Atkins/Long Beach diet

[danaeris]

So I've been contemplating going on either the Atkins or the Long Beach diet (unseelie describes the latter as a modified version of the Atkins diet which is just as effective but is slightly more permissive, having analyzed Atkins to see what works and what doesn't).

Here's your chance to tell me why Atkins or Long Beach or both suck or rock. Have at!

Comments

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, why not something fairly balanced and basic, like Weight Watchers?

[danaeris.livejournal.com]

I've been on weight watchers. It's a bitch. You have to measure everything you cook, cook from recipes, or use their nasty microwave dinners. Oh, and buy their cookbooks. I don't want to be restricted like that. I normally nowadays don't cook for myself. It would be REALLY difficult for me to change that for the time being because I have no car and no nearby supermarket that sells produce (which is kinda key to a healthy diet). When the new Whole Foods goes in, I expect that will change. Even then, though, I'm not sure I want to cope with measuring portions exactly, etc.

FWIW, right now I'm on a fairly balanced diet. But I'm not losing weight. I'm just maintaining. It's getting frustrating, because I feel like I'm denying myself of good tasty things and getting no benefit. I suppose if I didn't deny myself, I'd be gaining weight. *sigh* Frustrating body of mine...

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

I guess I don't see you as especially overweight -- well within the size range I was at when I was very healthy -- so I'd see something like Atkins as being dramatic in that context. Has a doctor given you any suggestions? Sometimes they can come up with a more objective assessment.

Is exercise helpful?

[danaeris.livejournal.com]

I'm 5'2" and fluctuating between about 165 and 180 pounds. That is definitely overweight for my height.

My metabolism is totally fucked up. I started dieting when I was 9 and stopped when I was 16. I was training 3-5 hours a day as a competitive figure skater. I was a size 3/4 or 5/6 most of that time. Now I'm a 13/14.

My goal is to be more around the 9/10 or 7/8 range. Ie. a medium instead of a large or extra large.

I do this mostly because *I* don't like the way I look in the mirror, but also because I feel my weight is unhealthy, and finally because I know it would please unseelie. The latter is kinda the last straw that pushes me to action.

Exercise would be helfpul if I were good at getting it consistently. I'm taking a dance class once a week for 1.5 hours, and that's good exercise, or at least, should help. I'm walking 40 minutes every weekday. I might start dancing on Thursdays as well, or start an aikido class, or something.

Ideally, I want to lose weight, and then I want to maintain that by eating healthy. I have a pretty firm grip on what that means. Atkins seems to do wonders for people fairly quickly... the concern in my mind is whether it will be bad for my health, and then whether the weight will stay off if I go to a normal, balanced diet afterwards.

And I can't go to a doctor because I don't have any insurance and I'm poor. And because this country is uncivilized, but I won't go there.

[danaeris.livejournal.com]

I should add that doctors have a fucked up idea of what is healthy and isn't healthy.

When I was dieting constantly and training about 2-5 hours per day (or something like that), I was between 114 and 120 pounds. According to the doctors, 120 pounds for my height is just within the ideal healthy range. So even with that much exercise and dieting, I had trouble staying within the ideal range. Which is ridiculous, in my opinion.

If I manage to lose the amount of weight I want and hit about 140 pounds, I will still be in the moderately dangerous range according to most doctors. Dunno what a nutritionist would say.

My body just tends towards heavier than the doctors seem to think is healthy. *shrug* I'm not going to hold myself to their standards because they are simply unreasonable.

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Wow, appearance is deceiving. When my body shape was about the same as yours is now, I was 5'8" and 160.

As far as reaching 140 and still being in the "moderately dangerous" range, my doctor thinks that overall fitness matters more than absolute weight. For me, 180 or so would still be "moderately dangerous," but if I were fit, I'd actually be healthy there.

[evergrey.livejournal.com]

Doctors are full of shit, and have bought into the whole "emaciated is good" societal ideal.
A healthy weight range for a 5'2" woman is between 130 and 150 pounds, says I.
I'm 5'2" also, by the way.

[lyricagent.livejournal.com]

I've been doing WW since August, lost 42 pounds, and haven't bought a single cookbook, weighed a scrap of food or ate a disgusting frozen dinner.

I eat whatever the hell I want.

wurmfood has dropped I think 15 or 20 pounds and colubra has lost roughly the same.

Check out the website. It's totally different than it used to be. There's also websites out there that tell you how many points things are rated from over 100 restaurants so you don't have to count anything. Their online system has a buttload of items that already have the points in there.

This is not your mother's weight watchers.

[princeofwands.livejournal.com]

Weight Watchers is really easy with a couple of pieces of useful not-published-by-them information:

1) WW-Points ~= Calories/50 + 9*(grams of fat) - 4*(grams of fiber)
(in I think '01 the revised schedule, they cap that fiber bonus at 4 total grams)

2) http://www.dwlz.com/restaurants.html

The weighing and measuring is pretty easy to eyeball after a little practice. And with some familiarity, most of the values become pretty easily guessed. Just FYI.

