|
What seems to be happening is that Atkins limits you to red meat, cheese, and the like. Given fewer food types to choose from, people eat less food, initially. In other words, people on Atkins initially might eat a cheeseburger without the bun rather than a cheeseburger with the bun—and a cheeseburger without the bun certainly has fewer calories than a cheeseburger with the bun, hence the initial weight loss.
However, people like to eat different types of food—this is the way people are, and one could speculate on the reasons for this. (Of course, not all animals are like people—cattle appear to be quite content to eat grass and hay.) The vast majority of people want more variety of food choices than are available in the Atkins diet, go off the diet, and gain back all the weight they’ve lost.
What’s worse, a high intake of animal fats has been proven to cause heart disease. This fact has been well proven in the scientific literature by multiple studies.20,21 In fact, scientists at the Metabolic Research Group of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine and at the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine have estimated that the Atkins® diet will increase your cholesterol on average by 51 points.22 As we saw earlier in the chapter, an increase in your cholesterol of 51 points means an increase in your risk of heart disease of over 100%. In my opinion, the Atkins® diet not only does not work, it can cause heart disease. Quite literally it can kill you.
In contrast, the other extreme, the Ornish diet, preaches drastically reducing fat intake.23 Several studies have suggested the Ornish diet may improve blood lipid profiles and help you lose weight in the short-term. It has not been proven to help you lose weight in the long-term. The major problem with the Ornish diet is that it is very difficult for patients to stick to. It is unnecessarily severe. Still, Dr. Ornish’s diet is clearly in a different class than Dr. Atkins’ diet: while Dr. Ornish’s diet may be hard to achieve, at least it won’t kill you.
Another popular diet is the South Beach(tm) diet of Dr. Arthur Agatston.24 This diet, which is a marvel of modern marketing, advocates consumption of a diet based on low “glycemic index” foods, that is, foods that do not increase your blood sugar rapidly. Dr. Agatston appears to invent facts whenever it suits him. For example, in his book he states, “Numerous studies have also shown that low-glycemic foods satisfy your hunger longer and minimize your food cravings better.” In fact, in 31 studies of less than 1 day, low glycemic index diets were associated with reduced hunger in 15 studies and were associated with increased hunger or no difference in hunger in 16 studies.25
 
|
