10 Lies About The Atkins Diet : Lie #4
Lie #4: The Atkins diet will help you keep fat
off for good
Dr. Atkins writes that his diet "Is so perfectly adapted
to use as a lifetime diet that, unlike most diets, the weight won't
come back."
It's a weight loss axiom that the more extreme a diet and
the faster the weight loss, the more difficult it is to maintain the
results. Slow, steady and balanced seems to win the race when it comes
to weight control.
Unfortunately this isn't what most people want to hear.
The four pounds per week and up to 15 pounds in the first two weeks
that Atkins promises sounds much more impressive.
There are two things you really need to know about rapid
weight loss:
(1) What kind of weight was lost? How
much of it was body fat and how much was water, glycogen and lean tissue?
(2) Are you going to you keep the weight
off for good?
Most low carbers won't keep the weight off for more than
a year, and many will fall off the wagon long before that.
Keith Ayoob, a spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association
(ADA), said in an official ADA statement about the 2003 NEJM studies:
"Twelve months is an equalizer; you hit a wall. Your lifestyle
starts to be affected and you get bored. A high dropout rate is a sign
that extreme diets can be difficult to maintain.
Truth is, despite Dr. Atkin's claims and the new research
apparently supporting them, we still don't know what will happen in
the long run. Based on the results of the recent three, six, and twelve
month studies, researchers have begun to organize longer trials. One
of them will be five years in length.
What you will probably see in long term studies is that
Atkins and other very low carb diets, while effective for weight loss
in the short term, will be found no more effective for long term fat
loss than any other restrictive diet (and that's NOT very effective).
This article was provided by GHF.
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