Atkins-bashers

[cjsmith]

WTF is up with Atkins-bashing? I'm not even on that diet and I've heard more snideness, put-downs, and just general meanness about it to last me the rest of my life. Some haven't even read what the diet is supposed to be, but the myths about it arouse their ire anyhow. Some raise the subject just so they can spew their bile about it. The internal pressure must be immense. One gal I met at a quilting group got so hot under the collar that I'm semi-seriously glad she wasn't armed. What the hell is the threat here, lady? Go ahead, eat your bread. Nobody's taking it away from you.

Obviously there's something I'm missing, because the way I look at it seems simplistic by comparison: if I don't like a diet I don't go on it.

Is it really more about fat-hatred? That might explain some of it, but not all of it. Is it that anything strongly contradicting previous wisdom must be suppressed? That probably doesn't explain all of it either.

If I leave comments enabled, I'm a fool, right? Yeah, I'm a fool. So I'll just delete any comments bashing any diet at all (see above remark about my lifetime quota being full).

Comments

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I dislike a holier-than-thou attitude or preachiness from ANY dieter... in fact, strike that, I dislike preachiness from anybody at all. Really gets my dander up.

I suppose it is the very popularity of Atkins that makes it the most common target of the vitriol I overhear: more participants means more people who are getting preachy (whatever the percentage may be), so more people who aren't on that diet get ticked off.

I've heard of the South Beach diet but don't know a thing about it. I guess I shouldn't sit in the same room with your dad for a while, eh? :-)

[portia.livejournal.com]

I agree, preachiness about ANYTHING makes me a little crazy.

From what I gather, South Beach is similar to Atkins in a lot of ways. Stay away from white flower, carbs, etc...

Beware! Those freaky people are like members of a religious cult! ;o)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

And some of the bashers (I haven't seen you do this, btw) are just as preachy as those they're reacting to. Yay, what an improvement.

I saw a book once wherein some of the characters followed the latest diet craze: eat only flowers. I think it was a subtle joke about the omnivore -to- vegetarian -to- vegan -to- ? kind of path, but maybe it was more general, poking fun at diet crazes of all stripes.

[portia.livejournal.com]

BTW, I can't believe I wrote "flower" instead of "flour" in my previous comment. Duh!

And speaking of flowers... It's funny that you mention the flower-eating thing... sounds very familiar to me but I can't quite put my finger on it. Can you remember the name of the book?

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

No, I can't remember... the people were "floritarians", but I'm blanking on the entire rest of it, including the plot. Must have been quite a memorable book. :-)

[tytso.livejournal.com]

The main difference is that the South Beach diet considers some carbohydrates to be "ok"; mainly fruits and vegetables. Why does this make a big difference? Well, in order to understand that you have to step back and examine the two reasons given for why Atkins works.

One is that when there are insufficient carbohydrates in your system, the body switches over into burning fat instead; but this is less efficient, and so left-over products from the fat burning process (ketones) are excreted into the urine. This cheats the calories in vs. calories burned must be negative equation, since in effect, you're pissing away some of your calories in the form of incomplete fat combustion products. Now, there are some real downsides to this approach. First of all, it does stress the kidneys, which is why the wise Atkins dieter will drink large amounts of water and do periodic tests using urine test strips looking for protein in the urine (which indicates that the kidneys might be getting unhappy). Secondly, the state where there are not enough carbohydrates in the system is also known to athletes (particularly runners and bicyclists) as "bonk", and it means that you may not be able to do activities that require huge amounts of energy quickly without getting exhausted. (Although I suspect that marathon runners do develop a capability to run using lipolysis.)

The South Beach Diet, because it doesn't insist on restricting carbohydrates to this level, means that the body generally isn't entering direct lipolysis often or at all. Instead, it works by emphasizing "good" carbohydrates, which is defined as carbohydrates which have a low glycemic index, and so therefore tend not to cause insulin spikes. The theory here is that "bad" carbohydrates enter the blood stream quickly, which means that the body produces insulin in response to control the carbohydrate levels. Unfortunately, for people who are pre-diabetic, the body initially doesn't react as well to the insulin, and then when it does, it ends up over-correcting and the blood sugar level crashes. This causes the person to get hungry, and to eat --- and if they eat more sugar-laden snacks, that just causes more fluctuations of the blood sugar levels, leading to more spikes and more blood sugar level crashes. Both Atkins and South Beach do talk about restricting carbohydrates, and when you do eat carbohydrates tend to prefer the "good" carbohydrates. The difference is that South Beach concentrates a lot more on the latter, and less on the former.

The bottom line is that for some people, both diets definitely works; probably better for some than for others. I won't claim that it works for everyone, although it is instructive that some recent statistics estimate that 50% of all American males have impaired insulin response, and among people who are overweight, that percentage is probably even higher. Because the South Beach diet does have more carbs in the diet and tends not to emphasize the lipolysis aspects of Atkins, it's probably "safer", especially for people who are worried about their kidneys. It also tends to immunize the dieters from one of the arguments used by rabid Atkins-bashers. :-)

I do try not to preach, but at least for me, I find the scientific basis for the diet, and some of the recent research results about the metabolic syndrome --- which mainstream medicine does acknowledge --- to be absolutely fascinating. So I tend to geek out about the subject, which probably in some cases can be more annoying that people who are preachy about it. If this is more information that you wanted, feel free to delete this comment. <grin>

Re:

[dawnd.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this excellent and balanced analysis. You said it all so very well. I am in complete agreement with you that not every diet works for every body, and that getting to the scientific basis of the diet can help illuminate whether it has some merit or is just complete trash.