By Suzanne Rostler

NEW YORK, Oct 08 (Reuters Health) - Despite personal anecdotes from everyone from your next-door neighbor to Hollywood celebrities, high-protein, low-carbohydrate diets are no panacea for long-term weight loss, according to a report released Monday by the American Heart Association (AHA).

"It's important for the public to understand that no scientific evidence supports the claim that high-protein diets enable people to maintain their initial weight loss," Dr. Robert H. Eckel, one of the report's authors and a former president of the AHA, said in a prepared statement. "In general, quick weight-loss diets don't work for most people."

The report takes aim at popular diets that promise quick results by eating steak, bacon, fried eggs and other high-protein foods, while cutting back on carbohydrates such as potatoes, pasta, vegetables and fruit. Some of the more well-known diets cited by the AHA include the Atkins diet, the Zone, Protein Power, Sugar Busters and Stillman.

According to the advisory, published in the October 9th issue of Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association, many of these diets are loaded with saturated fat and deficient in essential vitamins and minerals. High-fat diets can raise a person's risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke and some forms of cancer.

In some cases, high-protein diets lead to short-term weight loss through a loss of body fluid, since carbohydrates attract water. But they can also cause fatigue and dizziness in the near term since glucose, the form of sugar in carbohydrates, is the body's preferred source of energy.

And in the long run, high-protein diets can lead to ketosis, the body's natural response to starvation that can be induced, to a lesser degree, by eliminating carbohydrates. Ketosis can lead to appetite loss--another way that followers of high-protein diets may shed weight quickly.

Another concern is that high-protein, low-carbohydrate menus are simply too boring to sustain for long periods of time.

"The diets could be sustained long-term, but I think they get boring and/or people get concerned about the foods they have eliminated," Eckel told Reuters Health.

While there is no denying that Americans need to slim down--more than 50% of adults are estimated to be overweight or obese--high-protein diets are not the answer, the report concludes.

The AMA recommends that individuals who want to lose weight and keep it off consume the bulk of their daily calories from carbohydrate-rich foods such as whole wheat cereals, fiber-rich fruits and vegetables, and low-fat dairy products. About 15% of calories should come from lean protein sources such as chicken and fish, and no more than 30% of calories should come from fat, of which saturated fat should account for less than 10%.

This diet may also help lower blood pressure and reduce the risk of osteoporosis, liver failure, gout and some forms of cancer, the AHA notes.

SOURCE: Circulation 2001;104:1869-1874.

http://reutershealth.com/archive/20...008elin015.html

One can only hope that one day a "Real" study will be done by the AHA. I am not holding my breath.

Nat

I didn't realize I was on a quick weight loss diet. I was sure I had made a lifelong commitment.

What I really want to say is not allowed in this forum..

Can you pass me the Cheerios?

Karen

With all that we talk about on this site we could publish our own report!! Can anyone name one thing that hasn't been criticised or disproved?

More of the same:



Honestly, if the AHA says you can't keep weight for long, they must be right. I have a 120 lbs I kept off since 1995, now I think it's just water.

NOT!

Wa'il

My sister just sent me a link to this article.....grrr....

--Kirkwood

But I think this article is the best proof that low-carb is healthy!

If medical establishment cannot quote research and studies to prove low-carb is bad for you, and all they have is "I think" "high-fat can ..." then what they are really saying is this:

<<Another concern is that high-protein, low-carbohydrate menus are simply too boring to sustain for long periods of time.>>


Anyone who thinks low-carbing is boring has not visited this web site. I've cooked more tasty new things since I've been low-carbing than I have in the last ten years!

I take all expert opinion with a grain of salt. When I was first diagnosed with diabetes 17 years ago, the diet was rigid and boring. Now the diet is no longer a diet, but a "life style" and
I can eat anything I wish right down to a peanut buster icecream. Weekly and yearly these experts change their mind on what we should and should not be doing and eating.
no eggs to 2-4 eggs
margarine to no margarine
no butter to butter
low meat, no meat to red meat
etc,etc
I believe that some things work well for some and not others. You must determine what is best for you.

Who funded the study? C&H?

There was no study. It was merely another prepared statement from the AHA, rehashing the same old same old.

I'm sure there were similar proclamations made by the "expert authorities" a few centuries ago, to squelch those upstarts and rabble-rousers who DARED to suggest that the earth was not flat, but round -- especially when it was looking more and more that the rabble-rousers were right!



Doreen

I am so sick of all these "experts" telling us how unhealthy this low carb/high protein diet is, when in fact, I'm healthier now than I have ever been. My blood sugar is now normal, thanks to the 3 months on the Atkins plan, my energy is back.

I just had a co-worker come and try and show me other ways to loose weight, he told me he was worried about me, said his wife was on the same diet, but as soon as she went off gained it all back. DAH, its not a diet, its a WOL. yes your going to gain it back when you start eating all the high carb, fat free, sugar loaded stuff. hello, didn't you read the book.

Okay, I'm through venting.

Do you think this kind of perception against what we do has anything to do with the animal rights folks? This don't eat meat thing is something new as of the 60's and 70's right? Just wondering if there would be a big influence.

Basically, around here 70 years ago, you either killed or picked what you ate. It may have been picked then canned, killed then frozen but it was all done right there. I guarantee you those folks were heathy.

Just some food for thought,
wsgts

A friend of mine was going to start Atkins with me but she read the article and now she won't have anything to do with it. I've also asked my sister who is a nutritionist who also doesn't think this diet is going to work. But she wants me to lose weight.

But I'm not hungry! So I'm going to keep doing this WOL and I'm happy to know that there is a group out there that believes in this method as well.

