The Atkins Diet

"Eat like a swine – stay slim as a snake"

by Bryan Zepp Jamieson

05/21/03

http://www.zeppscommentaries/Science&Environment/atkins.htm

Back some 50 years ago, there was a story arc in Al Capp’s brilliant "L’il Abner" comic strip about how the village of Dogpatch was besieged by a ravening horde of "fatocerouses" – large, vicious beasts that looked like a cross between rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses, that ate everything in their path. The Dogpatchers stopped the beasts by laying out plates of "mockaroni," a wondrous pasta-like substance that had an interesting effect: the more you ate, the skinnier you got. In the case of the fatocerouses, by the seventh helping, most were so skinny that they simply floated away in the breeze, and Dogpatch was saved.

A theatrical agent, burdened with a former sex siren client with an eating disorder ("Anita Eatburg") saw this, and recognized the commercial potential. He bought up mockaroni for five dollars from the Dogpatchers, who were gleeful at such a huge windfall and happy to serve their nation in its hour of need against the fatocerouses, and the agent started selling it as a diet food, under the slogan, "Eat like a swine – stay slim as a snake."

In the end, millions of people became too skinny and floated away, and mockaroni fell from favor, and Granny Yokum, learning that she had been duped, thumped the agent and made him promise to never give mockaroni to real people ever again.

Even back in those days, I’m sure millions of Americans read that story arc, sighed, and wished there was such a thing as mockaroni. It would be great to eat all the rich food you wanted, and lose weight. That’s probably the REAL American dream.

Well, one problem Al Capp had was, no matter how absurd and lunatic his strip became, reality kept coming along and making him relevant. The great risk to parodying existence is that existence will parody you right back.

There’s a diet out there where you can eat to your heart’s content on such things as steak, butter, cream, eggs, sausage, and a whole bunch of other goodies, and simultaneously lose weight.

It turns out that it’s "to your heart’s content" in more ways than one. These foodstuffs, which have long been a nightmare of cardiologists and nutritionists, turn out to lower LDLs (triglycerides and "bad" cholesterol) while raising HDLs ("good" cholesterol) Two studies released today, from the New England Journal of Medicine and the American Heart Association, demonstrated this point.

The diet in question is, of course, the Atkins Diet. This has been around for some thirty years, and for thirty years, doctors and nutritionists have been dismissing it as a crackpot fad, and a potentially dangerous one at that.

But millions of people were reporting good results from the diet, and doctors were noting that patients who were going out and chowing down eggs every day and steaks every night were not only failing to keel over from heart attacks and strokes, but were actually losing weight.

And, despite all the dire warnings and scoffing from the medical community, the diet continued to gain in popularity. By 2000, some 30,000,000 people had tried what had been considered a crackpot 1970s fad. And the anecdotal evidence suggested that it worked better than other diets, most of which didn’t work at all.

The two studies released today came a month after the death of Doctor Atkins following a mishap on an icy sidewalk. Both had the same three salient points: people on the Atkins regimen lost more weight than on conventional low-fat diets; they tended to stay on the diet much better; and along with the weight loss, there were significant improvements in cardiovascular health, insulin metabolism, and cholesterol counts. Both studies, with proper scientific caution, declared that the results indicated the diet was safe enough to test on a much larger group of subjects over a longer period of time. Not bad for a dangerous crackpot idea.

NPR, striving, as always for balance by finding an opposing view, no matter how inane, found a fellow willing to scoff at the reports and make the erroneous statement that Atkins was telling people they could eat 8,000 calories a day and still lose weight. That’s pure nonsense, of course.

But one of the people NPR had on DID note the most important element of the Atkins diet: in most cases, there is a drop in appetite following the first two week "induction period." Yes, you CAN eat as much as you want. You just want to eat less.

For anyone not familiar with the Atkins plan, the bare bones are that you all but eliminate carbohydrates from your diet. You eat lots of protein, but you ALSO eat lots of fat. Reading his book, you come across some counterintuitive, not to mention startling suggestions. Instead of one of those weight-loss shakes in a can, eat a nice big steak. Feel free to eat hamburger with all the trimmings – except, of course, for the bun. Don’t bother to drain the meat. If you want milk over your strawberries, go for heavy whipping cream mixed with water instead of low-fat milk. If you INSIST on popcorn, don’t have popcorn without butter; instead, throw out the popcorn and eat the butter!.

On Atkins, you avoid grains, especially baked grains (all types of bread and cake), pasta, starchy vegetables, and sugar of all types. Aside from that, you eat to your heart’s content. You start out eating less than 20 grams of carbohydrates a day (the average American inhales some 300 grams a day, which is what dietitians have been calling the ‘recommended daily allowance’!)

