As are fiber supplements. (Yet again I have to point this out).
Off to drink a glass of vitamin C and echinacea, enriched with lovely psyllium husks. Mmmmm uuuurgghhh bleaugh.
?? Who said they were eliminated? Who said fiber supplements were eliminated? I was simply pointing out that Atkins doesn’t just eliminate nutrition-poor carbohydrate sources; it also eliminates nutrition-rich carbohydrate sources. The post I was responding to suggested that only refined sugars, white flour, and starchy vegetables were eliminated, and I was correcting that.
Daniel
You posted a litany of vitamins and such that are missing from Induction Phase foods. We have posted that we understand that, and that we take those from supplements as the diet proscribes.
Lib, I corrected a false dichotomy you were setting up, is all. Atkins doesn’t just get rid of sugar and white flour; it gets rid of all the healthful foods I mentioned as well. I recognize that y’all have to take vitamin supplements when you’re on Atkins to make up for the nutrition you’d otherwise lose by not eating a varied, healthful diet.
Daniel
I do not “set up” false dichotomies.
Yep. Daniel’s definitely right about the vitamins. The key word is supplement. Vitamins should not be where you get the bulk of your vitamins and minerals. Though vitamin bottles say they have 100% of this, and 1666% of that, that’s merely the physical makeup of the vitamin. You body only absorbs a small amount of that. When you urinate after taking your vitamins, and it’s a rich, gold color? That’s all of those vitamins flowing right out, because they weren’t absorbed. But, the key to avoid this happening is drinking obscene amounts of water, which most diets, Atkins included, call for.
I’d like to reiterate that no suppliments are “required” on the Atkins diet. Dr. Atkins recommends vitamin suppliments to EVERYONE on ANY DIET, simply because they can’t really cause harm, and they can cover any gaps in your nutritional intake.
Because he advocates suppliments in general doesn’t mean that they’re required for the diet he advocates. One can get the RDA of pretty much everything from low carb foods.
In response, I’ll quote an old friend of mine: “Blargh. Logic has taken a holiday.”
Your statment is a rash generalization which holds no water whatsoever. I’m sure there’s a nifty techinical word for the logical fallacy you’re commiting. (Maybe Lib can help me out with the Latin?) On top of that, there are factors other than diet which lead to obesity. Your “slim friends” are more than likely more active, watch less TV, and spend less time online that your unslim friends. Even if your slim friends aren’t active, and they eat like crap, I’d still bet on the fact that eat a lot less food than your unslim friends.
As for your second comment, fine. I still think it’s illogical to let yourself become overweight. It makes no sense to me. There is nothing (short of a serious medical condition, or physical or mental disability) that prevents one from not being overweight. Walk. Don’t eat as much. Don’t sit around as much. These three tasks, which cost nothing, are not very difficult to accomplish.
Do you know anyone, even a child, who does not know, or cannot comprehend the cause & effect relationship between eating too much/moving too little and putting on weight?
So, do I have a have “an extremely limited understanding of the human condition?” I don’t think so, but it’s possible. I’ll tell you what I don’t have, though. I don’t have pity for people who are too lazy to take care of themselves, who don’t have a care in the world about what they eat, and who look for snake oil salesmen to sell them “magic bullets” to instantly and effortlessly cure their laziness and obesity for them.
The most tried, the most proven, the most guaranteed, the healthiest, the most efficient, though arguably the hardest way to lose weight is to simply eat less and exercise more. There’s no contending this. We already know the answer to the question so many people are asking. But overweight people, in general, don’t want to hear the answer.
Eating healthy and responsibly is the easiest, and the cheapest form of preventative medecine available. We could save billions of dollars a year in medical costs if people ate better. Can you refute this?
You honestly claim that you generally use no logic when making decisions?
Well, I guess you hit right at the heart of the matter. People need to be more logical. They need to get smarter. Dr. Atkins isn’t making people smarter, though, unfortunatley.
We do (or should) use logic to make choices. “Would you like to supersize that?” The logical answer would be “No.” Everyone one of use here knows that he or she wouldn’t doesn’t need the extra soda and fries. Everyone knows that it’s simply not logical to eat that much salt, fat, and sugar in one sitting.
