Low-Carb Diet Research and News
Success of Atkins diet is in the calories Oct. 29, 2000 By Nanci Hellmich, USA TODAY People on the Atkins diet slash their calories by more than 1,000 a day, which may partly explain why some report dramatic weight loss with the low-carbohydrate diet, a study says. The research, which is being presented today in Long Beach, Calif., at the annual meeting of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity, is one of several new studies on the wildly popular diet. The Atkins diet encourages people to eat bacon, pork, steak, butter, cheese, nuts and other high-fat, high-protein foods and to avoid carbohydrates, including pasta, breads, cereal, sweets, some starchy vegetables and many fruits. Cardiologist Robert Atkins, who first published his diet in 1972, has said that his plan has "metabolic advantages" and that people can eat more calories on his program than they can with other diets and still lose weight. He says the reasons are not known yet. In the new study, doctors at the Bassett Research Institute in Cooperstown, N.Y., had nine overweight men and nine overweight women — each at least 30 pounds over a healthy weight — keep track of what they ate for several days before beginning the Atkins diet. The doctors then gave them copies of Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution and some instruction. Researchers analyzed the diet records and found: * During the first, most restrictive phase of the Atkins program, dieters consumed 1,419 calories a day, compared with 2,481 calories a day before they began the diet. At the end of two weeks, they had lost a little more than 8 pounds on average. * In the Atkins ongoing weight-loss phase, dieters ate an average of 1,500 calories a day and lost an additional 3 pounds in two weeks. * Dieters in both phases of the Atkins diet severely cut back on carbohydrates (by more than 90%), but the actual amount of fat and protein they ate was pretty much the same while they were dieting as beforehand. Allan Green, director of the institute, says the study demonstrates that people lost weight because they cut calories. "Weight loss is still calories in and calories out." Bernard Miller, an internist at Bassett Healthcare and the lead author of the study, says some patients felt tired, and some were nauseated on the plan. "A few of the study participants said they would continue the Atkins diet after the study was over, but the majority were eager to go back to their regular diet," Miller says. "We're not recommending this diet to anyone," Green says. "We don't know what would happen if you followed it for years. What we found is it seems to work for short-term weight loss." Two other studies are being presented at the meeting: Researchers tracked 41 overweight people who followed the Atkins diet for six months and found that they lost an average of 10% of their initial body weight. Most lowered their cholesterol by 5%, but some increased their cholesterol. Twenty subjects continued the program, and they had maintained their weight loss at the end of a year, says study director Eric Westman, an internist at the Durham (N.C.) Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Researchers who compile the National Weight Control Registry analyzed the diets of 2,681 members who had maintained at least a 30-pound weight loss for a year or more. They found that less than 1% had followed a diet similar to the Atkins program. Most followed high-carbohydrate, low-fat diets, says James Hill, director for the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver. Low carb diet and foods - good carb VS bad carbs The low carb diet is one of the most talked about and well known diets around right now. Specific low carb foods are now showing up in stores and on menus around the world. This is probably why when the average person decides they want to lose weight, the first thing that enters their mind is the low carb diet. In this article I will explain what this diet is, if it actually works, if it is required for weight loss to happen, and whether or not you should do it. I will also list some low carb foods and explain the difference between good carbs and bad carbs. How is a low carb diet supposed to work? The idea behind the low carb diet goes something like this... carbs raise blood sugar and insulin levels. This leads to weight gain. So then, less carbs means less weight gain. Your body also uses carbs for energy. So, if you start eating mostly low carb foods and therefore restrict the amount of carbs you take in, your body will use glycogen and stored fat for energy instead, which is a process known as ketosis. Is the low carb diet a "gimmick" diet? On the surface, the low carb diet is a gimmick diet (aka fat diet). By gimmick diet, I mean it is based on the gimmick of eating "low carb." The reason this would be considered a gimmick is because, while these types of diets CAN work, they are NOT something that is required for weight loss to happen. Eating mostly low carb foods isn't necessary at all, actually. See, for the average person, weight loss occurs when one thing and one thing only happens. That one thing is when your daily calorie intake falls below your daily calorie maintenance level. That's CALORIE... not CARB. Let me explain... Every human body has a certain number of calories that it requires from your diet each day in order for it to maintain your current weight. This is called your calorie maintenance level. Let's pretend for example that your maintenance level is 2500 calories. So then, if you started eating 2000 calories a day, you would lose weight. If you still ate 2500 calories a day, but then burned off 500 through working out, you would lose weight. If you did a combination of both, you would lose weight. So generally, weight loss is all about calories, not a low carb diet and eating low carb foods. In the simplest sense, calories are what really controls a person's weight. Eating less of them is what will make weight loss happen. And, if you greatly limit your carbs, you just so happen to end up limiting your calories as well. Weight loss diets are all about limiting something. In that sense a low carb diet is a lot like a low calorie diet, except it limits JUST carbs. For this reason, I don't know why these types of diets are so popular. Why put such a big limit on only carbs when you can put a much smaller, much healthier, and much more proportionate limit on protein, carbs and fat as a whole? This way you wouldn't have to eat only low carb foods. This way your calorie intake would decrease by restricting a little bit of everything (protein, carbs and fat) rather than JUST carbs alone as you do on low carbohydrate diets. But... that's just my opinion. Low Carb Foods Since the basic idea of the low carb diet is eating low carb foods, you are probably interested in knowing which are low in carbs. As it turns out, most foods high in protein and fat will usually have very few carbs. Meat, chicken, turkey, cheese, fish, eggs... these are all examples of low carb foods. Then there are specialty foods and products that normally have a lot of carbs but have been specially made to fit into a low carb diet. For example: Spaghetti Pasta Atkins cereal Atkins candy bars and peanut butter cups Atkins breakfast bars Good carbs VS bad carbs Once you've learned about low carb foods, the second most important thing a person on a low carb diet needs to know is which are good carbs, and which are bad carbs. First of all, the technical term for good carbs is complex carbs, and the technical term for bad carbs is simple carbs. Bad carbs (simple) are high glycemic. Good carbs (complex) are low glycemic. The term "glycemic" refers to the amount and speed a food will raise your blood sugar and insulin levels (which leads to fat gain). "Bad carbs" (simple) are foods like white bread, white rice, pasta and all typical junk food high in sugar. "Good carbs" (complex) on the other hand are foods such as oatmeal, whole wheat bread, brown rice, and other whole grains. Does it actually work? Yes, people have lost weight on a low carb diet. That is the truth. However, bare in mind that people tend to lose a lot of weight early with this method of weight loss because of all of the water they are losing. Due to eating only low carb foods, glycogen is used for energy, and this causes a decrease in water weight. Also bare in mind that limiting carbs is also limiting calories. A decrease in calories often leads to a decrease in weight. My personal opinion... As I mentioned before, the low carb diet can lead to weight loss. People have indeed lost weight using it. If the whole low carb foods craze appeals to you, then by all means, give it shot. If the whole theory behind it all seems like something that is right for you, go for it. I want to make that point clear. Some diets fit certain people better, and maybe this one fits you. However, to me the low carb diet is like hopping on 1 leg to get somewhere when you could have just walked. You may still get there, but your method of travel was unnecessary. My personal opinion? I prefer to walk instead of hop. However you get there is completely up to you. |
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