Atkins Diet can work--if you're committed and careful
Written: Sep 12 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Can eat a lot, rapid weight loss for some metabolisms
Cons: Health risks to some people
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| Redlass's Full Review: Atkins Diet |
Diet reviews just scream to begin with a testimonial. So while I don’t believe that pure anecdotal evidence is sufficient to make a decision about which diet is right for you, I’ll give you my testimonial.
My husband and I were introduced to Atkins through some co-workers of mine who had been successful on the diet. Nearly all my favorite foods include pasta, rice, and bread. I have a huge sweet tooth that is rarely satisfied. Yet, I was willing to give it a try, for the diet claimed to address carbohydrate cravings. We were on the diet for six months, going off of it only when I had a tubal pregnancy and could no longer devote the mental energy that any diet requires. During those six months, I lost 70 pounds. My husband lost 55 pounds. I had more energy and was healthier than I had been for years. I lost 17 pounds during the initial two weeks and there was never a week that I didn’t lose at least 2 pounds.
So, would I unreservedly recommend the diet to you? No. The Atkins diet is a wonderful diet that can be highly effective for many people. But you will have to decide whether it is right for you. I will, however, give you some information that might help you make that decision.
What is Atkins Diet?
Most everyone has heard at least something about this extremely popular diet. What is most commonly heard is that you can eat all the meat you want, but no bread or potatoes. That’s an oversimplification, but not far from the truth.
The first two weeks of the diet are called the “induction diet.” It is an extremely important part of the diet and should be followed to the letter. It is during these two weeks that your body will start to break your addiction to complex carbohydrates and in which you will learn more about your body’s metabolism.
During the induction diet, you are allowed no more than 20 carbohydrates per day. None of those carbohydrates can come from sugar. Typically, you’ll have a small salad or a vegetable side dish. You can eat as much meat, cheese, or cream as you like. Indeed, the higher your fat ratio to carbohydrates during this week, the more successful the diet will be. I was never able to bring myself to drink cream as my husband did. I drank skim milk instead. It was one of my ways of “cheating.”
After the first two weeks, you can slowly increase the amount of carbohydrates you consume until you reach the point that you are no longer losing weight or you fall out of ketosis.
If you’re going to go on the diet, DO do these things:
The Atkins diet can be a dangerous diet. It is why so many doctors advise against it. If it is not done correctly, it is very easy to get sick or to cause damage to your body. That is why it is essential to follow certain tenets of the diet, starting with this first one:
1. READ THE ENTIRE BOOK FIRST. Sorry for shouting. This is extremely important, though. Do not decide that you know what the diet is simply from talking to other people who are on it or reading any review here at the site. Read the entire book. Read it again. Keep it on hand as a reference book throughout the diet. Understand how the diet works and the affect it can have on your body. Understand how it interacts with other medicines, diseases, etc.
2. Take vitamins. Dr. Atkins is very clear that this diet is an unbalanced diet. He points out that the reason most of us are overweight is because we’ve been eating an unbalanced diet all along. Suddenly putting it into balance isn’t going to undo the years of damage. Instead, he unbalances it in a different direction for the duration of the diet. However, our body still needs certain nutrients. This is where the vitamins come in. Also, some of the vitamins he recommends will help your metabolism adjust to the diet. At the time we were on this diet, we didn’t have access to the vitamins Atkins produces. So instead, we took the list from his book and went to our local GNP store. We were able to figure out which vitamins we needed and simply kept ourselves well-stocked.
3. Eat a lot. If you let yourself get hungry, you’re going to be more inclined to cheat. Also, your body needs energy while you are on this diet. Keep the food coming, just make sure it is the right food. Also, this keeps you from feeling deprived.
4. Drink a lot. At least, drink a lot of water. For some people there is a danger of liver damage on this diet; drinking water can help mitigate that risk. Of course, drinking a lot of water is important for the health of any person—whether dieting or no.
5. Find foods that match your eating habits. If you like gourmet foods, there are plenty of tempting meat dishes you can make. For me, I needed to find foods that I could eat as finger-food snacks. For seven months, I was never without a bag of pork rinds (a snack that I now cannot bear to look at, much less eat).
