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by Parris Kidd, Ph.D.
Inside the Atkin's Diet
I met Robert Atkins, M.D. in person about seven years ago, when I arrived in his New York studio to be featured on his popular radio show. I was immediately struck by his charisma—a unique combination of intelligence, professionalism and charm. This past summer, at the American Biologics symposium in Malta, I attended his in-depth scientific presentation and was so impressed that I wanted to share his work with the readers of totalhealth. Here is our interview.
PK: May I ask first, how long have you been practicing nutritional medicine? How did you go into it?
RA: I’ve been practicing medicine for 42 years, since 1959. In effect I’ve been practicing nutritional medicine since I started my controlled carbohydrate approach to weight loss back in 1963. Early in my career in private practice I read a study in metabolism by British researchers A. Kekwick and G.L.S. Pawan, which showed the effectiveness of restricting carbohydrate intake on weight control. I have always had a big appetite, so I was intrigued by the fact that the researchers found participants could consume as much as 2,000 calories and still lose as much weight as someone who is fasting. Moreover, the ketogenic effect of the diet naturally suppresses appetite. This was just what I was looking for. I did it myself and lost my paunch, then tried it on my patients. Without exception, if they adhered to the program, they too lost weight. I quickly became interested in learning more about nutrition. It wasn’t really until 1972, when I began to incorporate supplementation into my practice, that I would say I was formally practicing nutritional medicine.
PK: Do you think your diet is for everyone?
RA: In one way, yes, and in another way, no. Yes, I think everyone can benefit from a controlled carbohydrate nutritional program, regardless of weight, age, gender and overall health. It’s my opinion that the over-?consumption of carbohydrates in the United States, which the USDA and other health organizations have been recommending for the last 20 years, is responsible for the twin epidemics of obesity and diabetes.
There are four phases to the program. For those who need to lose weight, what I call “Induction” limits carbohydrates to 20 grams per day. Patients then gradually increase their carbohydrate intake as they approach their goal weight, in the process learning healthy eating habits that they should adopt for a lifetime. Each person has a critical carbohydrate threshold, above which they will gain weight and below which they will lose weight. By finding this personal level, they can learn how to maintain their weight permanently. And certainly no responsible health care practitioner could dispute the value of eliminating junk food, which basically centers on refined carbohydrates.
The only precautions for the weight loss phases of the program are people in kidney failure and pregnant or nursing mothers. It is certainly the treatment of choice for anyone with diabetes, as well as people with high triglycerides. The purpose is always achieving optimal health and reducing risk of disease.
PK: Can you briefly outline the principles of your diet? Of the many books you’ve written, which one best explains the Atkins Diet?
RA: The book that best explains the Atkins program is Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution, which I have just completely updated with seven new chapters, twice the number of references and 100 new recipes. There you will find complete explanations of the following four key principles:
1. Weight loss. Both men and women who follow the Atkins approach to weight loss readily take off pounds and inches. Optimizing body weight is a valuable element of any health-oriented program.
2. Weight maintenance. Almost every experienced dieter has gone on a diet, worked hard, lost a lot of pounds and gained them all back. This is usually due to the consequence of low-fat/low-calorie diets: hunger. But that’s the problem of diets that restrict quantities. On Atkins, people gradually find their effective individual level of carbohydrate intake, the tool that allows them to maintain a healthy weight for a lifetime.
3. Good health. On Atkins, you meet your nutritional needs by eating healthy wholesome foods and omitting junk food. Moreover, the physical consequences of a dysfunctional blood sugar and insulin metabolism are reversed.
4. Disease prevention. By following an individualized controlled carbohydrate nutritional approach that results in lower insulin production, people at high risk for chronic illnesses such as cardiovascular disease, hypertension and diabetes will see a marked improvement in their clinical parameters. This results in weight loss.
PK: I understand you received an honorary degree from Harvard. That’s got to make you feel good about your work. You’re also going to work with them on a controlled trial of your diet, I believe. How is that trial being set up?
