal D. Barnard Eat More, Weigh Less : Dr. Dean Ornish's Advantage Ten Program for Losing Weight Safely While Eating Abundantly by Dean Ornish,
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Summary: Great diet! - Really works
Review: I've had no problems losing weight on this diet. Roughly following it for about 3 weeks and I've lost about 12 pounds.
His main point seems to be that when you are eating carbo's your insulin level is up and you are more likely to store fat. Carbo's seem to be eaisly converted to fat. Protien is not and fat you eat in the absence of carbos does not seem to get stored. Whats the big deal about ketosis? As I understand it your body will convert carbos to glucose and use it for energy first. In the absence of carbo's you've got to burn fat. This is what happens when you exercise a lot. - You burn off the carbos and then when they are gone, you burn the fat. If you don't have any carbos, then you just burn the fat.
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Summary: Atkins is a Quack
Review: It is true that people with certain medical conditions (such as diabetes) need to control their carbohydrate intake. My best friend has Type II and is encouraged to eat carbs but only up to 60g per meal. However, the idea that anyone and everyone should virtually eliminate carbohydrates from their diet is insane. You may "lose weight" but you are probably damaging your body in the process. If you are overweight or just unfit, it's not the number on the scale that counts, but body composition. Limiting calories to a reasonable level (based on your current weight, height, gender, age, & activity level) while eating a wide variety of healthy food, will encourage your body to burn stored fat for fuel. Eating regularly (preferably three meals or 3 meals and several snacks) per day will help boost your metabolism, causing your body to burn even more fat. When this happens you will see the scale drop. If you add cardio exercise, you'll build a little muscle, increase your overall heart/lung health, and burn additional fat. If you add weight-bearing exercise, you will actually increase muscle mass significantly, which will increase metabolism further. Your actual body size will be smaller than the scale might indicate, because muscle mass takes up less room than fat. Your body fat % or BMI will drop, and THAT is a better indicator of fitness than the scale. With low-carb plans, your body doesn't get enough "ready" fuel, and thus turns to your MUSCLE TISSUE to get extra fuel. This state is known as ketosis. Ketosis occurs when your body thinks you are starving, and the brain tries to protect itself by sacrificing other body tissues to save itself. Ketosis is a BAD thing. Atkins and other low-carb gurus try to spin this as a positive indicator, but the truth is that if you are in ketosis your body is in crisis survival mode. You are losing "weight" but only part of that weight is fat, so your body composition could actually be in worse shape than when you started. In addition, because you are killing off muscle tissue, your metabolism will actually DROP. What does this mean? It means that those pounds will be harder and harder to lose, and if you ever go off this excessively restrictive regimen (and who doesn't?) you will regain fat at a faster rate, because your body needs fewer calories to sustain itself than when you went on the diet in the first place. Then you go on this diet, or another fad/crash program, and the cycle starts all over again. Don't do it. Find a well-balanced program based on a variety of healthy foods that doesn't promise unreasonable miracles. Increase your activity level, even if you start very small, with very modest goals. Just don't fall for this snake oil.