Heart Association condemns the high protein diets especially the Atkins diet

The so called low carb, high protein diets especially the Robert Atkins diet are being discouraged in an advisory drafted by the American Heart Assn. Dr. Robert H. Eckel, senior author of the paper, stated that this type of diet tended to raise cholesterol and thus, put dieters in danger of a heart attack. Eckel's claims are confirmed by every cardiologist I have talked to. One cardiac specialist nurse practitioner I asked about this, said that every patient whom he sees on the Atkins diet has extremely elevated cholesterol counts. Another cardiologist from the Heart Hospital in Phoenix told one of the talk show hosts that he has several patients on the statin (cholesterol lowering) drugs - these patients were on the Atkins diet. Yet the Atkins Institute tells a different story. Their claim is not only that the AHA allegations are false but that their research shows that their diet actually LOWERS cholesterol. So what is going on here? From some research I did, the answer may be that the Atkins Institute research might have 'cooked the books' a bit. Some of their results DID show a lowering of the total cholesterol amount but in many cases this was attributable to a lowering of the so called "good cholesterol", the HDLs. Since the HDLs are what keeps our veins and arteries clean, we DON'T want to lower that type of cholesterol. The truth about the Atkins diet (and like diets like the Eades Protein power etc) shows not only a elevated cholesterol count but also other side effects such as

• rapid weight gain after the diet is ceased
• Causes severe carbohydrate cravings
• higher percentage of muscle loss than on other programs (the ketosis that the Atkins diet encourages is the product of the body burning muscle for fuel). What I have observed in friends who did this type of diet is that after the weight loss, they become very much fatter than before because of all the muscle they lost and the fat they gain back
• it's hard on the kidneys - ketosis puts a person in danger of kidney and other organ failure

This group of diets has been condemned by just about all the diet and nutritional experts who, although they don't agree on anything else, do agree that a high protein, low carb diet is risky, even for short periods of time. Most experts agree that any weight loss which occurs on the Atkins plan may be from cutting caloric intake.

In a panel of diet gurus on a recently aired Biography show called "Lifespan", Robert Atkins admitted no studies showing how effective or safe his diet was. "We don't have the money to finance those type of studies," he told Dr Dean Ornish and Ornish quipped "What - you've sold 10 million books and don't have the money?"

Dr Atkins who followed his own diet, had suffered a heart attack (and by some accounts had a stent in the coronary artery). He of course, insisted that this was totally unrelated to his diet!

Here is the newspaper article



Heart Association to warn against low-carb diets

March 20, 2001
Web posted at: 1:03 PM EST (1803 GMT) By Elizabeth Cohen


CNN Medical Unit ORLANDO, Florida (CNN) -- The American Heart Association has drafted an advisory paper warning the public about what it says are the dangers of high-protein diets.

"They put people at risk for heart disease and we're really concerned about that," said Dr. Robert H. Eckel, senior author of the paper. "Long-term, the saturated fat and cholesterol content of the diet will raise the ... bad cholesterol and increase the risk for cardiovascular disease, particularly heart attacks." Proponents of high-protein, low-carbohydrate diets, such as the Atkins diet, promote them as a way of helping people lose weight and lower their cholesterol while letting them eat unlimited amounts of red meat and high-fat dairy products.

Critics of high-protein diets acknowledge that people do indeed lose weight, at least temporarily, and as a result, cholesterol does drop -- again, temporarily. "But what I see after people have lost weight on such a diet, then their weight stabilizes for a period of weeks or months and often the cholesterol, particularly the bad cholesterol, now becomes more elevated," said Eckel, professor of medicine at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. He said he has seen patients whose levels of low-density lipoprotein (LDL), the so-called bad cholesterol, have risen from 140 mg/dL to 220 mg/dL after they lost weight on a high-protein diet. Any level over 130 mg/dL is considered dangerous. "That's an exaggerated case, but many people's LDL cholesterol goes up if they remain on the diet after they've successfully lost the weight," Eckel said.

Eckel is chairman of the AHA's Nutrition Committee, which is writing the advisory paper. He said the paper will be submitted to Circulation, the association's journal, to be used as guidance for doctors advising patients.

The committee reviewed five high-protein diets: the Atkins diet, the Zone, Protein Power, Sugar Busters and the Stillman diet. According to Eckel, Protein Power has the highest fat content, with 54 percent of total calories from fat. Atkins has the next highest, with 53 percent, and Stillman, the Zone and Sugar Busters have 33 percent, 30 percent and 21 percent respectively.

Colette Heimowitz, director of education and research for Atkins Health and Medical Information Services, said if LDL cholesterol increases after weight loss on the Atkins diet, it is because people aren't following the diet correctly. Heimowitz said some people put too many carbohydrates back into their diets after the two-week induction phase, rather than increase them slowly. "If someone were to go on the induction phase, which is the first phase of the diet, and go back to the old way of eating, which is a high-carbohydrate diet, yes, they will gain their weight back and their cholesterol may go up," she said. She also said the Atkins diet doesn't advocate eating only red meat and dairy products -- it also tells people to eat chicken, fish and tofu, too.

At Tuesday's annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology in Orlando, Dr. Robert Atkins was scheduled to debate his dietary nemesis, Dr. Dean Ornish, who advocates a low-fat diet. Sparks have flown before when the two doctors have debated -- once at a forum sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and again at a meeting of the American Dietetic Association -- but their discussion was expected to be particularly acrimonious when the issue is heart disease.

Many nutritionists and cardiologists have become bitter over the popularity of Dr. Atkins's diet.

"You want my response to Atkins' saying that [his diet] can lower your cholesterol and do all sorts of good things for your heart? You know what my response is? Bull----," said Judith Stern, professor of nutrition and internal medicine at the University of California at Davis.