Ysabella,
Your trainer is nutty. Dr. A may not have any "official" nutrition training, but my guess is that after 30 years of treating patients with diet and supplements, he's learned a thing or two. The Atkins center also has registered dietitians on staff that don't seem to think this diet kills people. Dr. A wrote an entire book called
The Vita Nutrient Solution which is an extremely comprehensive survey of nutritional supplements and illnesses/disorders that may benefit from supplementation. It's a terrific book and, unless he had a ghost writer, proves he knows his stuff. The book has the same somewhat irritated tone as DANDR, so I really suspect he wrote it himself. My pharmacy actually has a copy of this book for people to thumb through and make vitamin purchasing decisions.
If you are feeling at all nervous about following this WOE, I'd suggest reading,
Protein Power. There's about 40-50 pages on how how to follow the plan and about 150 pages on the biochemistry of low-carb. There's an entire chapter on cholesterol, blood pressure, obesity, exercise...it's a terrific book and after you read it, you will be able to whip ignorant people in the face with biochemistry (always a pleasure, because it makes a funny noise). I don't know if you're like me, but I like to know
why things work (kind of suspecting you are) and, for me, DANDR didn't really have enough of the why. It seems at times that he's just kind of saying, "Trust me, this works, and here's another anecdote about one of my patients who used to weight 8000 pounds and now can't be seen if they stand sideways." If you think your trainer might respond well, you could loan
Protein Power to him afterwards and maybe make a convert (lord knows we need some in his industry).
If you feel like making a quick point with the trainer dude, you could ask him, "How could the optimal diet for human health be one we couldn't attain if we were lost in the woods?" If you were in the woods alone, with just your own body as a survival tool, you'd be able to grab a sharp stick, maybe sharpen it with a rock and then go around spearing things. You could gather berries, some nuts, seeds, greens, etc. and you could eat raw meat. Fruit would only be available seasonally, so you wouldn't be able to eat it year round. The optimal human diet seems a lot like Atkins to me. If your trainer tries to claim we've evolved, then you can point out that agriculture is only 10,000 years old which isn't enough time for Madame Evolution to do her magic thang.
If thousands of people had died doing Atkins, you would have heard about it. Don't you think the low-fat experts would be pulling that out at every possible opportunity? With all the publicity low-carbing has had in the last six months since "What If It's All Been A Big Fat Lie?" appeared in the New York Times Magazine (which, btw, employs armies of fact-checkers) don't you think if thousands of people were dying, it would have appeared somewhere in print? Over the last six months I've heard plenty about the dangers of dying while taking ephedra/ma huang, but nothing about low-carbers dropping dead on treadmills.
Okay, I didn't mean to get all long-winded on you (please don't zap me with the death ray) but I haaaaaaaate it when people who are authority figures (like trainers) spout off half-truths when they haven't bothered to look into the plan themselves. In my mind, they have a higher responsibility to know what they're talking about before they open their mouths, because people
depend on them to know their stuff. It's his job, for goodness sake.
Lessara, if your sister read from a reliable medical source that Atkins and regular gym workouts weaken the heart, the study would appear
here, on the Medline database. I wasn't able to find anything in the 10 minutes of searching I did, but maybe your sister could remember more about the article which would help you do a more thorough search. The heart is a muscle, however, and a ketogenic diet is muscle-sparing, which is why competitive body-builders use it as a tool when shedding fat (they want to lose as little muscle as possible while doing so), so I doubt Atkins causes weakening of the heart. If anything, I think it would make it easier for your heart to become stronger in response to the stress of exercise. Your body needs tons of protein to make that new muscle.
You may find that having your carbs at Induction level isn't compatible with the gym just because of perfomance issues if you weight-lift. If you feel tired or sluggish during the day, you may want to up your levels 5 or 10 grams and see if that helps.
I'm not an expert of any kind and I've just spouted off, royally. I'm hoping that someone who really knows what he or she is talking about will stop by this thread and add their two cents and/or kick me in the buns for being mistaken.
Sigh, sorry. Sometimes, I can't stop myself...
Happy workouts, Dig