The Atkins diet is a whole other story...and can be true with any plan at all.
There are two ways of low carbing-a healthy way, and an unhealthy way. There are many people who do it healthfully eating fish and lean chicken-and plenty of salads and vegetables...then there are others who eat bacon and steak and use their minimal daily carbs on low carb processed snack foods.
This can also be true of anyone who decides to eat low fat-you can eat low fat and healthful-choosing fruits, veggies, and lean proteins-or you can eat a whole box of Snackwell's fat free devil's food cookies and a pint of fat free ice cream. You aren't eating fat-but you are eating a ton of sugar and chemicals.
There are always going to be a mass amount of folks who try to follow a plan and do whatever they can to eat crap without "breaking their diet rules". Those are the ones who aren't really losing any weight-because they refuse to make the choice to eat healthy-so they find a way around it saying "I can have that because it has no carbs, no fat, fill in the blank here".
The reason that there are whole sections with numerous threads for Weight Watchers, Sugar Busters, Low Carb, etc. is because of the mass amount of people on those types of plans. The threads all vary-one may be recipes, one may be support, another a specific question-and so on. The thread I closed was redundant enough that I directed her over to this one to read it. it saves space on the forum and the amount of threads that moderators have to read through each day.
Regarding Atkins (or any other 'name brand' diet):
I know LOTS of people - both 'in real life' and over the 'net - who say they are 'on Atkins' (or as it is so frequently misspelled "Adkins") but have never ACTUALLY READ THE BOOK (or books, as it were). They've just skimmed over some articles or whatnot, and figured the diet entails eating steaks, chops, bacon and lots of fat - just as long as you cut out the carbs - and to them, that's Atkins.
I know plenty of people who have 'done' the Cabbage Soup Diet (and its close-cousin, the Hollywood 3-Day Juice Diet, or the Grapefruit Diet, et al). Sure they lost 'scale weight' - like Aphil said, that's water weight and LEAN tissue - but guess what happens in a matter of days or weeks - yup, those pounds came BACK from their vacation and brought a few friends along with them! The Cabbage Soup Diet is a CRASH diet - a diet for TEMPORARY weight loss.
If you are interested, follow this link to a snippet from the book Fat of the Land: The Obesity Epidemic and How Overweight Americans can Help Themselves by Michael Fumento titled 'Get Thin Slowly'.
C. Wayne Callaway, who is quoted in the above snippet, is also cited in an article from the Spring 1993 issue of Nutrition Health Review which you might find of interest:
Quote:
Rapid weight loss unhealthful: leads to regaining more
NEW YORK: Losing large amounts of weight over a short period of time can lead to serious health problems and also to regaining more weight than was lost, a leading expert on nutrition and weight control said at a media briefing sponsored by the American Medical Association.
C. Wayne Callaway, M.D., who specializes in internal medicine, endocrinology, and clinical nutrition in Washington, D.C., said: "There are several epidemiologic studies that show that people whose weight fluctuates much have increased risk of heart disease." Repeated loss and re-gaining of weight is called the "Yo-Yo diet" syndrome.
In addition, Callaway said: "The risk of gallstones goes up in people who lose weight quickly or lose a lot of weight. If you lose 20 pounds in any time interval, your risk doubles for getting gallstones. If you go on a formula diet, within two to four months, about 25 percent of people who didn't have them to start with will develop gallstones."
Callaway said he believes quick weight loss can even lead to more serious complications. "We know that for certain specific conditions, this type of dieting is hazardous. What is still debated is whether it is hazardous in terms of total death rates. Some of us think it is."
Dr. Callaway continues: "The diet food industry is based on a faulty model that says all you have to do is restrict your food intake and you will lose weight. Then it's your fault that you don't keep it off." He adds that research has shown that when dieters significantly reduce their caloric intake to half or less of what is needed in a day, their bodies adapt to starvation in several ways. The body lowers its metabolic rate and burns less, which sets up a more rapid weight gain after the restrictive diet. Drastic caloric reductions also cause changes in water balance, resulting in an initial loss of a lot of water from breaking down protein.
Callaway warns: "Then as you continue you get into the situation the kids in Somalia are in, in which the body retains excessive amounts of salt and water, causing edema. When you re-feed them, they will retain fluid and that causes the scale to go wacky because as you go from say 800 to 1,200 calories, you start gaining weight, even though you are still not eating a normal amount of food."
Callaway notes that recent research also shows that "starving leads to stuffing." He says at least one biological marker, a brain neurotransmitter called neuropetide Y, causes increased food intake. Callaway says, "When a starved one is re-fed, neuropeptide Y levels go up, overriding satiety (eating beyond satisfaction of hunger). If a wolf hasn't eaten in three weeks, when it makes a kill, it just stuffs itself and the animal who eats the most survives the longest. We see that same thing happening in humans."
Dr. Callaway says people who undereat at breakfast are not hungry until lunch, but then they become famished by lunch. If they have a salad for lunch, thinking it's filling, it's only mechanically filling, but the next meal will make them more instead of less hungry. He advises: "As we are starting to realize how sophisticated the controls of appetite and satiety are, then all of a sudden we realize why it is almost impossible for people to maintain their weight loss when they have been on these really, really restrictive diets. That being the case, there's no point in going through that restrictive phase."
The definitions used in the past for overweight and obesity, Dr. Callaway says, have focused on the wrong segment of the population because they used weight and height, independent of fat distribution pattern and associated conditions. Callaway observes: "We have overdiagnosed obesity in old people, women, and pear-shaped folks ... and we have been missing a group of men with beer-bellies and younger adults where we really need to be focusing."
Those of you who ARE thinking of doing the Cabbage Soup Diet might want to keep the following in mind:
1. Make sure you're close to a bathroom at all times.
2. Always have air freshener or matches on hand.
3. Don't be surprised or depressed when the scale goes back up...
Well the cabbage doesn't affect me like that at all -- probably for two reasons, one, I'm not really stuffing myself with it (the "all you want" tag is working out to be like, one bowl a day or maybe two if I'm really hungry.)
Actually I'm making an oil-free cole slaw for the remaining 3 days -- with all the soup stuff in it just shredded, with some rice vinegar maybe.
The idea is to eat some negative calorie type food like that, and just limited amounts of other stuff. The other stuff changes every day and is kind of a mind game -- you look forward to whatever is coming up the next day.
I'm not the slightest be tempted to stuff myself after I'm off it -- I'll be counting calories in an effort to maintain the loss til the new year, and then maybe go on it again for one week in Jan.
I like this diet! I like the simplicity of it -- it takes your mind & focus off food for a week and gets you out of the snacking mode.
They've just skimmed over some articles or whatnot, and figured the diet entails eating steaks, chops, bacon and lots of fat - just as long as you cut out the carbs - and to them, that's Atkins.