I bought a copy of his book, read, it, and since I wanted to lose weight and regular diets weren’t helping (I was on a low-fat diet and gaining a steady pound a fortnight, to my immense frustration), I decided to try it. It didn’t hurt that I had three acquaintances who had lost significant amounts of weight through Atkins (40 pounds or more) recently. One of them – I kid you not – has a business selling fudge, brownies, and sauces. She told me that Atkins broke her of the habit of sampling her own goods. Hard to do; she sells quality goods.

So I decided to try Atkins. It was VERY strange frying eggs in butter, eating steak, and all these other things that were absolute no-nos on the old diet. And I was reluctant to step on the scales after that first week, fearing I had just made a massive mistake.

I lost seven pounds. Whoa.

I have an odd metabolism, and over the subsequent three weeks, I didn’t lose an ounce. I’m what Atkins calls "metabolically resistant," and have a system that slows down a lot when the caloric intake drops. I could literally eat just 1200 calories a day, walk a mile, and not lose weight.

Losing no weight over three weeks would have been pretty discouraging to anyone, and it would have been to me, but I -had- read the book, and was warned that something like this could occur, and told what steps could be taken to solve the problem.

But even without any weight loss, there were several reasons to stay on the diet anyway. First, my digestion was much better. Second, I liked the food – a lot. Third, even though my weight wasn’t dropping, my girth was. I lost five inches on my belly in those three weeks.

But there was a fourth reason, and this one was the best one of all. I wasn’t hungry all the time! The food cravings were gone! So even without the weight loss, I was ahead of the game. I felt better, I was eating healthier food, and if nothing else, the inexorable weight gain had been stopped.

Following advice from the book, I went out and got a thirty-day supply of l-carnitine, one of those "fat blockers" that you see in all the cheesy ads and in endless spam. Turns out that minus the ephedra, it’s actually pretty good at what it’s supposed to do. At least in my case, it was. I promptly started losing weight, at a fairly steady two and a half pounds a week.

After a month on the l-carnitine, I was down 12 more pounds (19 total) and feeling pretty happy.

The l-carnitine ran out, and my weight kept right on dropping. I’m now the lightest I’ve been in four years, and coming within sight of what I weighed the day I quit smoking. My old wardrobe is starting to fit again. And in the fall, I ought to be getting on to "slim as a snake," even while still "eating like a swine," albeit a swine with a greatly reduced appetite.

Coming off Atkins presents its own challenges. The studies noted that following completion of the diet, there was a greater, albeit statistically insignificant regaining of weight than with the conventional diet, although the Atkins subjects were still ahead of the game because they had lost more.

In my own case, I suspect I’m off wheat products for good. A buddy of mine, knowledgeable in nutrition, thinks that I might have an adverse/attract allergy to wheat, similar to that with alcohol that causes alcoholism. Well, that’s ok; after three days off wheat products, I never noticed their absence.

And I -do- love steak, butter, fried greasy breakfasts, tuna in sunflower oil, asparagus in Hollandaise sauce, and all the other goodies I can eat now without fear or guilt.

Dr. Atkins came to a simple realization. Fat is essential to the human diet. Carbohydrates – except for those carbs that make up dietary fiber and aren’t counted in the Atkins diet–are NOT essential. The human body needs fat, and all it uses carbs for is to create fat to store against a rainy day. The body uses fat to burn energy. The only use it has for carbs is to create fat for days when hunting is poor. If you have lots of carbs and no fat, the body is going to create fat to get you through until your fat supply from outside is resumed. If you eat carbs but no fat, your body devotes itself to using the carbs to create fat. If you eat fat but no carbs, your body gleefully burns fat, since it has all it needs.

So trying to lose weight by reducing fat intake makes as little sense as trying to draw a thunderstorm by going outside and banging pots and pans together to attract thunder. For years, we’ve all been dieting by what amounts to sympathetic magic, and we’ve all been wrong. Fat doesn’t cause fat; carbs do.

If you are thinking about trying Atkins, there’s three big things you have to do: get the Atkins diet revolution book and read it. (There’s a number of low-carb, high fat and high protein diets out there, but his was the first, and the one tested. Further, Atkins stresses the need for dietary fiber through lots of fresh veggies, and the need to take vitamin supplements). Second, talk to your medical specialist, let him or her know what’s going on. And third, enlist the support of your household.

Atkins has a much longer list of things you should do, and things to watch out for. But he wrote the book, your local bookstore has it, and you can get that information straight from the horse’s mouth. He also discusses people who should not try Atkins, and you’ll want to be sure you aren’t in THAT category, and people with special problems (Type II diabetics, for instance) and what they need to do to address those problems.)

It’s not mockaroni, but it comes as close as anything yet seen.

And mockaroni looks suspiciously like pasta. Maybe you want to avoid it, anyway.