THE DIET: Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution by Robert C. Atkins, M.D.
THE CLAIM: Carbohydrates provoke hunger, causing you to overeat and gain weight. If you eliminate carbs and increase protein and fat intake to satisfy hunger instead, your body will thank you for it by losing weight without food cravings.
THE DOC'S PRESCRIPTION: A meat lover's dream: Thick steaks with slabs of melting butter, crisp bacon, eggs (yolks and all), thick cream instead of milk, mayonnaise-based salad dressings, fried pork rinds and, finally, rich desserts like cheesecake and mocha pie.
HOW IT'S SUPPOSED TO WORK: Atkins claims that ketosis is the key: Without incoming carbs, your body first burns its carbohydrate stores, and then the protein in its lean muscle tissue for energy, both of which release a lot of water. Your body also starts burning some fat in an inefficient way that creates toxic by-products called ketones. These build up in your bloodstream and need to be processed through your kidneys to be eliminated.
BUT HOW DO YOU FEEL? Too many ketones in your blood can cause dizziness, headaches, mental confusion, nausea, fatigue, sleep problems and bad breath. Also, high protein intake causes your body to lose calcium, so add weakening bones to the list.
WHAT'S REALLY HAPPENING: Since your brain and body are designed to get energy primarily from carbohydrates, they view anything else as abnormal food, especially ketones. "Ketosis is a signal that your body has gone into starvation mode," says Howard Flaks, M.D., a bariatric physician (weight loss specialist) based in Beverly Hills, California. When your body thinks it's starving, it slows your metabolism to conserve whatever fuel it can and eats at its own muscle tissue to get at the carbs stored there as glycogen.
Worse, after you quit the diet, your body fights to turn every bit of food you eat into fat because it doesn't know when you're going to starve again and it needs to build up a bigger reserve than you had before. The result? You gain more fat than you had when you started.
WHAT TO TELL FRIENDS ON THE DIET: If you lose weight, you'll gain it all back — and more — once you stop the diet. Not planning on quitting the diet? Then don't expect to have healthy kidneys for the long term: Over time, the stress of processing so many ketones can damage your kidneys, causing ketoacidosis or toxic ammonia in your blood, according to Megan McCrory, Ph.D., a researcher in the Energy Metabolism Laboratory at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, at Tufts University.
This article was obtained from: http://www.phys.com/b_nutrition/02solutions/diet_debunker/atkins.html
