Hi,

I am a student at the University of Exeter, England and am writing my dissertation on the success of the Atkins diet... would anyone be willing to answer by queries? - I want to make sure that I get the technical information correct.

At the moment I would be really interested to find out how people heard about the Atkins diet (in particular) as this is the eating plan that I have focused my research on....

Thanks

KEdger,
In the US you can not swing a dead cat without hitting a Low carb diet book or Ad. The US has gone low carb crazy. Alot of resturants her in the US are advertising on TV how they now have Atkins approved menues, even fast food places. My mother in law tried it with no success, but I really question how she did it. That is how I really got interested in it for my husband to try, through her. I have gone on it to help my husband loose his weight. I lost my weight with weight watchers points system, but my husband travels out of state anywhere from 2 to 4 days per week and the points system is not condusive to eating out. He would either blow his points out of the water or starve. We are trying Atkins now, today ends our second week. He has lost a total of 6 lbs and I have gained a total of 4 lbs all together. I am 5' 8" and started at 139 lbs. I only started to be supportive to my hubby. Good luck and feel free to email me. Mary

Hello

If you live in the US, and unless you have lived in a vacuum tube for the last 30 years, you can't help but have at least heard of the Atkins Diet. Not to say that "hearing" of something means you know anything about how it works. I didn't know until I started it myself that it's really not a diet at all--it's a change of lifestyle.

The reason I got seriously interested in finding out about the plan is that my boyfriend's doctor advised him to try it. Rob had just been diagnosed with high blood pressure and Type II Diabetes. He checked into the plan and began in early May.

By mid-July he had lost SIXTY pounds. YES, 60 Now I realize that this doesn't work that fast for everyone, and I also realize that he began an exercise program along with changing his way of eating, and that is a big plus in this weight loss plan.

I was very impressed with what I had seen, and on August 11th I began the Atkins WOL (Way of Living) as well. I've now lost close to 60 myself. Rob has continued his weight loss and is now only a couple of pounds from his goal. (He's lost 101 total.) Best of all, in September, his doctor took him off his blood pressure meds, and told him that he is NO LONGER DIABETIC!

So we will both continue with this way of eating... he is maintaining now, while I am still in OWL (Ongoing Weight Loss). But we love the way we are feeling and love knowing that we are not filling our bodies with all the food additives, flavorings, etc., that we had been doing all our lives. We love knowing we are eating fresh foods and how can that be anything but good for you?

Don't know if that helps with what you are looking for, but there's my 2.5 cents (inflation) worth anyway!

~Debbie~LoveSong~

I had no idea that Atkins was quite so massive in the US - the book only started to be published over here last year (although there was a LOT of hype about it in the media)...

Thanks a million for replying to yesterdays query.

Another question if anyone fancies it... my dissertation focus is on why Atkins has been so successful now as it contradicts traditional medical advice (although research is obviously continually supporting it more and more)...

Anyway: Q: The Atkins Diet has recieved strong celebrity endorsement; do you think that this has helped its progress?

Cheers!

I've been aware of it for years, actually did it years ago. Couldn't tell you specifically how I heard of it, it's just kind of everywhere!

Nope, celebrity endorsements mean squat to me - those folks have personal trainers & chefs, plastic surgery, etc. I really don't look at them as an example to follow.

You may also want to ask the same questions (or others you have) on the main Atkins diet - there are people there who have lost, and kept off, significant amounts of weight for years now & they really know their stuff.

I learnt about Atkins about three years ago when a couple of my friends and colleagues had tried it. I bought the book and read it and it all made so much sense I had to try it myself. I had always been partial to chocolate and starchy foods and as a result have always been 1-2stone over my ideal weight. Even when I exercised a fair amount things didnt shift as i just got hungrier and ate correspondingly more carb (fill up on pasta they said! huh - no wonder nothing worked)

In any case i tried it for four weeks 2years ago and it worked a treat, especially as i wanted to get fit fast for an upcoming cycle tour of Europe. Once touring I reverted to a high carb diet as this is much more sensible for the huge amount of calories i needed to sustain eight to ten hours on the bike a day! Unfortunately no one can sustain that kind of exercise and when I finished the tour and emigrated to australia all the pounds piled back on. So now I have restarted (3months) Atkins and have lost 9kilos and feel great and back in control. I intend to continue on this woe and have started doing so proper exercise again..though my work had long unpredictable hours that make this part difficult to do regularly.