RA: Actually, my honorary degree is from Fairleigh Dickinson University, not Harvard. We are currently working with the Deaconess Hospital/Beth Israel in Boston and some of the investigators are from the Harvard School of Public Health. The controlled study will examine low-fat versus controlled carbohydrate weight-loss programs. They will also look at clinical parameters for lipid profiles.
PK: What about all those objections that the so-called experts used to have about your diet? That it can cause ketosis, etc.? What do the Harvard people think about all that?
RA: First of all, ketosis is just a secondary process to the lipolysis, the burning of body fat, so it is more properly referred to as lipolysis/ketosis. This perfectly natural process is sometimes confused with ketoacidosis, which is a condition experienced by people with severe kidney disease as well as alcoholics and those in a state of starvation. There is nothing anywhere in the scientific literature that shows ketosis to be dangerous and I am sure the Harvard researchers and the human subjects committee wouldn’t even consider doing this study if they didn’t agree.
PK: A lot of regular folks seem to know about your diet but many of them seem to think the diet gives them permission to eat lots of red meat, bacon, fried foods, pretty much anything other than carbs. Did you ever recommend this style of eating?
RA: The program is often misunderstood and the “experts” are often misinformed. We allow liberal amounts of meat because it poses no risk when you are in lipolysis and are burning fat for energy. We encourage people to eat three cups of vegetables, even in the strictest phase of the program. We don’t deny people a couple of strips of bacon, steak, lobster in butter sauce and other fatty foods. In fact, this is what makes the approach so appealing to people who have not been able to lose weight successfully the low-fat way. We always stress that food choices should be from the most nutrient-dense sources. As the patient moves from the weight loss phases toward what we call “Lifetime Maintenance” and is not primarily in lipolysis, he should moderate his intake of fat.
PK: Is all the criticism circulated by your rivals valid or biased innuendo? After all, your diet is so much more consistent with the body’s metabolic needs and so much more practicable than the others. I understand there have been personal attacks at your character and integrity.
RA: Yes, I would be less than honest if I did not acknowledge that some people have chastised me for not going into debt to fund studies to prove that the approach works, and things of that nature. And there is no question that of all the thousands of studies published, people can use selective citation to prove anything they want. The fact remains that there is plenty of research that supports the principles when you look at research done on insulin resistance, impaired glucose tolerance and the effect on glucose load on the blood sugar levels. There is no question that controlling excessive carbohydrate intake will prevent disease, foster weight loss and weight management as well as promote good health.
PK: I found for myself that on the diet my thinking is clearer and I don’t have the ups and downs I used to have on higher carb intakes. I do have diabetes in my family. Is yours an anti-diabetic diet?
RA: It is clearly the treatment of choice for Type II diabetes. If people who are pre-diabetic—in other words, those who show high insulin levels, insulin resistance or early abnormalities during a glucose tolerance test—were to follow the lifestyle that I’m recommending, they would not develop diabetes. We have 300 million diabetics scheduled for the planet in the year 2025 and if people would listen to what I’m saying and use my approach before they get diabetes or even after they get it, we could knock down the number of diabetics to well below 100 million. There is no question that this is what the people have to do and it’s my number one goal in life to put an end to the diabetes and obesity epidemics, which are both the same illness. Both of them are found with insulin resistance, hyperinsulinism and abnormalities of blood sugar. So all of these are really the same illnesses and it’s about time that people recognized this.
PK: Do you think our diet in America is killing us? From my own nutritional consulting and educational work I’ve found a lot of evidence that the SAD (standard American diet) is pro-inflammatory and promotes degenerative disease. Do you also find scientific and clinical support for this?
RA: Yes, the standard American diet (SAD) has certainly been shown over and over again to increase the level of triglycerides. A 60 percent carbohydrate diet increases triglyceride levels considerably more than a 40 percent carbohydrate diet. That is evidence that the low-fat diet, which is typically 60 percent carbohydrate, is absolutely dangerous when you also consider that triglycerides have been shown—when compared to cholesterol—to be much more predictive of heart disease. In the case of women, 75 percent who do have heart disease have it because of their triglyceride elevation, meaning that the low-fat diet is increasing the risk of death from cardiovascular disease.
