That’s it for me, too. I always ate lots of veggies and chicken and fish, but I ate lots of bread and potatoes and rice and pasta, too. And drank lots of soda, regular soda, not diet. My neurologist wanted me to get the excess sugar out of my diet to see if that helped my migraines, and I quit drinking soda. That helped somewhat. Together, we decided that I would try Atkins, both for weight loss and to see how that would affect the migraines. It’s helped control my migraines incredibly. If I do go overboard and eat too much sugar, I get a headache.
I have tons of energy. I feel better now than I have in years. I sleep better, and my skin is clear.
I’ve decided that this is how I’m supposed to eat - lots of protein and green veggies, lots of water, and a minimum of carbs. No soda, no refined sugar, no potatoes, no corn, no white flour, no commerically processed cereals, and only whole-grain breads. In truth, I don’t even like pasta anymore.
It’s a way of life, if I can say that without sounding too much like a Diet Fundie.
I’m happy for you, sweetie! 
I’ve decided the same thing. And when I look back on my years of struggle with my weight while eating a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet, I get irritated. I wonder why no one had ever presented this option to me. If they had, maybe I wouldn’t have spent the last 15 years of my 25 year life morbidly obese. I found it on my own and I gave it a shot, with my doctor’s consent. I will never, never go back unless and until my bloodwork (that I get monthly or so) comes back with danger signs. My cholesterol on this diet has dropped from 300 to 140, my blood pressure from 170 / 100 to 140 / 75, and my weight so far from 411 :eek: to 360 pounds. I have never felt better in my entire life, and if this way of eating is wrong, why is that? But to avoid the glares and anger, I always just say, “My doctor told me to cut my starches and sugars.”
on preview: Thanks, Bib! Same to you.
I’ve also stopped telling people that I’m on Atkins, when they ask how I’ve lost weight. I recently ran into a friend from church that I hadn’t seen in about a year, and she asked how I lost weight and I just said I had cut out the sweets and exercised more.
The only looks you get that are worse than telling someone you’re on Atkins are when you tell people you don’t drink soda.
“WHAT?!? You don’t drink soda? Well, what do you drink?”
“Water.”
“Are you serious? No Coke?”
“Nope.”
“What about Sprite?”
“No, that’s soda, too.”
“What about Dr. Pepper or Mountain Dew? Do you drink those?”
“No, those are both sodas. I don’t drink soda.”
“You just drink water? Ewww, water’s gross! How can you NOT drink soda?”
People are just amazed that I don’t drink soda at all. Its like they think you’re Anti-American for not sucking down Cokes all day. I haven’t had a soda in over two years.
On the Straight Dope Message Board, this is the way it works. If you make a claim which is subjective by it’s very nature, then it’s up to the person making the claim to prove it’s veracity - NOT the responsibility of the reader to prove it’s untrue.
You’re asking me, 10,000 miles away, to explain how you can be losing weight while still eating 3,000 to 4,000 calories a day? Man… who the fuck knows? You’re asking me to explain why your urine strips are a certain colour? Again, who knows if you’re telling the truth. I’m not your physician… I’m not there to assess whether you’re some freak with a metabolism going crazy. Or maybe you do 60-100k a day on a racing bike (like I do). Ultimately, who gives a shit? If you’re losing weight, great.
Still, there is an inherent conceit attached to the following logic - namely, “such and such is working for me, ergo it must be true for all human beings” and I’m hear to tell you that I’m a former Olympian in the 100k Team Time Trial and the 180km Road Race at the 1984 Los Angeles games and I have known, in my time, hundreds if not thousands of athletes who were leaner, fitter, and lower body fat percentages than any of the people I’m reading about here. And not one of us ever pissed on urine strips to verify our beliefs in a friggin’ diet. Sure, we took urine tests all the time because of drug testing, but you need to be aware of something… I’ve been doing blood tests since 1982 when I first became a national representative cyclist - and in that time diet was everything because power to weight ratio is everything in cycling. I’ve been hearing about terms like “ketosis” and “lipolysis” and “glycaemic index” for decades longer than all of the current “know alls” have been. And through it all the bottom line has been this - avoid soft calories like booze and soft drinks and then eat healthily and a broad mixed diet and exercise like a demon. As they say, no substitute for the miles. And in my time, just before the World Chamionships in Austria in 1987, as a 6’1" guy at 25 years of age, I was down to 69 kilos - that’s 152 pounds for my American friends. My heart rate was 36 beats a minute in the morning. None of you, absolutely none of you, can lecture me on diet, or human athletic performance - unless of course you once beat me in a race.