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Summary: Proof that low fat diets are a death sentence and not atkins
Review: I am really upset at the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) advocating a low-fat diet based on eating mostly breads and grains (food pyramid). Thinking that eating vegetables and fruits and staying away from fats was the "healthy" way to eat, 4 years ago I wanted to lose weight I excercised 5 times a day ate salads with lemon juice instead of any dressing lots of fruits and vegetable low fat milk, cheese and ground turkey for meat. 6 months after eating this way, yes I lost weight, but I also ended up in the hospital with gall stones and a badly inflammed pancreas. After doing research on gall stones I found out what Atkins also speaks shortly about on gall stones, YOUR BODY NEEDS FAT ... your gall bladder is kept active by digesting fat and since I didn't know this at the time I basically left my gall bladder inactive and stones where formed. My gall bladder was removed, and my digestive system has never been the same until Atkins. Yes Atkins, eating food such as crab dipped in pure butter, savory ribs, chicken, vegetables...etc. I have lost 20lbs (After just 6 weeks), weight loss was initially the main reason for trying the diet and yes it does mess with your head when buying groceries becasue it goes against that stupid food pyramid and what society believes is "healthy". It was years of low-fat dieting on and off that made my weight yo-yo with steady increases in weight gain overall, and also ended me up in the hospital. Atkins has changed my life literally my disgestive system is back to normal I no longer have stomach pains with every meal I consume. My hair is healthier because of the protien, more energy and this diet actually makes you want vegetables since it helps to break to monotony of meats, eggs, and cheese...eating vegetables was always a chore but not anymore (3 cups a day, may not seem like much to some but is more than what the fast food american dieters consume). Luckily I never did consume the mass products of sugar-free items such as diet coke, pepsi, jello ...etc that contain aspartame "Equal", which is something alot of people on low-fat diets are consuming now and is pushed by the FDA along with the food pyramid. Aspartame is a real problem, do research on it, it is another thing that is going to kill people who think they are eating healthy, and I am glad that Dr. Atkins is against this sugar free product, he offers better alternative such as sucralose "Splenda" and Stevia "a natural herb". If people didn't fight this nutritional approach so hard years ago and still, I would still have a gall bladder since all I was trying to do was eat "healthy" and now thanks to Atkins I finally feel healthy.
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Summary: joy of living out of it
Review: We are not machines ; we should be free to eat the whole spectrum that the good God allmigty created for us. Balance & moderation according to OUR inclination is the key in the use of all this God given bounty by which we ought to taste the joy of living every day of our lives ; the sinthetic pills the book offers along with its restrictions does not give us that.I rather live one day this way and not a1000 years the books way ! By the way i am 62 and still kicking,
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Summary: Works well for me.
Review: I'll throw my data point into the mix for your consideration. I found truth to the claim that while on this diet, one experiences less hunger. I also found I had plenty of energy, even with exercising on a Stairmaster, burning upwards of 1000 cals per day. I lost from 225 to 214 within 10 days, eating reasonable portions, no cheating, and the exercise described above. I have a 6'2" frame, and am targeting 195 as my weight goal. Wish me luck! Hope it works as well for you.
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Summary: The Best Place to Start Your New Healthy Life
Review: This is the book everyone loves to hate! Every time I ask people what they didn't like about this book I hear one criticism after another. I'm sure you've heard them too. Next time you hear these criticisms, ask you friend some of the following questions: "Which of the Atkins diets did you disagree with? The Induction, Pre-Maintenance, or Maintenance phase?"
"Which of the 55 vegetables which Dr. Atkin's lists to include in your diet do you think is unhealthy?" You will almost always find THEY NEVER READ THE BOOK. And most people who have "tried" the Atkins Diet never read the book either. If you are heavy someone needs to tell you that YOU ARE DYING. Right now. Your weight is killing you faster then you know. It has long been recognized that obesity, heart disease, lipid disorders, diabetes, and a host of other degenerative conditions are in fact ONE DISEASE- Metabolic Syndrome (also known as insulin resistance, Syndrome X and a host of lesser used names). And insulin resistance is caused primarily by sugar and too many carbohydrates in our diet (also trans fats, but not natural saturated or unsaturated fat). If you want to save your life you must learn about sugars, simple carbohydrates, and how to avoid them, and, in my opinion, this book remains the best place to start. BUT YOU MUST READ THE BOOK. This book is a treasure box full of information, much