JohnnyRock

Hey,
I'm thinking about trying Atkins, but can't see how I would have the energy to lift and run on it [I do both pretty intensely]. I'm curious to see if it would work knocking off a few pounds [like 10 or so] but don't want to sacrifice training or just lose muscle.

Anybody try it? Anybody try alternatives that better suit the athletic lifestyle?

Thanks!

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Mael

i didn't like it. but some people swear by it. i think if you want to lose 10 pounds, just drop some calories from your daily diet (not more than 500) and it will slowly melt off. only cutting that many out will probably not have a really noticable effect on your workouts.

winsecure

Atkins diet is great for losing weight unless you consider yourself an endurance athlete. Endurance athletes rely heavily on large glycogen stores. While on the Atkins diet your glycogen stores will shrink. This will probably only be an issue for you if you typically run for longer than 45 min's at a time. You really shouldn't see any muscle loss on the Atkins diet because you're ingesting so much protein, especially if you're lifting.

EleqTrizi'T

Atkins makes me way to sluggish to even want to do weights. If you want to lose weight, just try cutting out flours, nutrionless-sugar products, and try to eat less as the day goes on.

sexymama

Atkins does not work for me! I believe it is just another fad. It is better to eat healthy then to "crash diet."

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irieemon

I have been doing Atkins for 3 months now and have lost over 33 pounds. At first I felt like shit as my body was detoxing and I just didnt have the energy to train hard. Once my body got over it's glucosis and entered Lipolysis (burning fat for energy) my endurance skyrocketed. The longer I hiked or ran, the more energy I obtained from my gut, and the smaller it got.

Dr. Atkins also explains that since your body is getting so much protein that your body does not burn lean muscle but rather fat, both in the food you eat and in the stored fat on your body.

I went on a backpacking trip about 2 months into the diet and managed 14-16 miles a day with ease without Cliff bars or other energy bars, just some meat, cheese, nuts and water.

Wonderful feeling, I'd recomend it for everyone, but you have to read the book to understand your body and whats going on, dont go by a friend of a friend, do your homework and do it right and it will work.

cowlick

I worked with my doctor (retired cardio surgeon) and a dietician to develop my diet. It's a lot like Atkins, but with:
* more (but still very low) carbs. Always whole grain.
* much more fruit and vegetables
* much less unhealthy fat and more healthy fat.

I do a lot of endurance type sports, and I strength train, and I never run out of energy from lack of proper food.

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yournamehere

Good points.

You could try the South Beach Diet - it's somewhat more lenient than Atkins - and was started by a cardiologist. He asserts that the important thing is to distinguish between good carbs and bad carbs. For instance, fiber in all forms is a good carb - and sorely missing from Atkins practitioners' diets. Ugh - Constipation City!

He's also more forgiving of fruit - I mean, nobody ever got obese eating apples, right? Just stay away from the <i>really</i> high-in-sugar fruits, like bananas and pineapples.

Sugar is the worst carb - look at labels and you'll be amazed at the sugar content in otherwise "healthy" food. Even SlimFast products are swimming in sugar. Also, check the "Total carb" section of the label. Even "Sugar-free" food can still be loaded with carbs (like alcohols). Become a label-checker.

I think if you will seriously research that or the Atkins diet, it will provide many clues as to your "weaknesses" when it comes to carbs - I know it sure opened my eyes. Just by eliminating breads, pastas, and sugar from my diet, I lost 35 pounds in about 2 months (I also started working out at that time, too - so it was a combination of the both)

Good luck

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cowlick

I haven't read about the South Beach, but my wife did. She said it's the closest thing on the market to how we eat and excercise, and she's recommended it to a few people.

FastShark85

Atkins allows you to eat as many fiber carbs as you want. The first phase of the diet, called "Induction" requires you to eat less than 20 NET carbs. Net carbs are total carbs minus fiber carbs. So, if an item as 20 carbs and 15 are fiber, it only counts as 5 net carbs.

I've been on the Atkins diet since July 28 and have lost 19 pounds and 2" off my waistline. The first few days are hard since your body is overcoming its addiction to sugar and excessive carbs. Since about day 4 or 5, my energy level has gone way up, my periodic heartburn has completely stopped, I no longer get headaches, my blood pressure has dropped, and I'm sleeping better at night.

Since most beverages contain sugar (and thus many carbs), I've been drinking nothing but water for nearly a month. Doing without caffeine probably causes the better sleeping. I can drink wine if I want to, but I just don't like it with meals.

I'm enjoying the diet now. There are a LOT of people that criticize it, but I believe that much of it stems from the fact that traditional weight loss programs and their proponents view Atkins as an economic challenge to them....it is.

