Um, you did notice that my response was to BiblioCat didn’t you? A big clue would be that I QUOTED him/her.
Yes, I am painfully aware of this. But since you obviously didn’t bother to make note of the post to which I was responding, I’ll point out the BiblioCat attributes his/her success to “ate mainly whole, fresh foods, starting walking and riding an exercise bike”, NOT to ketosis. This is the logic spiral from hell:
A: People who do Atkins wrongly fixate on carbs.
B: That’s not true, I just eat whole foods like lean chicken, fish, and vegetables, and I have lost weight.
A: But that’s just common sense; the fixation on carbs is irrelevant. You lost weight because you improved your eating habits.
C: You have to cut carbs to enter ketosis.
:rolleyes:
Here I thought that BiblioCat attributed his/her success to having followed the Atkins Diet, which necessarily includes ketosis. How do you know whether it was the whole-food focus or the carbohydrate restriction (or both) which worked? Do you think that s/he would have lost the same amount of weight by eating those foods and also eating plenty of whole grains? How do you know?
Personally, when I was on Atkins, I ate a cheese and onion omelet with a side of bacon for breakfast almost every day, a green salad with chicken and Parmesan dressing for lunch, and red meat and vegetables for dinner. I snacked on cheese and nuts. My fat intake was quite high, and I lost 40 pounds. I certainly attribute that to the carbohydrate restriction, since I was overall eating “better” by traditional guidelines when I put on the 40 pounds (lots of whole grains, low fat meats, similar quantities of vegetables).
Eating whole foods is better for you, but that’s not the only thing that makes the diet work. That’s all I’m sayin’.
Was this supposed to be your admission that you were wrong:
Because that’s a pretty shitty admission that you were wrong. It sounds more like you’re doggedly insisting that you’re right.
I think you bear the lion’s share of the responsibility for that.
Actually, after seeing your obnoxious response to me, I DID scan ahead to see if anything further was said, at which time I saw the post I quoted above, where you told gobear that he was just “spouting”, and challenged him to provide evidence that you were wrong. Maybe it’s just me, but I thought that when one is admitting they are wrong, they generally don’t challenge others to prove it.
Here’s an idea: Why don’t you take a piece of brocolli, shove it up your ass, and see if it raises your blood sugar, OK?
Okay, I’m back to 'splain myself. First off, I’m also taking seizure meds (Topamax), but they’re to combat migraines.
Okay, I did follow Atkins, pretty much to the letter. I was not following the food guide pyramid at all. I used to eat tons of carbohydrates; toast and cereal in the morning, bread on a sandwich for lunch, pasta and bread for dinner.
The first few days on Atkins nearly killed me - the cravings were so intense, but I stuck it out. I was sick of being so fat.
I ate lots of chicken and fish, eggs, a variety of cheeses, turkey burgers, some red meat (like steaks and hamburger), bacon and sausage (hey, let’s not kid ourselves - this diet’s great for those who like to eat!), lots of broccoli, sugar snap peas, cauliflower and fresh green beans, and a big salad every day. I drank almost exclusively water, about 100 ounces a day.
The only “franken-food” I had were some shakes by a company called EAS that makes protein shakes and low-carb shakes (and snack bars) that were the only chocolatey thing I could tolerate. The no-sugar stuff (and hence low-carb) almost always has an ingredient called Maltitol and it gives me a nasty stomachache and gas. I got through the chocolate cravings by having an EAS shake.
Again, I was NOT following the food guide pyramid at all. I cut out bread, potatoes, pasta, cereal, and anything with refined sugar. I was definitely in ketosis, and know that the weight loss was due to that.
In the interest of making this exchange less adversarial, I respect your opinion. The point I was trying to make was that half of the Atkins proponents tout the diet as simply a commonsense eating plan, while the other half claim that the carb-counting is critical to the success of the diet. I have a problem with a diet where its proponents can’t even agree on its purpose.
If one changes ones eating habits to consist primarily of lean meats, vegetables, and whole grains, one WILL lose weight. That’s common sense. You can say that it was the carb-counting that did it, but since it would have happened either way, it’s an unfalsifiable claim. I can say that eating a green banana will kill you, provided you jump off a high bridge while you’re eating the banana. Absent any evidence to the contrary, such as an autopsy, I can claim that eating the banana caused the death, but the claim is unfalsifiable, since the death would have occured anyway.
It just irks me that whenever I discuss Atkins with people, I seem to get assailed by contradictory arguments, e.g. “Ketosis is crucial” and “Ketosis doesn’t matter”. The assumption that “carbs are bad” seems to be taken as gospel.
This is a little unfair. The books that spell out Atkins are clear on the point that carb-counting is necessary. The fact that people who think they are following a diet are totally misinformed shouldn’t color your opinion of the diet itself. Otherwise, you’d have problems with almost every diet out there.
Well, I follow this argument later. I’m off to the gym (first week back after recuperating from surgery), followed by a dinner of grilled chicken and green beans.
Usually when I see Atkins dieters talking about a “commonsense eating plan,” they’re trying to rebut the idea that all they eat is bacon cheeseburgers with no bun. I’ve never heard an Atkins dieter say that carbohydrate restriction is not critical to success of the diet, although they may not explicitly mention carbohydrate restriction if they’re in the middle of addressing something else (refuting claims that Atkins outlaws vegetables, for example). Your experience may differ, I guess, but I haven’t seen examples in this thread.
Look, blowero, - I was wrong, and I apologize if you feel that I did not adequately state that before. I am stating flat-out that I was wrong now, so I am hoping that is a non-shitty enough admission for you. Here:
I was wrong.
And yes, I did tell gobear I thought he was “spouting,” and, gobear, I apologize for that, too.
However, in no instance have I gotten as antagonistic as you have about this, and I don’t think that your response that I shove a piece of broccoli up my ass to see if my blood sugar is elevated is warranted.
to be antagonistic. Not to mention all your sarcastic retorts to gobear. The only thing worse than a smartass is a smartass who’s WRONG. If you like to play with fire, don’t cry when you get burned.
I was in a discussion some months ago regarding the low-carb diets. The proponent of said diets lamented the “lack of food products” geared toward that particular eating style.
Actually, Guin, it’s mostly fat, but that’s neither here nor there. Peanuts do have a lot of protein, but they’ve also got a fair amount of carbohydrate (which is mostly fiber). She was all bent out of shape because she’d had ten impact carbs (near as I can tell, that’s total carbohydrate minus fiber) from the peanut butter. Never mind the fact that she’d satisfied a craving that had been driving her nuts for three days, nor the fact that she’d gotten nearly 30 grams of protein, those carbs were simply unacceptable.
