Atkins Revisited

In honor of Diet Week here on Keen, I thought it would be a nice idea to pay tribute to one of the most well known diet trends in America, the Atkins Diet. I'm pretty sure that at some point or another, almost every person who reads this blog has heard of the Atkins Diet. I remember about 5 years ago, Atkins was a common dinner table term that everyone thought of as being the ultimate low-carb, quick weight-loss fad. There were success stories left and right of people who had abandoned their beloved breads and pastas in exchange for high fat, high protein only meals like steak and bacon. The results were intriguing, and it turned out people were actually losing weight. What was the secret behind the mystery?

Here is the quick breakdown of how Atkins works: By drastically reducing the amount of carbohydrates consumed, the body is forced into a ketogenic state where fat stores become broken down for energy. Essentially, you are tricking your body into starvation mode, which results in the break down of stored fats.

There's a TON of information out there for those who are interested in pursuing this diet. Here are a few links for those out there who are interested:
Atkins Diet
Ketogenesis
WebMD

There are also a slew of videos on YouTube. Here are some interesting ones that I saw:




There's the Atkins Diet in a nutshell. We at Keen do not endorse nor reject any one diet plan. My advice to anyone out there looking to change their calorie intake, is to read up and do your research first, and then decided on a diet plan that works for you. Atkins has helped a lot of people lose weight, but it doesn't mean anything if you can't make it last in your long term goals. Good luck everyone!

Next Week is Diet Week

I am addicted to celebrity gossip.  I love reading about their troubles and seeing the fashion.  This week, my fascination with all things celebrity turns to photoshop.  Most celebrities keep a personal photoshop technician on their staff and make sure that any photos that are released are first 'touched up' by their photoshop technician.  Below, you can see an example of Faith Hill on the cover of the July 2007 Redbook.

In the before picture, Faith is a beautiful, thin, (then) 39 year-old woman.  In the photoshopped cover picture, she is much thinner and younger looking.  Look at the headlines, Redbook wants to tell us about "The New Skinny Pills".  Have you ever heard of a pill that was healthy and provided long-term weight-lost?  I haven't.  How are we, who don't have personal trainers and photoshop technicians, supposed to achieve what the media tells us is beauty?

We can't.  All that we can hope for is maintaining a healthy weight for our height by eating healthy foods.  Now comes the tricky part; what are healthy foods and what diet do we follow?  The New England Journal of Medicine published a study yesterday (here) which focused on comparing three major diets, Atkins (low carbs), Dean Ornish (low-fat) and Mediterranean (low animal protein).  The diets were randomly assigned to the study participants and all reduced calorie consumption but none of the diets had less than 1,200 calories per day.  After two years, all of the participants lost and regained the same of weight regardless of the diet they were on (13 pounds after six months and 9 pounds after two years).  The lesson is that the best way to lose weight and to keep it off is to reduce your calorie consumption by following a diet that you enjoy.

Next week, we hope to shed some light on all this diet stuff for all of you.