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

[tytso.livejournal.com]

One of the real risks is that some of the "low-carb" products aren't really all that low-carb --- at least, not if you have multiple large servings. Unfortunately, the same people who treat "low-fat" as a license to eat unlimited quantities of the stuff are apt to make the same mistake with "low-carb" foods, with the same predictable approach.

That being said, some controlled quantites of the low-carb foods can be really useful. I regularly carry around in my laptop low-carb "granola" bars, and low-carb Snickers bars look-alike. These are my emergency food supplies for when I'm really craving a snack, and the choice is between one of my snack bars and buying some potato chips from a nearby vending machine. And the fact that I can now get low-carb chocolate milk for when I need a chocolate fix is really nice. But I make sure I only drink 8 ounces at a cost of 3g of carbs, and not drink multiple glasses of the stuff at one sitting.

Re:

[ambar.livejournal.com]

One of the real risks is that some of the "low-carb" products aren't really all that low-carb

Agreed.

some controlled quantites of the low-carb foods can be really useful.

That's definitely a personal tradeoff, and edges out of the realm of "lowering caloric intake" and into the fuzzier realms of "what psychological uses do we make of food?" Without being prescriptive (I hope :-) I'll toss back the question of which would, ultimately, be healthiest -- the ability to snag 8oz of chocolate milk now and again, or putting the chocolate milk addiction to rest permanently? :-)

It is not easy. It may not be necessary to achieve one own health goals. But for some people (me!) it becomes obviously necessary. Lord knows I'm not done. (I will say that giving up cheese took more concentrated, stubborn effort than going on the diet in the first place. But it broke a hella stall.)

The observed wisdom from the txlowcarb mailing list is approximately this: as long as you're losing weight or inches, you're doing the right thing. If you get stalled on both for a substantial period of time (6-8 weeks), there's a list of things to look at that are "Atkins-safe" and yet still cause some people problems. Dairy and "fake food" are at the top of the list. Hence my concern that the marketing blitz leads people to think that "Atkins" means buying "Keto Cereal" and "low carb pasta" and ordering from the "low carb menu" at Burger King, and not really changing their eating habits.