My thoughts on Atkins

Well it seems that everyone loves to tell people that Atkins will kill you so i'll just comment on my personal experience with Atkins. First of all a little background I weighed 233 pounds previously and I was at risk with my health my blood pressure and cholestoral were through the roof. I started on atkins and around 4 months later with exercise I had lost over 50 pounds. I have had blood work and testing done during the diet to make sure it was not harming me since I was a bit leery of it myself. All of my numbers have gone to normal and I'm now in better shape than I was before.

Now its been a little over a year, still eating the same way and i've held myself at 170 since losing the weight. All blood work comes back as normal. This new version of the Atkins diet is not dangerous as the previous diet back in the 80's was. Back than it was "no carbohydrate" instead of "limited carbohydrate" I eat roughly 70 carbohydrates a day and a load of protein and vegetables, to me this is the most balanced diet i've been on, and I never starve. But thats just my opinion and I haven't died yet. Running 2 miles a day, riding my bike 4 miles, along with lifting, to me its changed my previously unhealthy ways.

Hey thats awesome on ur success and not dying and all. I didn't know the atkins diet was considered dangerous at all. I just started on the South Beach diet which is supposed to be similar to atkins I think. I'm not overweight, I'm just trying to lose the extra fat to get my six pack. My gf lost 10 lbs on this diet so far in about a month so hopefully it will work for me :)

I didn't think it was dangerous at all until I told some friends I was thinking about it and got the usual response of "oh no atkins will kill you". Everyone seems to try and use an argument about ketones in your blood from burning fat instead of carbohydrates but what they don't understand is that Dr.Atkins insists you drink 64-100 fl oz of water per day to flush the ketones out of your system.

Good luck with South Beach, I heard it works wonders if you just stick to it, glad to hear your girlfriend had success with it too.

Yeah I've been in the habit of drinkin a lot of water and pissin every 10 mins for a while now so that wouldn't be an issue with me. And I'm glad my gf had success with the diet too!! :)

Eating fatty foods is not heart healthy, and that does seem to be the way people have gone with the atkins diet. I also worry about people getting colon cancer from a lack of good fiber in the diet. ex. My mother makes the best homeade bread. she grinds up the grain for it and everything. How is this unhealthy? Atkins won't allow it, therefore I don't know if the things he said can be trusted.

*edit* Heres a pretty informational link from the Atkins website, it lists what your concern was, about the fiber and such.*edit*
http://atkins.com/Archive/2001/12/18-970957.html

Actually grains are allowed during the later stages of the diet. Most people are mistaken when they believe that you are limited to 20g of carbohydrates during the entire diet that is incorrect. That stage lasts for 2 weeks, after that you move up gradually until your into the later stages and can eat grains and altmost anything else. The only thing that Dr.Atkins entirely bans is sugar, however not sugar substitutes.

As for fiber, Dr.Atkins insists that you eat at least 2 cups of salad and around 3 cups of vegetables per day during induction at minimum. In the later stages you increase all of these until you arrive at the final stage which is a well balanced diet that includes alot of fiber. People often do not follow the diet correctly and simply stay in the induction stage during their entire time which I agree is not safe or smart, however that is not the way the diet was intended to be followed.

This also goes for fatty foods, sure if people are prone to eating unhealthily they are going to go for the fatty foods, but look at people in the U.S. who currently do not follow a healthy eating plan they're living off mcdonalds and pizza.

Before and after pics plz.

congradulations, but just for the record, although safer than the original, the new atkins diet is still not totaly safe. you still lost massive amounts of fat over a short period of time, and since we store many essential nutrients in out fat, those who work out will lose a lot of their energy for sure, and may suffer from mal nutrition. You really have to take it easy w/ the exercise in the first 2 stages of the diet in order to be safe.

Before pic is a little older but its all I could find right now.

http://pichold.com/tmp/beforeaf.jpg

http://pichold.com/tmp/afteraf.jpg

http://pichold.com/tmp/afteraf2.jpg

Excellent work mate. Keep at it. If you need some inspiration, I went from 89kg (200lbs) to the current 67kg (148lbs) in around 6 months. I do not have a frame that can hold a lot of weight and I've gone from 'chunky' to lean, clean muscle.

I don't really care how you do it - whatever diet and excercise - really top effort and keep going!

Thanks Oz, I appreciate it. Thats why I posted this topic I wanted to let people know that this diet worked for me and if they need to lose a good ammount of weight don't be afraid to give anything a try. I'd been on a few other diets before and nothing was working I had just about given up.