6. Take the urine tests as directed. It is one way to evaluate whether the diet is still working for you. Indeed, it will often be a better indicator than your scale, as weight can fluctuate during a week.
7. Find non-food ways to reward yourself. This is really true for any diet. We started the diet the month before my birthday. For my birthday, I received a “magic jewelry box.” It was magic, said my husband, because a piece of custom-made jewelry would appear in it for every 15 pounds I lost. The first gift was already there—a set of 11 gold beads for my hair, one for every year that we had known each other. My husband entered into his little conspiracy with the jeweler and they designed all sorts of surprises for me at relatively low costs. I still have a pair of earrings that match my hair that are sitting unworn and inaccessible to me in our home because I stopped just five pounds short of that goal. (Gaining and losing didn’t count. I tried that during my pregnancy.)
The lists of DON’Ts
I won’t list the foods that you shouldn’t eat. You need to read the book and I don’t want to give you any excuse not to. Besides, you will have to determine what carbohydrate level you can tolerate. It was certainly different for both my husband and I.
I will, however, tell you some things that you definitely shouldn’t do.
1. Don’t cheat on the big things. In order for the diet to be successful, you need to break the carbohydrate habit. Allowing yourself to sneak in chocolate bars or a can of Mountain Dew will only make the diet harder. There are ways that you can “cheat,” indulging yourself to make the diet a little easier. I cheated by drinking skim milk rather than whole milk. I would sometimes have sauces that had a little bit of sugar (preferably fructose) or I would have an extra piece of fruit during a week. I also disregarded his admonition to avoid all foods with preservatives. He says in his book that his prohibition against pre-prepared and preservative-laded food is one of general health, not one related to the success of the diet. So we had preservatives. Other people we know kept caffeine in their diet. We weren’t big caffeine drinkers anyway, so that was an easy one to give up.
2. Don’t be on the diet if you are pregnant or trying to get pregnant. Please.
3. Don’t do the diet alone unless you live alone and always eat alone. It really is easier if you can get everything out of the house that is forbidden and you can prepare meals that are specific to your diet. While I wouldn’t recommend the diet to children, you can still cook for the diet with children in the house. You simply give the children more vegetables and fruits than what you can normally eat. It certainly won’t hurt any child to remove the sugar from the house. You may also still wish to have bread or rolls that you serve to non-dieters. However, do at least have a dieting partner that you can report results to, compare progress, and discuss recipes. For a while, the diet can become an obsession and you’ll want to talk about it a lot.
4. Don’t be shy about what you can eat. Don’t be afraid to tell the restaurant server that you want your hamburger without a bun or your steak without a baked potato. I certainly believe in being gracious when a guest in someone’s home, but often a quiet word about the foods you can eat will be appreciated by your host and help you stay on your diet.
5. Don’t focus on what you can’t have. This is a diet of abundance. Don’t let yourself focus on what you can’t have. Focus on what you can have and what you can eat.
Do the research
The Atkins diet has achieved enormous popularity because it does work. It has also achieved enormous notoriety because of its health risks. Let me repeat what I said above: Read the entire book. But don’t stop there. Read what other people have to say about the Atkins diet. Read reviews here, read reviews at medical sites, talk to your health professionals. Have plenty of information both about the diet and your personal health risks.
If you decide to go on it, congratulations and good luck! Enjoy watching the pounds melt away.
As a postscript, credibility demands that I add that I have since gained back all 70 pounds that I lost. Indeed, I regained it in the seven months following the diet. However, the diet cannot entirely be blamed for that. I did not follow the instructions in the book for going off the diet or going onto a maintenance diet. I was also suffering from a depression following the loss of our pregnancy and I comforted myself with food—food that I had been denying myself for the previous six months. This is, though, an intensely personal and circumstantial event, not one that I would expect to hamper another in their dieting.
Recommended:
Yes
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Redlass
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Member: Bridgette
Location: Lansing, Michigan
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