Can you see now how the flip side works? I’ve demonstrated a capacity for extreme athletic prowess that none of you can match, and by extension, I am now presenting myself as the de facto authority here. And yet, I also recognise that to do such a thing is an inherently concceited and arrogant thing to do - hence I’ll dial back my claims and merely state this - the overwhelming personal experience that I have of world class athletes is that the training is more important than the diet in regards to weight loss. This why athletes look like athletes, and office workers look like office workers.
So I wish to reiterate, ketosis is what we call in cycling as riding “hunger flat”. That is, zero glycogen stores left in the liver. 100% fat burning in real time. Going “hunger flat” in a race is disastrous - your legs are fine but it’s like someone turned off the tap regarding your fuel flow. You get dropped every single time from the pack. Ask any knowledgeable athlete whether they would like to live in a permanent state of “hunger flat” and they’d tell you you’re fucking crazy. It’s unhealthy in the long run. It can’t continue. The body is running on empty and it’s just a fucking stupid way to go through life.
The question remains… however… if you’re so sure you’re right… if you’re so sure you’ve found the magic bullet… then how come you had the weight problem to begin with?
Three questions for you, Boo Boo Foo:
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What do the needs of endurance athletes matter to sedentary people or strength athletes?
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Why are you attacking the line of thought that says low-carb is the only way to go? I haven’t seen anyone state that.
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Are you and your other athletes differentiating between weight loss and fat loss? To some, it doesn’t matter much, but to others, it matters a lot.
Boo Boo Foo, you are the one making subjective claims. I’ve provided cites here, as I did in the previous thread (as have some others here and there) - all of which you’ve ignored. Are you really going to continue with this “my post is my cite” stance?
Atheletes are not necessarily authorities on science. As for “personal experience”, remember what your “friend” blowero has said about the scientific validity of such claims. :rolleyes:
We are in full agreement about your arrogance and conceit though.
No one’s asking you to explain why the keto-sticks turn purple. I know why they do that - because I’m in ketosis and excreting ketones in my urine.
Did you read my previous post? I don’t drink sodas at all. Now that I think about it, it’s probably been more like three years since I had a soft drink. I don’t drink liquor that much, either. I don’t drink wine at all - it’s a migraine trigger. I’m not that fond of hard liquor. I have a beer or two occasionally, but since I’ve been dieting, I’ve laid off of them. No, I don’t drink light beer, either. I prefer dark beer. And I wouldn’t try the newer low-carb beers out there.
I do eat a healthy mixed diet, I just lay off the carbs.
I’ll lecture you on diet when it concerns MY diet. From what I’ve observed over the last year, too many carbs give me migraines (and so do some other very specific foods, but that’s a tangent). Eating a diet high in protein and veggies and very low in carbs is better for me than a diet high in carbs.
I had a weight problem becasue I ate too much of the wrong types of food for my body. From what I’ve seen in the last year, I’m not meant to eat a lot of carbohydrates. I have tons of energy. I wake up feeling rested, and have plenty of energy all day. I only work part-time, but I have a level amount of energy all day. I teach preschool (four-year-olds - believe me, I need a LOT of energy!). I used to get those awful blood sugar spikes and crashes when I was eating lots of carbs, and now I don’t. I feel 100% better now. When I ate cereal and toast for breakfast, by 10:00 a.m. I was falling asleep and always thought I needed a cup of coffee. Now for breakfast, I have either eggs and sausage or some cheese and turkey and a couple strawberries. I feel great all morning, and never get that mid-morning crash. I used to get another crash around 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon, but not anymore. I can go all day. (I do eat lunch, of course.)
