The diet is meant to be long-term. There is more information about this at:

[link|http://atkinscenter.com/|http://atkinscenter.com/]

Dr. Atkins' premises as I read them are:

1. Humans did not evolve in an environment with readily available refined carbohydrates (sugars and starches).

2. When Atkins first published his low-carb regime, he rationally applied the medical understanding of diabetes to explain an anomaly that was discovered among Vietnam War dead: Autopsies of dead soldiers, though they were young and in peak physical condition, showed varying degrees of heart disease.

3. Recent advances in endocrinology have led to a much better understanding of the interrelationship among blood sugar levels, hunger, and liver and pancreas function. These advances appear to validate Dr. Atkins' guess. Humans evolved using blood sugar levels to regulate appetite, fat storage, and metabolism. Ingesting refined sugars and starches break this regulatory mechanism and can lead to obesity and Type II Diabetes in a large portion of the population.

4. Using Atkins' diet to lose weight indicates that your blood sugar regulation is already broken--otherwise, your weight would be self-regulating. The hope is to get onto a maintenance diet that keeps your metabolism running primarily on ketones produced from the breakdown of fat (BTW, fat is about 10% glucose when broken-down) and prevents wild swings of blood sugar levels.


I did Atkins' diet for three years starting in late '94. I fell off the wagon during the holidays in '97. I let my fatness steadily increase over the years, and then I started again four weeks ago because it would cost too much to buy new dress trousers.

The diet is good for couch potatoes, but it works for active people, as well.

There are a number of observations I've made about the regime based on my experience:

1. If you are into heavy physical activity, you have to train your body to run on fat. Your body will protest the low levels of readily available carb fuel at first by making your ass drag, but if you keep with the exercise, your body will adapt.

2. If you need burstable carb energy for an emergency or for athletic competition, then by all means, eat or drink some carbs. Just learn what the impact of doing so will be (preferably through experimentation).

3. Avoiding the blood sugar yo-yo goes far toward levelling-out your head.

4. The diet quickly slashes appetite in terms of food volume. You should avoid buffets simply because you'll rarely get your money's worth :-)

5. Eat lots of dark green vegetables.


A couple of side topics:

1. There has been some recent research on the glycemic load of various foods. This research was done to benefit diabetics, but it can be used to help vary menus on the Atkins regime. The concept is that various carb-based foods impact blood sugar differently, and researchers have constructed relative weights of this impact by running controlled tests on human subjects. One big gain from this research is that you can eat all the fresh strawberries you want on the diet.

2. There is much criticism about the Atkins diet based on the fact that its long-term effects are unknown. This may be true, but if Dr. Atkins' hypotheses about endocrinology are borne-out through further research, then we will know quite a lot about the deadly short-term and medium-term effects of George McGovern's food pyramid.

-Mike