"atkins" news and stories

I've done an extensive survey of all of the information about weight loss that you can find on the shelves of Border's and Barnes & Noble, and here are the results.

It seems as if the best way to lose weight and get in shape is a combo of the following: eating a lot of carbs, eating a lot of fat, cutting carbs out completely, drinking a lot of water, not eating any "white" foods at night like bread, rice, and pasta, eating just grapefruit, eating your meals in a mixed-up fashion (lunch for dinner, breakfast for lunch, etc), not eating after 8pm, eating a lot of soups, cutting out all candy, cakes, and processed foods, avoiding diet drinks, eating a Subway sub a couple of times a week, eating foods according to your blood type, eating foods according to color, eating a lot of fiber, training your brain to think like a thin person, eating like they do in France, eating like they do in China, not counting calories, making sure you count calories, taking vitamins and supplements, become a vegan, eating more meat, eat a lot of apples, eating only raw foods, and joining one of the weight loss organizations such as Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig.

If you follow the above rules, you should get in shape very quickly. You're welcome.

I don't know about you, but even though I love every sunny, poolside moment of summer, I secretly rejoice when the days start to get shorter and the air a little chillier. The end of summer means the beginning of fall, and that means I get to drop kick my bathing suit and body-baring shorts and tanktops. I don't have to be so conscious of what I'm eating. And not eating.

But "dieting" isn't a seasonal activity. People watch what they eat year-round. According to Forbes, "Americans spent an estimated $46 billion on diet products and self-help books in 2004." If that's the case, why is obesity such a problem in the US? Because, as a government review has found, two-thirds of dieters on "diet regimes" will regain all the weight that they lost within a year. Give them five years, and almost everyone will gain it back.

People gain the weight back for a number of reasons, but one of them is that the popular diet programs are very expensive, especially since many health and nutrition experts believe that they are ineffective to begin with. Forbes examined the weekly menus of the ten most popular diets to find out just how expensive they really are. The results are listed below. The first dollar amount is how much the program costs per week for any associated book, membership fees, and food costs, and the second percentage is how much more that is than the average $55.44 a normal person spends on food.

• Jenny Craig - $137.65, 152.8%
• NutriSytem - $113.52, 108.5%
• Atkins - $100.52, 84.6%
• Weight Watchers - $96.64, 77.5%
• Zone Diet - $92.84, 70.5%
• Ornish - $78.75, 44.6%
• South Beach - $78.76, 44.4%
• SlimFast - $77.73, 42.8%
• Sugar Busters - $69.62, 27.9%
• Subway - $68.80, 26%

Whatever happened to good old fashioned "eat less, exercise more?" I think that's free.

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After getting stuck under a lawnmower, Des Moines radio personality Van Harden says that he lost his taste for bread completely. Harden said "Doctor's can't explain it," but it could be the case that he experienced a side effect as doctors revived him from anesthesia after his surgery. With no appetite for bread, Harding was essentially living an Atkins-style life, but he did miss the taste pizza even though he didn't actually want to eat the wheat-based crusts.

Necessity is the mother of invention, so Harden came up with a 100% cheese crust pizza, complete with toppings. Think of it as being a stuffed-crust pizza, without the actual crust. Over the weekend, in what appears to be the first release of the product, over 200 were sold at two Des Moines Hy-Vee stores. More store are scheduled to offer the Atkins-friendly, gluten-free pie soon.

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The five Campbell brothers, John, 91, Jim, 88, Colin, 85, Sid, 82, and Doug, 78, have gone their entire lives without eating vegetables - hardly one pea has passed onto (or off of) their dinner plates. Their general philosophy, to which they attribute their longevity, is that it doesn't matter what you eat as long as you are active. They say that their parents did not force them to eat the vegetables and they, in turn, did not put that pressure upon their children, at least one of whom is no more interested in eating greens that his father and uncles are.  

Predictably, this has stirred up a bunch of people into proclaiming that vegetables are not a vital part of our diets and are not necessary for good health. This is, by and large, untrue. Vegetables have lots of nutrients that out bodies need. The story of the Campbells is just an example of a handful of people who were lucky enough to go through life without any serious medical conditions.

After all, if something had gone wrong with their health, their veg-less diet would have been blamed.

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Most diets are about losing weight - high protein, low-carb, low-fat, Mediterranean, South Beach, etc. Most diets also emphasize balance and variety, regardless of what they discourage people from eating. There is a new diet that is not about losing weight, balance or variety, though it may have other health benefits. Researchers at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York have conducted a trial in which patients ate an ultra-high fat diet - over 90% fat - to see if a diet "devoid of protein and carbohydrates might temper symptoms of several neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer's and Lou Gehrig's disease." The results of the original study, published last year in Neurology, were encouraging. Patients with Parkinsons reported a decrease in their symptoms. Since then, additional studies have been done that have shown positive results, as well.

The success of the regimen is credited to the high numbers of ketone bodies that are produced when the body is taking in next to no carbs or protein. Even a very strict Atkins wouldn't produce enough keytones to have a measurable benefit, according to the doctors. A typical diet, which did allow up to 8% protein, for a study participant included butter, cream cheese and heavy cream, with small bits of fish or egg added for flavoring.

The results of all trials are not firmly conclusive, but are promising enough to have prompted another round of testing to see if doctors can devise a diet that is easier to follow. The problems with the diet are obviously things like heart problems, so the next round of testing involves a combination of the ultra-fat diet and the Atkins diet.

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