I’m not an Olympic-class athlete, so I don’t need to “exercise like a demon.” You keep saying that - we’re not all in training for Athens, remember. I ride my exercise bike for 20-30 minutes every day, sometimes more. It’s down by the kid’s PlayStation, and I recently realized I could play DVDs on it, so I’ve been watching the first season of CSI, one episode at a time. I can pedal for 50 minutes at a steady rate quite easily while I watch. I’m not sitting there pedaling away like Lance Armstrong; I just pedal like a normal person would on a regular bike ride. I also have a dog that needs walking several times a day. That’s my exercise: biking and walking. Once summer gets here, I’ll add in swimming. Isn’t that enough for a 30-something suburban soccer mom? (Actually, I’m a baseball mom, but no one ever knows what that is… )
No kidding. :rolleyes:
Because I was a child who ate what I was given. Because I had serious emotional problems that I comforted by eating. Because even though I ate the right things and the right amounts, I was always hungry, so I ate more. Did you have full control over every single thing you ate when you were 10 years old? If you’ve never had a food addiction, I’m afraid you probably wouldn’t understand. Moreover, I’ve only been doing this since January, so I can’t expect to lose 170 pounds in 4 months.
As to my activity level, I’m what you might call moderately sedentary. I have a job where I work standing up, but that’s only 30 hours a week. In addition, I take one 15 minute walk every single day. But, I did both of those things pre-Atkins, and I never lost an ounce – except for the one time when my doctor put me on an extremely restricted 1100 cal / day diet when I was 17. I lost 110 lb (50 kg) and I have never been more miserable. Such a lifestyle is not sustainable, so I of course managed to put back every single pound and 60 more. Atkins may not be right for you (and I’ll be the first to say it’s not right for everyone), but it’s right for me, and as you said, it’s not your place to tell me it’s not right for me. All I know is this: my food addiction is broken, my bloodwork has never been better, and I have lost a lot of weight. Are you going to argue that being a 25 year old >400 lb male is more healthy than living in ketosis for a year or so while getting regular blood testing?
I suppose it’s a good thing then that I have no desire to be a world-class athlete, yes? The sort of strain that you placed on your body is so far outside my realm of experience as to be irrelevant to me. My body is not running on empty; my body is converting my copious stored fat into the carbohydrates necessary for my daily functioning. The first 2 - 3 days of ketosis, as your body runs out of stored glycogen, are miserable. I understand that no one would want to live like that for very long. You get headaches, you feel dizzy or light-headed, and you just feel a general malaise – we call it “induction flu.” But, that goes away on day 3 or 4, when you slip into ketosis. It’s been long gone for me now, because I’ve been in ketosis for 4 months. Is this sufficiently long term, or should I resurrect this in a year and ask again?
Please provide a citation on your statement that
I want a study, preferably published in a peer-reviewed journal. Until then, I’ll regard it as an argument from authority. If low carbohydrate diets are inherently unhealthy, then explain how the Masai and the Inuit live – keeping in mind that the Inuit diet is almost 0g carbohydrates daily. Explain how our pre-agrarian ancestors lived off a high-protein, high-fat diet long enough to become agrarian.
On preview:
ultrafilter, I’m one of those people to whom weight loss is less important than fat loss. As I mentioned above, I have gone on a restricted calorie diet – on that diet, the 110 pounds I lost was around 50 - 75% muscle mass. I’d always been naturally a pretty strong person (pre-diet, without any previous weight training, I could bench about 225 when I was 15), but on the calorie restricted diet, I lost almost all of it. When I put the weight back on, thankfully the muscle returned, but it brought fat and friends with it. So far, I’ve not lost any muscle mass (perceptible to me, anyway) on Atkins, and that’s yet another tick mark on its good side. In fact, right now my calves are looking pretty good, from moving a 400 pound person around for 5 years or so; I’ve lost most of the fat that was stored down there and I think I like it.
On further preview:
Take what Bib said about energy crashes, right down to the times of day, and apply it to me pre-Atkins.