Why isn’t it logical? It’s a simple equation, really. “If I eat too much crap, too often, it is highly probable that I will get fat and develop other health complications. Being overweight and/or having medical complications will more than likely decrease both my qualiy and length of my life. This is bad. Should I, then, eat at McDonalds tonight?”
The logical answer, obviously, is “no.”
If one chooses to ignore this, then it’s their own fault. They made a bad decision, due to their inability to grasp the very simple logical statment I spelled out above. Don’t you agree? Or is the whole “eat too much and you’ll gain weight” not clear enough for you? If that’s the case, I’m sorry, then I can’t help you, as I don’t know how I can put it any simpler.
Guin got it exactly right when she said people “just need to eat healthier and exercise more.” She’s right. It’s that simple. Hard as hell to do, but simple to understand.
But at issue is what IS healthier. Watch out for that Audiatur et Altera Pars.
Perhaps I need a new dictionary. Mine lacks the notation: something that makes sense to the_great_dalmuti as a definition for logic.
Perhaps when you get around to posting that fully developed philosophy of living that models all human value choices as decidable propositions in a formal language you will also post your dictionary of choice.
Of all the things for humans to feel self-righteous about, bady fat percentage ranks right up there with the ability to memorize long lists of unrelated items.
I believe it starts with: “Thou shalt not eat meat,” Spiritus. And that is an absolute moral. 
log’i*cal (-i k’l) adj. 1. based on or using logic 2. expected because of what has gone before -log’ically adv.
log*ic (laj’ik) n. [ult. < Gr. logos, word] 1. correct reasoning, or the science of this 2. way of reasoning 3. what is expected by the working of cause and effect -lo*gi-cian n.
These are from the 1987 edition of the Webster’s New World Dictionary.
Look particularly at the seond definition of logical and the third definition of logic. We have always known, since we were children, that it is logical to assume that eating a lot of food, eating junk food, and not exercising will lead to gaining weight. Therefore, one is using faulty logic when one assumes that he or she can both eat a lot of unhealthy food and not exercise, and maintain a healthy physique. I could spell this out in formal logical notation, but that’s hardly necessary, as you’re a learned individual and can surely grasp this simple concept.
So, one may feel proud of the fact that he or she is smart, and try to run it in other people’s faces on an internet message board. Yet, one may not feel proud of the fact that he or she is healthy, and try to fight “unhealthiness” on an internet message board? Why is this? People flaunt their intelligence all the time, around here. Why I can’t I flaunt my healthiness?
Have you, or anyone else on Atkins, gone to your doctor and/or a nutritionist about the diet? What did they say about it? Just because the book says it’s good to go, it’s probably a better idea to get a personal, professional opinion. Who knows, maybe a nutritionist has got some other fancy diets up her sleeve, which you would like even better than Atkins? It’s worth a shot, and coming out of it, the worst off you would be is being armed with a professional medical opinion. Sounds like a win-win situation.
Also, if you asked the doctor or the nutritionist, point blank, “Is taking vitamin supplements, fiber supplements, and mineral supplemets every day, in the place of a balanced diet, a healthy thing to do?” They would undoubtely, 100% answer “no.”
What myself, and I presume Daniel, are getting at, is that while you may lose weight on the Atkins diet, it is neither the best nor the most effecient way to do so. Eating a well-rounded, plant-based, low fat diet, and exercising regularly, is the best, most efficient way to lose weight.
In addition to not being the best way to lose weight, the Atkins diet is also a rather unhealthy diet which relies heavily on invariably innefficient vitamine, mineral, and fiber supplements, and has no long-term feasibility. I’ve been a vegetarian for 8 years. It’s an easy diet to maintain, and I’m fit as a fiddle. How long do you see yourself being able to maintain an Atkins Diet lifestyle? Both monetarily and physically? When you’re 65 or 70, do you see youself being able to be happy on the Atkins Diet?
