Dr. Atkins talks to Larry.
I got some semi-spam from the Atkins center. This should be interesting, actually, we get Larry King Live here in Spain on CNN International - though it's usually broadcast a bit late. This may not be here until tomorrow, but I'll check tonight to see:
Dr. Atkins will answer questions about the science behind the Atkins Nutritional Approach, the foods you should eat when doing Atkins—including the right kinds of fruits and vegetables—and will discuss his new book, Atkins for Life, available in bookstores and at AtkinsCenter.com as of January 18th.
It's a "Don't Miss" for people who do Atkins.
I need to get back into the diet now that the holidays have passed. More info when I actually start again.
-Russ [Russell Beattie Notebook]
Something of a departure for me today, blogging about something that is reasonably personal, and utterly unrelated to technology. Interestingly though, still highly related to the general hacker mentality of intense curiosity about how stuff works.
Atkins appears to be hitting Europe with the marketing machine this year. I just finished watching 'Tonight with Treveor Macdonald', which was entirely devoted to the Atkins diet. It was interesting, and I found myself nodding along to their two diet-testers' comments about the induction phase.
Admission: I did the Atkins induction at around the same time Russ did, out of the aforementioned curiosity about this diet which appeared to contradict accepted wisdom. Yes I lost weight over the two weeks of phase 1 (induction), and yes I felt rough for about the first week. This was after some time spent reading around the theories on the Atkins website. I didn't continue the diet after the first phase, as I got a huge fruit craving. I now (strangely) eat far more fruit than I used to, including several that I thought I didn't like.
What Atkins did do for me was break me of several bad habits involving toasted bagels for breakfast, curries and pizza (not for breakfast). Just being forced to examine in some detail what I was eating was good for me, and I lost about 14 pounds (just under 7 kilos) - some of which happened after I chucked the Atkins diet, but stayed off the high-carb/high-fat food. But do any of us really need to be told that pizzas and burgers are not the healthiest food in the world?
What annoyed me slightly about the programme was the implied message that Atkins is all about the (virtually) no-carb phase of the diet. While I don't agree entirely with the Atkins philosophy or recommendations (kudos to them for claiming the rest of the body of research is wrong, but hard to swallow objectively), I still think they are entitled to a fair representation. The entire TV program was focussed on the most intense phase (which Atkins themselves only recommend you do for 2 weeks), and only once was it mentioned in passing that this was only phase 1 of the diet plan.
Anyway, to sum up, going cold turkey on stuff that is bad for you is almost always going to have positive results if you break the habit, but everyone is different, use your common sense and go with what works for you. Your body will let you know if that works for it.