It’s worth noting that here in Australia and England (and perhaps other parts of the world) we refer to soda drinks as soft drinks. They’re the same thing - just a different cultural name. Certainly however, the philosophy of cutting out soda drinks and more importantly, booze, is a profoundly well known one if you’re an athlete wishing to stay as lean as possible. However, it’s important to note that this philosophy is referred to as “avoiding empty calories” - that is, calories with zero nutritional benefit.
I would politely suggest that such a philosophy should not be attributed to Dr Atkins, or any notable diet plan for that matter. It’s an age old philosophy in athletic circles - a bit like common wisdom for want of a better description. My point here is that it’s just plain a sham to attribute a name, or a legacy to stuff which was already common knowledge - there’s just something shonky about it.
Well, one would think that the answer lays in the fact that endurance athletes burn so many calories. It’s not an unreasonable assertion that sedentary people who can find a way to burn more calories will, by extension, lose weight far more easily. In this context, the name of the diet they’re adhereing to is largely moot by virtue of the calorie expenditure far outweighing everything else.
Allow me to be very specific - I’m attacking the opportunistic “snake oil” nature of any, and all, weight loss programs. I am stating quite bluntly that so long as you eat less calories per week than you’re expending, you will lose weight - without fail. No if’s. No conditions. No need to read a book.
Good point and a good question. At an athletic level, any reduction in power, and endurance is bad. Hence, the goal is an increase in “power to weight ratio” by (at least) maintaining power levels while also decreasing body fat percentages. The general consensus is that 6% body fat is low as you’ll ever want to go - lower than that and you start having real immunology problems I’ve found.
In closing, what I’m finding time and time again at the moment regarding Atkin’s proponents is the following syndrome… “I do such and such and it works just fine for me because I’ve lost x amount of pounds in y months”. And my response is, quite frankly, big deal. I’ve known oodles of people who’ve gotten back into sport after ten years in the office, and voila, in the same period they were able to make the same claim. Ergo, by extension my logic is this - the need to buy a book by some famous Diet dude is a croc - just do the work and it’ll happen regardless. But interestingly, that seems to be the hardest sell of all - doing the work that is. It seems far easier to sell a quick fix book and THAT is why I cry “SCAM”!
Well, that and the opportunity to brag on and on and on about how you’re a world-class athlete and anyone who doesn’t desire to be the same doesn’t know goose-flop about their bodies or what seems to work to make it healthier.
But that’s just my reading of the situation. :rolleyes:
It should also be noted that there is no need to buy either Dr. Atkins’ book or any of the supplements and add-ons that are being sold. The plan is on the website, complete and without lacunae, for free. If this be scam, make the most of it.
Boo
No doubt you could kick my ass on a bike any day of the week and at least twice on Sunday. Of this I am flat sure.
But with that said, your metabolism and mine are not the same. Your body fat is what 10%? 15%?
I recall reading in the book fit or Fat that there is a floor of fat level that no one can go below. I don’t recall the percentage but if you try to use body fat as fuel below this number your body will burn muscle instead. In other words there is no way a person can get to 0% body fat. I suspect that you and the other cyclists were running just above that critical percentage when you competed. Your hunger flat was your body using up available fat and starting to tear down muscle to use as fuel. Lance Armstrong talks about this in his second book, where he missed a feeding stime in the middle of the Tour de France.
Now compare that to me. I am right now at 32% body fat (according to Mr. Tanita’s scale) I can ride for days and days before I get to that critical percentage. Last Friday I did 3 hours on my mountain bike No boink, no hunger flat, I felt great the entire trip. Tired yes. No I did not use Gatorade, Gu, or Power bars. Just lots of good cold H2O. Man I have enough fat to ride for days 
Furthermore your metabolism is not the same as someone who has hyperinsulinism
Food effects you differently than it does someone who has 40% body fat.
Well that’s your opinion but in my defence I’ll point out that I left the Olympic angle out of this thread for 4 pages on purpose - specifically to demonstrate that a truckload of pro-Atkins people cited their own positive experiences to illustrate what THEY believed was empirical evidence. To demonstrate that it isn’t empirical evidence, I then demonstrated my own history to prove that even lower body fat percentages can be achieved through athletic performance. My goal was to demonstrate that neither technique is a compellingly definitive debating technique. Only the most jaded person would contend I’ve been going “on and on” but oh well, can’t please 'em all.