As for celebrities, their role is minimal in keeping me on track or in deciding on diets etc. Hope this helps.
As a scientifically minded person, I cant tell you how mad it makes me when I see morbidly obese patients with all manner of weight related ills and cannot officially recommend atkins as a woe as there is yet to be a long term controlled study on this wol sufficient enough to hold up against, and turn round the vast tide of medical opinion :sigh:

As for the media, well I wont go there it frustrates and angers me too much - and not just the lc issues either, in fact all their misrepresentation of medical issues.

I learned about Atkins from a friend of mine. He had tried it, then started losing tons of weight. At first, I ridiculed it immensely, swearing up and down that bacon and pork rinds were terrible for you (I was on Susan Powter's non-fat plan at the time).

But then I saw how happy he was and how much energy he ha, while I was feeling sick and was losing very, very slowly, despite a religious exercise program.

So, I figured I would just pick up a copy of the book and see what it was all about. And, it made a lot of sense. Why are people so fat when they 1) don't eat anything and 2) are trying so very hard to do what they're being told? People I knew (including myself) were fat, depressed, & ridiculed for not having enough "willpower" to stick with the mainstream wisdom of fat=bad, despite following that wisdom religiously. Plus, if eating nothing but pasta and fat-free cookies and salad was supposed to make us so bleedin' healthy, then why does the US have the highest incidence of diabetes in the world, growing particularly during the 70's, 80's & 90's when low-fat diets were being pushed so hard?

After throwing caution to the wind and buying my bacon and pork rinds and tuna and eggs, I tried it. Lost a massive amount of weight in the first 3 months, then the holidays caught up with me and I had trouble with sticking to for a while. But, despite being on a rocky road for a while, I can still remember how my severe depression and manic mood swings went away. I didn't need a nap at 5 in the afternoon. Plus, I'm eating healthier, with more veggies than I was eating while being a pasta fiend (and I always hated pasta anyway).

Almost everyone *I* know has been convinced to try the diet by word of mouth and seeing their friends having success. Now, that may change as people start seeing endorsements and restaurants changing their menus, but I think this has been mostly an "underground" word of mouth thing until this past year.

Just to answer your new questions:

Another question if anyone fancies it... my dissertation focus is on why Atkins has been so successful now as it contradicts traditional medical advice (although research is obviously continually supporting it more and more)...

I believe, since the Atkins way of living has been around for 30 years, that if there were TRULY serious health problems resulting from the plan you would have had lawsuits galore from this sue-happy society! If you REALLY take the time to look into this way of eating, and follow the plan correctly, you see that it's just basically good common sense--doing away with all the processed refined garbage we've been eating for years--and concentrate on fresh non-processed foods--you can see for yourself how much sense the plan makes. It only took me 30 years to see the light!!!

Anyway: Q: The Atkins Diet has recieved strong celebrity endorsement; do you think that this has helped its progress?

I never pay any attention to anything any of them say, but I know a lot of people do put a lot of weight into celebrity endorsements. I just hope if the endorsements DO start, that they come from people who have ACTUALLY read the books, studied the plan, etc., and didn't just use it for a "quick fix" for weight loss and then eat their old way. This plan makes so much sense--how could eating fresh un-processed foods NOT be better for you than eating all the processed glop?

~Debbie~LoveSong~

Hi KEdgar!

The Atkins main book covering the diet was first published in the late 70's, I think (don't quote me on that, I don't remember the exact year.) It's been revised and updated a couple of times throughout the years, as new research has been incorporated into the LC thinking. It's just the latest edition of DANDR (Dr Atkins New Diet Revolution) that came out in Britain 2003 (and in the US in 2002.) It wasn't a "new" book.