of which is counter intuitive. And all the information is carefully documented and referenced in the back. Two years (and 40 pounds) ago, when I first read Dr. Atkins book, I was stunned by the level of information in it (and I am a physician). In fact, there is so much information in the book it is difficult to absorb the first time. Which, unfortunately, is where much of the confusion about the diet starts. If you are overweight, you have insulin resistance. And if you have insulin resistance, your metabolism IS NO LONGER NORMAL. You must TEMPORARILY restrict your eating from high carbohydrate foods to drag your metabolism back to where it should be. In my opinion, because Dr. Atkins diet is more strict initially (remember, you still should eat THREE servings of vegetables per day even during the strictest part of the diet) it allows you to progress faster to restore your metabolism back to where it should be. I now have literally COUNTLESS patients who have lost over 25 pounds, several who have lost over 100 pounds, and several diabetic patients who have been able to stop get off all diabetes medications. More criticisms you'll hear: "But what about my cholesterol?" It is now known (and, in fact, has been for some time) that well over 80% of your cholesterol is made by the liver and is not a reflection of the fat in your diet. Most will see their cholesterol drop dramatically on the diet. Almost all will see their HDL ("good cholesterol") go up significantly. A FEW patients will have their LDL ("bad cholesterol") go up- but here again, limited knowledge will hurt you. NOT ALL LDL IS BAD. LDL is in fact made of a variety of different particle sizes (LDL subclasses A and B) and only one of these (Type B LDL) is bad. MOST PEOPLE ON A LOW CARBOHYDRATE DIET LOWER THEIR PRODUCTION OF THE "BAD" TYPE B LDL EVEN IF THEIR TOTAL LDL INCREASES. Most community labs are not yet able to measure these different subtypes (requires a LDL-GGE test). Fortunately, if your LDL increases you can almost always tell whether the increase or decrease is "good" or "bad" by looking at your triglyceride levels. People who increase production of the bad LDL (which is rare) almost always increase their triglycerides as well. MOST PEOPLE, HOWEVER, WILL NOTICE A DRAMATIC DROP IN THEIR TRIGLYCERIDE LEVEL. "I just don't feel good without eating some sugar." Did you hear me? You ARE DYING FROM SUGAR! You will never feel good again if you don't get it out of your body. "I think complex carbohydrates are good for you." You are right. Complex carbohydrates are good for you. And Dr. Atkins strongly recommends that once you get your weight down to where it should be you add limited amounts of complex carbohydrates back in your diet. "I love fruit, and I know fruit is good for me." If you are at your appropriate weight, fruit is EXCELLENT for you. But it is full of sugar. AND YOU CAN'T HANDLE ANY SUGAR. Once you get your weight back down you should start incorporating fruit regularly in your diet. But if you don't cut out the fruit, you will never get your weight down." I do have some criticisms of the book:
(1) The book is TOO complete. Weighing in at 522 pages of intense material, most people just can't get through it. BUT TRY.
(2) In fact, you need to read THREE books to really get the complete Atkins diet, this one, Dr. Atkins Age Defying Diet, and Dr. Atkins Vitamin book. ALL ARE EXCELLENT (but who other then a doctor will read them all).
(3) The section on Trans Fats in the new edition is still not enough (of course, adding more would make the book even bigger!) This man deserves a Nobel prize for standing up to ridicule for 30 YEARS. Now low carb diets are everywhere, and amazingly he is still criticized by people who know nothing about his diet. This book changed my life and the entire way I practice medicine. I have countless patients it has helped. If you want to lose weight and improve your health, read this book FIRST. Then read Sugar Blues. Then Protein Power LifePlan. P.S. Thank you, Dr. Atkins for saving my life.
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Summary: Yech, but I admit to having tried it.
Review: Ah, what a great bunch of reviews: Atkins is the Best, Atkins will kill you...and that pattern repeated hundreds of times. I tried this diligently twice, once last year, and just recently, and I am just angry that I even spent that money on this. Atkins' scientific rationale is worrying and very suspect--it's one thing to eat less carb, it's another to eat too much animal fat. Sure, some point out that Gorillas eat bananas and cows eat grass...but take a look at their physiology-they were built for that kind of thing. I digress--what I really want to point out is that this diet is a lot of fun for the first day or so. Beyond that, you begin to have significant doubts about your health. I, for one, reacted very badly and broke out. I didn't last too long on this one. Any diet where you begin to look worse right off than you did before is probably one you should put away. For ever. I won't tell you to try this diet because I don't want anyone to put their lives in danger. But don't get me wrong, I am not an uninformed Atkins naysayer. I've tried many many diets, and this one is a weird one--it's that nagging sensation of logic that throws you off. Best of luck to all of you in dieting efforts.
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