I talked with Dr Atkins in his NYC office in 1995. It's not bragging becuase the subject matter involved an attempt to save a dying persons life, and that person wanted me there.
All that aside; I told him I listened to his radio show [he was on NY radio then WOR]. His radio show he said, got mostly callers about his diet, even though he really would rather have talked about other health issues from time to time.
Anyway he simply said 'people say the diet doesn't work, but hardly anyone actually follows the diet.'
In short, people who think they are on the diet do the following: cut out carbs, but what little carbs they take in are the simple carbs [refined sugars, and booze]; sacrifing the complex carbs the body Does need on this diet.
Then. they replace it with what might be called a high protein diet [all the yummy meats mentioned]; but much of what the people eat is also very high fat of the worst kind, saturated.
SO; following it as above can result in the hepatic and renal strain people are debating about above. It's individual to the person and how they are following things.
ALL of these diets are not what you want if what you want is to lose weight! Sounds stupid, maybe is, but that how I dropped 70 pounds; by ingesting less carbs [i still ate them alright]; but I minimized the simple carbs by [sorry...this will hurt...] giving up booze. Completely. 100%. Like the f-ing Osmonds. And took the long haul. 1.6 pounds a week; so well over a year. But that's a year later, down that much and still heading slowly downward.
Forget Hyperlipidemia and Hepatic/Portal Strains. They're just $5 words that I threw up there [pun?] to tell ya I read the chemistry of this; and if you want to lose weight you have to do it slow and find a diet for you.
ANY attempt to lose weight fast; like those liquid-protein diets, or fasting, or going all liquids, or whatever; can really be dangerous as hell. Sounds like a cliche, but have an MD do at least a check-up and some bloodwork so you can actually see YOUR blood chemistry. In fact, that's what I did. I got all the blood workup, got the results, and hit the books. Med books that is; to find out what the hell this Hyperlipidemia was that I have even though my total cholesterol was low and this was at 360 frigging pounds.
I saw the doctor and he said cut out the booze 100% [my liver numbers? the hepatic? holy shit thru the roof]. I didn;t tell him how much booze I sometimes drank. I cut it out 100%; ate what I wanted when I wanted, and lost 14 pounds in two weeks, which then seemed to halt for a while, and then the slow weight loss began.
My doctor, when I later told him how quickly I cut out all the booze, he said I was lucky I didn't have a seizure in those 2 weeks. He said many do. That's how much strain we can put on our bodies by what we ingest.
Read Atkins' book; its all over the place; a good read is also Barry Sears' series of books. He's 'the Zone' diet guy. This is personal for me, but the weight flew off me on a Zone-type diet.
My personal choice if ya HAD to get a single book? Ugh. Here it is: The Carbohydrate Addict's Healthy Heart Program by Heller, Heller and Vagnini. But since all of this is personal; that book may well, for you, suck.
Jesus I ramble on. Why can't the sun come out so I can go out and play?
Mike
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