When I started, I asked my brother (who's a board-certified gastroenterologist) whether the diet was OK. He said everything he's heard about it from his colleagues is positive, and he said the lipolysis/ketosis condition brought on by Atkins is NOT harmful in anyway. The diet by default encourages people to increase their intake of protein, which avoids the commonly mistaken condition of ketoacidosis (aka starvation).

I frequent another forum and have a thread that extends 4 pages on the topic. After I took the initial onslaught of ciritcism from people attacking the diet, other people on the Atkins diet jumped in who had only been following the thread before. For those that stayed on the diet past the initial uncomfortable stage, all results were very positive.

Atkins has been around for over 20 years. If it was harmful like the critics say, they would be able to point to specific examples of people who have been harmed by it. I'd like to see such evidence if it exists.

JohnnyRock

Thanks for the feedback...I'll have to do some more digging. I'll start by replacing staples [breads, pastas] with lo-carb versions and figure the rest out as I go along.

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Johnny Rotten

As was stated before, Atkins actually goes into great physiological detail about the benefits of fiber. You don't see most Atkins practictioners holding the line because most people are lazy eaters. Just the other day, someone was telling me about a friend who walked into the lunchroom with a hunk of cheese and some sausage, and saying, "I'm on a diet! Isn't this amazing?"

*sigh*

As to the original question, I would recommend the Cycling Ketogenic Diet (CKD). The short version is that you eat strict Atkins for five contiguous days, then toe the South Beach Diet line for two contiguous days, then switch back to Atkins. As far as I know, CKD was researched and developed independent of Atkins.

There's a lot of misinformation about Atkins, mostly spread by dissatisified customers who didn't read the whole book before they went to go buy their cheese and sausage.

I've been doing Atkins for two months and have lost over 20 pounds. I would have lost about 30 by now, but I need coffee to stay awake at work in the morning. (Caffeine stimulates insulin overproduction, which inhibits weight loss).

yournamehere

Okay - two different people have corrected me by saying (and they're right!) that Atkins allows fiber.

My comment earlier was not so much about the <i>rules</i> of Atkins, but the <i>reality</i> of Atkins by most of its "practitioners." To quote myself:

<i><b>fiber in all forms is a good carb - and sorely missing from Atkins practitioners' diets.</b></i>

I know Atkins allows fiber, but the typical "sausage and cheese" Atkins follower doesn't get much. To those of you who corrected me - please list a few palatable foods allowable on Atkins that contains fiber, but doesn't also use up all 22 of your daily carbs in one serving. I'm not trying to be a smartass challenging you here - I'd really like to know - I spend a lot of money on Benefiber every week in order to get fiber without starches, alcohols, or sugars. I'd much rather get fiber in the foods I eat, than buy it separately. What are some foods rich in fiber, but low in other carbs?
Personally, I try to get it from apples, but there's more carbs in an apple than Atkins allows in an entire day (at least during induction), right?

__________________
If you want to avoid 95% of internet spelling errors:
"If your ridiculous pants are too loose, you're definitely going to lose them. Tell your two loser friends over there that they're going to lose theirs, too."
It won't hurt your fashion sense, either.

Johnny Rotten

Sorry if I came off sounding hostile. I'd had to correct someone else about Atkins in another forum earlier that day. It was about diet sodas. (Atkins doesn't allow aspartame, and there's the caffeine).

As it turns out, you can get plenty of fiber (and other good nutrients) from green leafy vegetables, nuts and seeds. Some nuts and seeds are good, some aren't. Non pareil almonds (at least the ones I get at Trader Joes) have only one net carb. Same with Planters brand sunflower seeds. If you shop around, you'll see a lot of variety in net carbs within the same food item.

I also recommend you check out the book for some more tips--Atkin's New Diet Revolution. You can get it in paperback just about anywhere. It's a thick book, but most of it is actually recipes. He talks a lot about the chemcial reactions in the body with both glucose-based and lipid-based metabolism and makes the two processes easy to understand and separate.

There are several progressive stages in the diet, with the first two weeks (or longer) being the most restrctive, excluding even nuts and seeds. After that, however, you can have some fruit. If you like having lots of fruit, the South Beach Diet may be more your speed. I don't have any experience with it, but I know they allow carbs in the form of whole grains and fruit.

I know of one Atkins dieter who uses bran to cancel out carbs. You can have as much carbs as you want, as long as you eat enough fiber to keep things down to a manageable number (usually never more than 100g a day, one third of the USDA daily allowance).

Hope that helps.