Still, you’re welcome to your opinion. It doesn’t take away what I’ve achieved in the past, nor will it stop me training tomorrow morning with the lads.
I’m not a nutritionist, and I do not really have an opinion on Atkins, but I wanted to respond to this:
If you have had a food addiction, you need professional help. Diet alone won’t break it. I’ve known too many people with eating disorders (and been married to one) to believe that you can break a food addiction just by eating different things.
Ahh yes, the concept known as “Genetic Body Fat Minimum”. There’s a body of opinion that it actually slides up as we get older too.
In my personaly experience, what I’ve found is this (and it carries across the board for most of my fellow competitors) - we would get to a minimal level - say 8-10% body fat. Then, as the season progressed and we slid into mega mileage and racing, we’d lose another 3 or 4% body fat - however - the moment we backed off that intensity our bodies would clamber to gain back to that earlier mark. In effect, we were temporarily going below our genetic minimums - but the body would try to rebound to that minimum as soon as possible.
There’s a body of opinion which suggests this “minimum body fat” level is genetically different for various people, and further, that it slides inexorably upwards as we get older - until about 65 or so - and then starts to fall again.
On the other hand, you seem quite willing to take away what the people succeeding on Atkins have achieved so far, simply because you consider it a scam and won’t hear that people are actually lowering their body fat and weight using the program. It’s not a fad diet. It’s not unsustainable. It works for these people. Yet you keep trying to poo-poo everything they’ve done so far as if Atkins dieters are the most metabolism-ignorant human beings that ever walked the earth.
That’s the difference in what’s going on here. We’re perfectly happy for you to do whatever you want to do to keep fit. We’re not begrudging you your training “with the lads”. We’re not begrudging you your 0.5% bodyfat or whatever percentage you possess. We’re not begrudging you your “hunger flat”. Yet you seem to begrudge us our eating plan, on which we’re losing weight and getting fitter.
You’re the one intruding on OUR fitness culture, not us on yours. Go pedal with the lads. Just realize that you and we are coming from two whole different places as far as health and metabolism and fitness are concerned. What’s dangerous to someone with extremely low bodyfat is beneficial to people who are trying to get rid of that bodyfat, on an eating program that is sustainable past our goal weight.
I appreciate your concern, but it’s misplaced. I had already broken my psychological addiction to food long before I started Atkins, but I still felt hungry all the time. Instead of eating like I would have, I just went hungry, until my willpower ran out and I gave in. Ketosis has more or less banished cravings – I can’t remember the last time I thought, “I could really go for X right now.” I just eat when I’m physically hungry, which I don’t even notice until I get a slight headache.
I’ll take you to task on that if I may. Let’s remember what this thread is about shall we? This is a thread about seeing the words “Lo Carb” on this, that, and everything. Nobody asked the pro-Atkins people to come rushing in here defending the plan or whatever. Ergo, to assert that I’m impacting on YOUR fitness culture in some way is somewhat disingenuous considering what this thread is really about.
Nonetheless, if you’re losing weight, great. But mark my words, for every bit of offence that somebody like you might be taking from someone like me who says “just do the work”, a shitload more people are taking offence from all the latest converts who are walking around screaming “Atkins Hallelujah! I’ve discovered Ketosis!”. Hence, your last post there doesn’t cut it for me I’m afraid. It seems to me that we’re not discussing the things we’re discussing because some former Olympic cyclist threw them on the table as points of debate. The terms we’re hearing are getting bandied about far more widely in the public domain than you and me in this little old thread.
And that, I suspect is why the thread was started to begin with.
As I said, if my fellow Dopers out there are losing weight, that’s great. I don’t begrudge any of you the congratulations you deserve. I merely reserve the right to assert that MY way of doing it is ultimately better for you - because your heart rate is lower and your blood pressure is lower and you’re oxygenating yourself every day - ergo you look younger too. It’s an opinion thing, and I’ll gladly accept that arguing about opinions on a messageboard is foolish.