New study suggests surprise discovery of why Atkins works.
 

I watched a fascinating BBC program last week on the Atkins diet. Several scientific experiments were conducted to test Dr. Atkins' claims of how his diet worked. This was the largest medium term trial ever conducted on diet types (300 people, 5 types over six months). The experiments disproved the claims. However, individuals in the experiment on the Atkins diet did loose more weight than both the control group or those on other types of diets. The program investigated this further, with findings summarized as follows:

"At last the mystery of how the Atkins diet works may have been solved. It might have nothing to do with calories being lost. Probably nothing to do with ketosis. And apparently nothing to do with burning more calories. Neither does it seem to be due to gorging on fats. The secret to the diets success may be down to something completely different. Protein makes you feel full. Increasing the amount of protein in the diet may control appetite and make people eat less than they would normally."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2004/atkins.shtml

That's all well and good but how come studies have shown that dieters on Atkins lost more weight eating the same or more calories than low-fat dieters.

And then there are the studies that found that LCers lost MORE weight than any other plan while eating MORE calories than any other plan. They keep trying to explain it away. Why can't they just accept that Aktins was RIGHT all along.

Yes, I watched this program as well as taking part in the online ABC discussion forum afterwards.

Isn't it a pity that the ABC doesn't do real science programs any more, and we are subjected to this 3rd rate "journalism" imported from overseas.

You would think that any serious analysis of Atkins or the reduced carb WOL generally, would at least include an expert from the Atkins camp, so all the tired old claims of kidney damage, reduced bone density and cancer could be refuted. At the very least they could have looked at the recent scientific studies that have found these claims to be baseless. And rather than running their own "quick and dirty" study they may have also have explained that there are has been plenty of recent research showing thet people lose more weight on a low carb diet of equal or greater calories compared to the low fat/high carb diet the "experts" recommend.

Even if you were to accept that appetite supression is one of the keys to the success of Atkins, the experiment they showed which supposedly showed that high protein was the key factor - pitted a low fat high protein (and we guess low carb) diet against a very high carb low protein diet. This still leaves open the question that people on the high carb diet ate more, simply because of the blood sugar instability we know this diet causes - with a high crashing to a low after insulin is dumped into the system leading to cravings for more carbs to bring the now low blood sugar back into balance.

Of course no media piece on this topic would be complete without some "expert" warning us that the long term dangers of a low carb diet are yet to be established - and without anyone to point out that -
(a) no Atkins didn't invent it
(b) it has been around in its modern form for nearly 200 years
(c) the paleolithic basis for the diet gives us more than 2 million years of long term validation.

And did they question the now all to apparent dangers of the low fat/high carb diet? Nope.

As I said, I joined in the online discussion afterwards. The ABC found six "experts" to assist viewers with their questions about low carb. Funnily enough, not one of the "experts" was a supporter of Atkins - but given the nature of the program we were discussing, I thought that was fairly appropriate.

Malcolm

And why do they think that protein making you less hungry is "a way that no scientists or even Atkins himself had seriously considered."??? Everyone who has ever kept Ramadan or Yom Kippur (Jewish and Islamic fast days) is told the first time that you need to eat proteins in order not to get hungry - and I thought I read it in DANDR too.

Response
 

Angeline, tofi and mcsblues, please post a link to the studies you mentioned that demonstrate a low carbohydrate diet leads to greater weight loss than low fat diets for equal (or more) calories consumed. I assume the studies are published in a reputable medical journal and are from a non-profit research body such as a university.

The research referenced in the program I saw found that under controlled conditions the group of dieters on Atkins did not loose any more weight when consuming the same number of calories as those on low fat diets.

This contradicts findings of the studies to which you refer. I am interested in the credibility of these and the program I saw, if they are in fact performing the same test.

I dont have links off hand but I know that the Harvard University study had low fat dieters eating 1500 calories, low carb dieters eating 1500 calories and low carb dieters eating 1800 calories and the low carb eating 1500 calories lost the most, the 1800 calories were next on the list and the low fat dieters lost the least.

I am sure if you do a search on this forum under harvard study you can find it.

Harvard
 

OK I'll look for it if nobody else posts the link.

I am interested in the weight of the participants. A daily calorie intake of 16x bodyweight is considered maintenance weight for your 'average' person. 10-12x bodyweight is considered minimum intake before the body goes into starvation mode. Below 10x body weight I would not consider research to be relevant to my situation just as that kind of calorie intake would have a different physiological reaction for a 300 pound person as it would on a 200 pound person. 1500 calories is pretty low.

If the participants weighed 10-16x the calorie intake then yes, this would be good to read up on.

Found It
 

Found the Harvard article:

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette...03-lowcarb.html

MyJourney, be aware:

"Greene cautioned that the study was just a pilot for the larger study she had planned from the start and that she is preparing now. As a pilot, the groups were relatively small, containing just seven participants each. That means that despite the raw numbers, statistically the three groups lost about the same amount."

One positive outcome
 

From the Harvard study:

"The subjects asked to continue in the study even after the 12 weeks concluded, a request Greene had to decline."

Nice to know at least one study made its participants happy!

They lost an average of 20 pounds. You'd be happy too!

Lies, bloody lies and statistics.

What he/she was probably aiming at with this comment, is statistical significance. Because the sample sizes were small, they cannot rule out the possibility of random variation being the culprit of why the lowcarbers lost most, lowcarbers+300kcal lost 2nd most and why the highcarbers finished last. The confidence intervals probably overlapped each other a bit. It does NOT mean they all lost about the same amount. It means that with certain statistical mathematical analysis (analysises? what's the plural of that thing) they can calculate that the differences between groups COULD be due to chance.

See the difference? Statistics, the mothers of all lies...

Next stop: another journalist will freely quote Mr./Ms. Researcher, and say "all groups lost the same amount of weight"... and the mess is all ready and served!

Unfortunately, Ewert, that's already been done in a number of articles. You'll come across them on this thread from time to time :rolleyes:

Or...as Mark Twain is quoted as saying, "There's lies, damn lies and then...there's statistics." ;)

Yup, I was more trying to describe how the flow of things goes with statistical analysis of studies being re-reported onwards while "shortening" the story. This particular study in question is already quite old news, and I'm sure there are reports on it somewhere that say highcarb was found healthier by some weird trick of numbers or something. :)

Tornado, the best (and easiest lol) thing I can do is refer you to Anthony Colpo's site.

1. He has read a massive amount, and he reads the whole study not just the abstract - something a few professional academics and so called nutrition "experts" should try! *

2. He is a fellow Aussie (yeah!)

http://www.theomnivore.com/commonmy...wcarbdiets.html

.. - check out paragraph 2 - all the references are at the bottom.

* Damn I have lost the reference, but there was a recent paper, where instances of "scientists" using the 'cut and paste' method of boosting their reference list have been exposed. A bit of a problem if there are typos in the original list LOL.

Cheers,

Malcolm