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FastShark85

I've had low carb pancakes. Instead of using flour, I used flaxseed meal....nuttin but fiber.

They taste incredible, too.

1/2 cup flax meal
2 eggs
3 tbsp heavy cream
1 tbsp splenda (artificial sweetner)
dash nutmeg
dash cinnamon
1/4 tsp baking powder

A company named Walden Farms makes carb-free maple syrup, which is also quite good.

Try this website for more info:

www.atkinsdietbulletinboard.com

Lots of GREAT information and recipes.

Some people are even brave enough to post before and after pictures.

Johnny Rotten

Splenda (for those of you who aren't familiar with it) is the trade name for sucralose. I think it was the Wall Street Journal that did a story on it, comparing it to saccharine and aspartame, and according to them, it was the safest of the bunch, as well as being officially Atkins approved.

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"The idea that money doesn't buy you happiness is a lie put about by the rich, to stop the poor from killing them." -- Michael Caine

FastShark85

Aside from the fact that Splenda is supposed to be safer (for laboratory rats anyway), aspartame (aka Nutri-sweet) has caused "stalls" in weight loss for a lot of people on the Atkins plan. After cutting out the aspartame, the weight loss started again. No proof of this, just first-hand accounts.

yournamehere

<b>Johnny Rotten, FastShark85</b>,

Thanks for all the useful info.
Ummmmmmm . . . pancakes.

__________________
If you want to avoid 95% of internet spelling errors:
"If your ridiculous pants are too loose, you're definitely going to lose them. Tell your two loser friends over there that they're going to lose theirs, too."
It won't hurt your fashion sense, either.

legolas

My mom is on the atkins and she LOVES it. It definetly takes commitment though. You have to actually want to lose weight and follow the program. She's lost 50 lbs in a few months.

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Vyxen

Quite a few of my family, friends and co-workers have been on the Atkins Way Of Life (they say WOL instead of diet) and have steadily lost inches and felt better than ever. =) It's really exciting to see the folks that were heavy since as far back as I can remember finally finding the right plan for them to lose weight and become healthy and energetic again.

I'm usually skeptical about things that seem "too good to be true", but I've truly seen and read too much positive feedback/information to not give Atkins a try. Actually, I started today (Would like to lose about 20 pounds), so I'll try to keep posted about how the WOL is affecting my body and mind. =)

I'd like to add that I don't think Atkins is for everyone, but if you have the determination to stay away from so many sweet temptations, it definately can help most people who give it a shot. (Actually, after induction, he does include some very delicious deserts, so you don't have to feel like you can never touch another sweet again hehe, that would be torture!)

Anyway, if anyone is seriously interested, I suggest stopping by this Everything Atkins site. http://www7.addr.com/~atkinsdi/

The forums are full of positive and supportive people who enjoy helping eachother reach their goals, swap recipies, tips, etc. =)

FastShark85

I've now dropped 28 pounds on Atkins and have never felt better.

pocon1

I f you are looking for strength training while on Atkins, see if you can find Dan Duchaines Bodyopus book. He details a cyclic ketogenic diet that is designed to have you in ketosis for the week, and out of ketosis for the weekend. The theory is that no one can maintain any diet scheme for a length of time and not lose muscle. His theory is that the weekend of recovery with high carbs rebuilds tissue, and the carbs stored over the weekend fuel your workouts for the week. Look on the internet at
http://low-carb.org/lylemcd/
This site gives a ton of info on ckd diets. The last time I tried it, I lost about 20 lbs in seven weeks, and kept my strength up for the first five weeks. The hard part is going in and out of ketosis for each week. And the carb depletion workout on friday will tax anyone who thinks they are tough guys.

Cardinal Syn

I would suggest the South Beach diet over Atkins. It doesnt limit you in any way really. Basically for only 2 weeks. The first 2 weeks that is. You can have all yer vegtables and there are alot of great recipies to try.

I see no decrease in activity for me at all and i am also not tired. I train in weights all the time and do cardio to.


I suggest reading about South Beach before atkins.

Have fun either way and goodluck!

Mael

i'm not understanding how caffiene inhibits weight loss? do you mind explaining? i'm not trying to be sarcastic/assholish, i'm genuinely curious. the original stack for weight loss was caffiene, asprin and ephedra and that was really good at weight loss, so i don't understand what you wrote.


also, an open question to everyone on the atkins diet... why not try to lose weight the normal way? i mean, if your on atkins, you obviously have the will power to stick to your diet. and it sounds like everyone's losing weight at a rate of 2-3 pounds per week, which is what's considered healthy in a normal weight loss program.