Posted: Mar 07, 2011 6:23 pm
Dudely wrote:Yes there is.
Everyone made fun of the Atkins diet when it came out, but guess what? It actually works. The weird part is we've known this since the 70s. Calorie-restricted diets work because they inadvertently cut carbohydrates. But they also starve you and your body compensates by making you hungry. You'll stay hungry for years until your body gets what it wants- the calories to replace what it lost. This makes perfect sense if you consider the following.
Just like everything else in your body fat growth is regulated by growth hormones, not calories. The growth hormone that regulates fat is called insulin (maybe you've heard of it), and it's production is triggered by eating carbohydrates, not fat. You can eat as much fat as you like and so long as your insulin levels are low you won't gain weight because your body has no signal to. That's why a lion can eat half an antelope and not get fat but a house cat on kibble seems to gain weight no matter what you do. Kibble has carbs. An antelope doesn't.
To think otherwise would be like asking why you don't get taller when you eat more. The answer to that is obvious and the answer to horizontal weight gain is exactly the same. Weirdly, no one likes to put 2-and-2 together on that one. I guess it's just easier tot think that you get fat by being lazy and eating too much, not due to some complicated hormonal dance. To make matters worse being lazy and eating too much really does make you gain weight, but it's just not for the reason people think it does.
How do you think the Atkins diet works if not by cutting the amount of calories that you take in?
It's certainly not that just eating meat won't make you fat; Lions might not get fat, but easy meat is rare in their habitats so they're a bad example. However, take a look at a polar bear; they're practically pure carnivores, yet they'll typically enter hibernation in a state of extreme obesity. If a human being could actually stand to stuff themselves with 3000+ calories worth of meat and fat every day, they'd likely gain weight too.
Of course, most people would find such a diet rather unpalatable, so Aktins usually works so long as you can stick to it. Still, that's true of any calorie-controlled diet, and most of them have rather more in common with what would be conventionally considered a balanced diet. As such, I'd only recommend Atkins to people who just can't stick with anything else.
Still, they might want to read this first:
http://www.atkinsexposed.org/atkins/17/ ... sguise.htm