PK: How come if you and I and others can figure this out, so many other health professionals can’t? Do you think they’re burdened with biases from the old-style medical and dietetic schools? Or is there some industry agenda to keep people hooked on life-threatening diets?
RA: Well, they’ve been taught low-fat dogma. Certainly doctors are taught to memorize things and not all think critically and now that’s coming to haunt everybody. Also, the industry agenda is playing a role because there’s a great deal of profit to be made in selling drugs for obesity and selling drugs for diabetes. In addition, both the low-fat product industry and the cholesterol-?lowering drug industry have their vested?interests.
PK: So then, if people’s diets of fried foods, promote diseases like irritable bowel and colon, can we design a single, practical anti-inflammatory diet that would retard disease and lengthen lifespan?
RA: Well, from the very beginning, I’ve felt that it’s essential to individualize diets. First of all, not everybody has the same metabolic profile or the same medical conditions or the same food preferences. And I think the important thing about a diet is that it should be enjoyable as well as healthy. The reason for the enjoyability is that people will stay on a diet for the rest of their life only if they enjoy it; if they don’t enjoy eating a certain way, they’re going to go off that program. Rather than impose a single anti-inflammatory diet on everyone, regardless of personal tastes, it might well be more effective to rely on anti-inflammatory vitanutrients, things like MSM, essential oils and a variety of herbs.
PK: By “essential oils” you mean dietary oils high in fatty acids. How does nutritional supplementation fit in with your diet? How do people on your diet decide which supplements they need also?
RA: Supplements fit in with everything I teach. If people are on another diet, I’m going to give them nutritional supplements. Nutritional supplements are valuable to anybody because our soils are depleted and we live in a toxic environment. Even my program, which is nutrient dense, can benefit from supplementation. And really it’s all based on the teachings in my book, Dr. Atkins’ Vita-Nutrient Solution: Nature’s Answer to Drugs. We recommend the bare minimum of a good multivitamin and mineral, antioxidants and essential oils. Beyond that people shouldn’t really be deciding which supplements they ought to take unless they’ve read my book or better still, gone to a doctor or nutritionist who understands the use of vitanutrients. That’s because each person needs supplements that are designed to overcome their individual points of vulnerability.
PK: Does the staff at your center in New York City have the collective understanding and resources to help me live to 100? How can I and others take best advantage of your team’s expertise?
RA: Certainly, to help you, yes, that’s our goal. But you have to have good luck and not catch some kind of infectious disease that could shorten your life. First of all, the approach is really based on not making mistakes that create the life-shortening conditions like heart disease. And those are all based on refined carbohydrates, by the way. Before we ate refined carbohydrates, we didn’t have an epidemic of heart disease so it’s most important that you eliminate junk food from this point on for the rest of your life. People who want to know how best to take advantage of our team’s expertise should know that The Atkins Center for Complementary Medicine has a nutritional counseling service that can be done over the telephone. This way people who live thousands of miles away can still have the advantage of talking to nutritionists who have been trained here. It’s even more valuable if people can make a trip to our center in Manhattan because then our staff can do a complete examination, both biochemically and physically, and find out what most people don’t even look for. I think this is what we’re known for—the ability to find things that other people don’t find.
PK: Do you have plans to train more practitioners?
RA: There is no question that we have a shortage of practitioners who are trained and I would do anything in my power to find more of them and train them. We give one conference a year with CME credits, which gives people a chance to realize they can go to conferences and learn about our program, but that’s really not enough to accredit them. It takes years of full-time work to learn to integrate nutrition into medical practice.
PK: Dr. Atkins, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to do this interview. I hope many of our readers will try this diet, as I have, and experience the renewed health it can give. Your work has saved many lives and will become ever more valuable in the coming years. Best wishes for the future.
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