I found it was more about a logical life style change. Less food, but higher nutritional content and being about 5 billion percent more active :)

Continuing to think on the positive side, you have fairly broad shoulders and (soon enough) narrow hips. This is a classic guys shape (I have slightly narrower shoulders than average and fairly small hips). You will find that you can have a little bit of fat and a decent amount of muscle and still look quite good, feel good too.

http://pichold.com/tmp/beforeaf.jpg

Innocent Boy.......






http://pichold.com/tmp/afteraf2.jpg
...Serial killer


good job on losing the weight though. :thumbsup:

Can't avoid the plan facts- Doctor Atkins died of a blood clot and animal fats are FAR worse for you than Vegetable fats. Actually vegetable fats are very good for you, most people I know of cook every thing in Olive Oil, VERY good for cholesterol levels.

Good work on the weight loss though.

Actually I was never that innocent in that photo graph I was actually a bit cocked thats why the smile is so funny looking I was suprised by a camera flash, and your like the 100th person to tell me I look like a serial killer. :)


Jimster: His actual cause of death is listed as "blunt impact injury to the head" earlier reports that were said to have been leaked contained false information. He also developed cardiomyopathy from a viral infection completely unrelated to his diet.

As for the bloodclot that was removed from his brain, he did have blunt force trauma from hitting his head on a curb and hypercoagulation can be a in the family genes and has nothing to do with the diet itself either.

So I know almost nothing about nutrition and what carbs are and cholesterol and all that, but can you just take a daily multivitamin to replace all the nutrients you lose when your on the diet? I mean that seems like the biggest concern about this diet right? I would also like to know what other diets or strategies other people here who disagree with atkins have chosen that worked for them.

Actually I was never that innocent in that photo graph I was actually a bit cocked thats why the smile is so funny looking I was suprised by a camera flash, and your like the 100th person to tell me I look like a serial killer. :)

You gonna kill me too? :lol2:

2Slow, you are required on Atkins type of diets (Dr.Atkins states this in his book), to take a multi-vitamin, and he also recommends the essential oils to be taken. I take CarbSmart One-A-Day vitamins and they contain my required daily allowance of all vitamins according to FitDay's calculator. (you also get alot of nutrients from the vegetables, meat, and other things you eat on this diet, the only lacking nutrients are those that carbs provide which the CarbSmart vitamins contain.)

*edit*
--link to carbsmart site--
http://www.oneaday.com/products/carbsmart.shtml
*edit

Lame, I dunno I'm kinda running out of places to hide the bodies the last 99 people I just ran through the trash compactor piece by piece. Since I'm on atkins maybe I should of ate them for the protein, yummy.

Any low-carb diets are bad in the long run, unless you are eating healthy fats but basically their for lazy people. Go on the low-fat diet. Aim at the target not the house if you know what im saying. But again many people cant resist the house :disappoin

I also started on Atkins at the end of August of 2003. When I started, I weighed 245 pounds. Yeah, some people harassed me too with these "it's bad for you" lies. But I didn't listen to them. Using the Atkins diet to lose weight is a hell of a lot healther than staying fat the rest of your life. I've gotten so used to diet pop, it's HARD to go back to regular because it now tastes like shit! I like to drink a lot of pop too every once and a while. It was the main thing that made me fat. So now that I'm drinking diet pop, I have room to enjoy my carbs, in limited amounts of course, and still keep the weight off. I've been maintaining a good 170 pounds for over a month now. It seems like that I have been REALLY bad too and it's hardly going up. But I BETTER start behaving soon before my "boobs" come back. Don't want that to ever happen. I think I might loose another 5 or 10 pounds. Then try to be more careful with the carbs this time. So far, I'm doing pretty damn good, but I have to be careful. Good job Cl0ak. Lookin' good there!

Don't drink alot of diet soda. Consuming too much nutrasweet can be hazardous to your health. Now that you are down to 170, try to start working out hardcore. Try cycling, walking, weights etc. The only way to maintain a good weight is to become fit. Losing weight does not make you fit

Besides pounds of bacon and sausage, what exactly can u eat on this diet?

Actually I don't eat bacon or sausage, bacon contains nitrates which stall weight loss and sausage has the same effect. Any processed foods are considered unhealthy on Atkins. In reality we're only to eat whole fresh foods, along with vegetables.

You can eat anything except sugar (you can have splenda which is a substitute) and you cannot eat grains until the later stages of the diet, at that point after the weight loss you return to eating normally just without junk food.

p.s. Kcg your doing good keep it up and thanks.