You might also find it interesting to surf around a bit on this board, read the tips for newbies in this newbie section etc. There is a section called "Low-Carb Studies & Research / Media Watch" that might interest you as well. If your main picture of LowCarb/Atkins type diets is built from what you've read in media, then I do strongly recommend you to look into the facts about this WOE a tad closer. (Since 99% of what I've seen in media is pure rubbish, misconceptions and twists, vegan lobbying disguised as "medical advice" etc written by lazy journalists who haven't done their job source-searching properly.)

Cheers!
/gil

Thats really helpful, thank you.

Its probably helpful if I clarify my dissertation subject a bit - the actual Atkins diet is basically a test case for my dissertation which is on the way that knowledge presents itself in society. The atkins diet is a good example of a phenomenon that seemed irrational in the past but now has spread quickly among a vast number of people and is developing itself globally. (I am not disputing that it works!)

(There are alot of other things invented that work better than our contemporary alternatives ie the QWERTY Vs the Dvorak keyboard so the fact it just 'works better' is not necessarily a sufficient explanation for its success...)

From the thread that I started in the Atkins forum the suggestion that Atkins is a 'natural' (ie cave man) way of eating seems quite important in confirming dieters decision to take up the plan, would you agree with this?

Thanks

Katie

I would agree with this simply because a lot of the literature out there now is continually pointing out how genetics and evolution does play a big role in how our bodies digest food. I think society got wrapped up in what science thought we should do, rather than looking back and realizing how we ate when our metabolism genetics were developed many, many years ago.

I would agree with it as the "diet plan" (I see it as changing my way of eating [WOE] for life though, not a "diet" - except for Atkins Induction/phase 1) logically makes sense to me from a biological aspect.

We don't have the same obesity problems here in Scandinavia/Northern Europe as in the U.S (yet!) and the eating habits over here have historically been closer to LC:ing/low "GI:ing". The fast food/junk food phenomenon (in combo with the "lowfat craze") which seems to be so deeply ingrained in the American lifestyle since decades only recently started to root over here, which has resulted in a galloping % of overweight related illnesses amongst our population. That said, our lifestyle in our modern Western society as a whole is designed around "convenience", as we strive hard to avoid any kind of movement, from remote controls and nifty gadgets for everything, jobs based on working in front of PC's all day long/ rationalization of manpower tasks etc etc. (In the US it's even worse, with all these "drive-ins", delivery services, the vast amount of convenience foods/shake/bake/schmake mixes etc.) We seem to - as if we were toddlers - be driven by "immediate indolent need satisfaction" (don't know how to translate this to English properly) and we lack patience.

So the combo of modern man with sedentary lifestyle consuming refined carbohydrates obviously will have this effect on our bodies (and minds - enter Prozac.) Hence, going back to our "roots" in our WOE is a start. That said, we also need to address the issue of not using our bodies for what they were built to do - manual labour.

Just my 1 cent rant.

Thanks for your replies.

I appear to be getting very different results for the American and British experiance but that may be because you have had Atkins there on a larger scale for longer.

I've just done a survey over here so I'm gonna sort the results out for that for a while now - I'll post a new thread when I have anymore q's or if I find anything interesting,

Cheers

Katie

Hello just wanted to mention that there is a huge misconception about this woe and that is that you can never eat certian foods again. That is not true, if one follows the plan correctly, they are suppose to re introduce these foods in the later part of the plan. However, at that time it's more about controlled serving sizes.
A good thread to check out if you are interested in the Maintainance of this diet, is Maintainers thread, you can get to it from the Main page.

Cheers Kathy

I became aware of it when a co-worker lost about 60 pounds. He was no intellectual, so I knew I could figure it out if he could. Also, he's about the same age as I am (44 now), so I knew it wasn't something that would only work for a younger person (unlike a strenuous exercise program, which worked well for me when I was 20 but had little effect when I was in my mid-30s).


Doesn't mean much to me. I discount health advice from anyone who has the money to pay a personal trainer full-time to keep him/her on a program.

I wouldn't say that aspect of the diet meant that much to me -- without modern medicine I would be a crippled eunuch or dead of testicular cancer (and nearsighted in one eye to boot), so living like a cave man doesn't have quite the same appeal to me.