As I said before, a diet shouldn’t be a prescription for a lifestyle. It should be a guide to get one on the right track of eating healthier, and maintaining a healthier lifestyle. Any diet is a waste of time if you don’t learn anything from it, and if you don’t come out of the diet healthier and feeling better than before you went on it.
I have never denied that one can lose weight on the Atkins diet. But, there are many better, healthier ways to lose weight.
I want to flaunt my left pinkie finger. Why cant I? If people can flaunt thier intelligence and/or thier health then i wanna flaunt my pinkie. With that established shall we open the floor to other things we should be able to flaunt or drop the whole rather silly issue.
Perhaps, but I have my doubts.
Well, that is, of course, a different question entirely. Now you are questioning the logic of a decision based upon stated assumptions of causlity. You do understand that this is not the same thing as saying , “[it is] illogical to ever . . . get to the point where I felt the need to go on a diet.” Right?
Thin and healthy are not synonyms. Perhaps if you find a message board dedicated to fighting unhealthiness somebody there could explain the distinction to you (without, I hope, rubbing your face in anything.)
Nope. I don’t understand the difference. Be a dear and explain it to me. So you’re saying that it’s not common knowledge that eating too much will cause a person to gain weight? You’re saying that, in general, people do not know why they gain weight? People don’t live, everyday, with basic assumptions of causality?
For a common, everyday, ordinary person, who understands the most basic understanding of nutrition and the human body, it is illogical to let themselves become overweight. They make a series of choices which are decided upon by desire and emotion, or faulty logic, rather than sound logic. Or, they simply choose to deny or overlook the inevitable conclusion.
You’re exactly right. If you read my last post, you’ll note that that is exactly the point I attempting to make. Though the Atkins Diet may make you thin, it does not necessarily mean that the diet is inherently healthy.
Even though a thin person is not necessarily a healthy person, an overweight person IS necessarily an unhealthy person.
The Great Dalmuti wrote:
Although your presumptions are mysterious indeed, you seem here to be presuming a lifetime of vitamin and mineral supplements when they are in fact proscribed for only a couple of weeks.
And it wrote to Spiritus:
That proves exactly two things: (1) logic cannot explain everything, and (2) you cannot explain logic.
This is actually slightly different from what i’m getting at.
It’s possible that the Atkins diet will eventually prove to be more healthful than the ADA-recommended diet. However, the bulk of research so far shows the ADA diet to be the healthiest, and that’s the one that all mainstream nutritional and scientific bodies recommend: the ADA, the AHA, the FDA, the NAS, etc. Low carb diets are mainly recommended by a small number of commercial entities who stand to profit directly from people’s acceptance of their recommendations. If the only people recommending a high-carb, low-fat diet were the American Wheat Association and their ilk, I’d be suspicious of that diet as well.
I’m willing to see research that shows Atkins is healthy, and I hope it’ll be done. One study put forth, the Duke study, has been explicitly repudiated by the same American Heart Association at whose conference the study was presented. Other studies have shown that the Atkins diet is not so healthy after all.
I’m not particularly concerned about weight loss: I’m concerned about all diet-related illnesses, of which obesity is only the most prevalent. And mainstream scientific opinion is that a varied diet, rich in minimally processed whole grains, vegetables, fruits, and lean meats, is the healthiest diet. Until that mainstream scientific opinion changes (which will take more than a small Atkins-funded apples-to-oranges study performed at Duke), I’ll go with my varied diet, not with a no-legumes, no-grains, no-fruit, mucho-pork-rinds diet*.
Daniel
*the last line’s hyperbole. So sue me.
Dear the_great_dalmuti
The statement “one is using faulty logic when one assumes that he or she can both eat a lot of unhealthy food and not exercise, and maintain a healthy physique.” is not identical to the statement “it is illogical to ever get to the point where I felt the need to go on a diet.” Nor do the two statements indicate equivalent propositions, should you both understand propositional logics and desire to apply one in this case.
Sincerely,
Me.
Sorry to resurrect an old thread but all i can say is HA!!! <smirking in that smug kinda HA! kinda way> www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/02/15/health/main540776.shtml