Dr Atkins Diet - Friend Or Foe?

Dr atkins diet does have some features, described in the linked article, which I think are very positive. And many people do in fact lose weight with the Atkins diet or a low carb diet. The question is, will you keep it off in the long term?

Dr atkins diet claims that it causes the body to burn fat instead of just water. Their professed indicator that this is happening is that you go into a metabolic state called ketosis (which is measured by the presence of ketone acids in your urine). Now, ketosis is what the body does when it is starving, fasting, or ill with a diabetes like reaction. It is not a healthy state to be in, and any starvation diet will get you there. Anorexics go into ketosis.

What exactly happens by people following Dr Atkins diet when the body does not get enough carbohydrates, and uses up what little it is able to store?

(We don't store much carbohydrate as usable carbohydrate. When you consume too much carbohydrate it gets turned into fat and stored as fat.) So when the body gets too little carbohydrate in its diet, it will start using proteins and fat in a process that's called ketosis.

The problem with ketosis is that its not a very efficient way to create fuel for the body. It has a lot of waste products, called ketone bodies, that are acidic in nature. So pretty quickly, using dr atkins diet you get a system with excess acidity. You body compensates for that first by trying to neutralise the acids in your blood with bicarbonate ions. But that is a very limited mechanism. The main way your body has of dealing with it is by increasing your urine output, and getting rid of the excess acid throught the filtration process of the kidneys.

So dr atkins diet does not balance your body. It in fact stresses it and causes it to adopt a compensatory mechanism as its daily practice. That is not healthy.

Dr Atkins diet conclusions:

If, as Dr Atkins diet suggests, you give up eating processed food, you will feel more energised. If you start eating fresh, healthy food, and taking mutli vitamins everyday just in case you don't eat the variety of fresh foods you should, you will feel better.

If you followed the principle of carbohydrate limiting Dr Atkins diet reccommends, reducing the amount of carbohydrates you ate to a moderate level. And if you ate carbohydrates that did not cause your blood sugar levels to "spike", you will protect yourself from cravings and mood swings and fatigue. If you consumed the right amount of essential fatty acids, you will improve your nervous system, brain functioning, skin, immune system, and a whole host of other things.

If you succeed in changing your eating patterns long term, as those who successfully follow dr Atkins diet do, you will keep off the weight you lose.

Some people may have found various positive benefits from being on dr atkins diet. But I suggest that if you took the well recongnised, sensible aspects of dr atkins diet and combined them with something that did not cause your body's metabolism to mimic a disease state, then you'd have the same success, the same feeling good, without the risk or body stress.

Interestingly, one of the studies cited on the atkins website refers to another, moderate carbohydrate (as opposed to dr atkins diet low carbohydrate) diet.

This study successfully showed higher reduction in body fat and reduced loss of muscle, compared to a group consuming a high carbohydrate diet.

Yet despite the atkins site appropriating the study to validate its own methods, the study actually used the zone diet - 40% carbohydrates, 30% fat, 30% protein.

More Dr Atkins Diet and Weight Loss Articles

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(Layman D.K., Boileau, R.A., Erickson, D.J., et al., "A Reduced Ratio of Dietary Carbohydrate to Protein Improves Body Composition and Blood Lipid Profiles During Weight Loss in Adult Women)," The Journal of Nutrition, 133(2), 2003, pages 411-417.)