Atkins

[evergrey.livejournal.com]

I have lost 31 pounds since the beginning of August.
My cholesterol levels have gone DOWN.
My kidneys and liver are FINE.
My energy levels are WAY UP.
I no longer get sick all the time.
I no longer get depressed all the time.
My joints don't constantly hurt.
I can climb over a wall now.
I can fit in clothes I couldn't fit into for over two years.
My hair is getting glossy and longer.
(must take many multivitamins!)
This diet has four stages, the last being a lifetime management stage, so you don't go on the diet, then go off it and gain back the weight and then some.
Losing fat is great. The wya I feel, healthwise, is even greater.
It's hard at first, The first couple of weeks you feel kinda crappy while your body switches over to ketosis. And then you feel so good, and realize just how awful you had been feeling before.

There is no evidence that atkins damages your kidney and liver. No studies have proven this. And everyone I have spoken to has had their cholesterol levels go down. You just have to have plrenty of fiber, potassium (spinach!) and lots of vitamin supplements.

[aaangyl.livejournal.com]

When are we getting together for dinner? I've just turned up a lot of interesting information about what these carb-cutting diets to one's biochemistry. I can't as such recommend them, but if you go for one, I'd highly recommend you buy and read the whole book associated, AND schedule a lunch so I can spend a half hour giving you a basic dump on how it's going to impact your serotonin cycle and what kinda of things you can tak and do to minimize impact and/or work with the crisis mode these diets throw your body into. (Not that body crisis is entirely bad, just something that is best approached from a fully informed perspective.)

[coffeekitty.livejournal.com]

whatever you go with, i'd suggest, as general rules,

1. go for nutrient-dense (not calorie-dense) foods. Stuff like beans, bright colored veggies, eggs and nuts in moderation, fish, whole grains. Try to cut out overrefined stuff, or keep it to a minimum. Basically, try to get the most nutritional bang for your caloric buck. You pretty much can't go wrong with raw or lightly cooked veggies, as long as you hold the butter/dip/stir fry oil.

2. Eat a variety of foods. Actively try new foods and work at enlarging the set of "healthy food that I like."

3. Drink a lot of water. Drink more than you think you need. Putting a dollop of pure fruit juice in sparkling mineral water encourages me to drink more water.

4. Listen to your body. From what I've heard, there are many variations on the Atkins diet, and different people respond very differently, given their various body chemistries. Some people feel very well and energetic on Atkins; others can't adapt. When I was trying to tweak my diet to make myself feel healthier, I kept a running log of what I had eaten and how it made me feel for a while.

So, I am actually on atkins...

[earthdragon.livejournal.com]

I started on it because all the old people in doomcom were on it, and loosing noticable amouts on a regular basis. In about a month and a half or so, I'm down about 15 lbs +- 3 or so, and the loss is noticably slowing down, but not stoping.
Things I have noticed on the diet:
I am very dehydrated very often.
I am not having many cravings (except for the desserts at the bakery counter at the supermarket when I walk by).
I am cooking a lot more. I eat out on occasion, but it is an anoyance with the places I go. Few casual places do large good meat with no sugery topings well.
I would say that atkins is noticably more expensive then the equivelent meal with lots of carbs. I did not cook before, so I'm doing better, but if you don't have the time and stores to cook, it is going to be hard.
I am not very hungry. When I want to eat, I eat. Fat is satisfying. My parents(who see me about monthly) say I'm looking better. I have not had a single suger headache like I used to get. As far as I can tell, my body is not mising the carb, although I'm being carful about vitamins(and need to get a bit more fibre).

If you have any more questions, ask. As a minimum, if you are going to do the diet, get and read the whole book, or do similar deep reasearch so you really know what you are doing.

Re: So, I am actually on atkins...

[jadia.livejournal.com]

Protein requires more water to digest, which is probably why you are dehydrated more often....

Re: So, I am actually on atkins...

[auros]

IIRC, it's more like, protein requires more water to excrete the byproducts of digesting it, and having more water will probably help your kidneys... A lot of doctors tell people to make sure they get checked out for kidney and liver problems regularly if they go on Atkins. At least one article I've read suggested getting the over-the-counter diabetic ketone test strips, and checking with those several times in a day, every eight days (to make sure you rotate which weekday you're checking on, to avoid having data biased by issues of your weekly routine). Though that was a few years ago, so I don't know what current science says about the ketone issues...

I need a datajack, so I can just soak up this sort of info as it becomes available...

[karenbynight.livejournal.com]

Disclaimer: this is my opinion. you asked for it, here it is. :-) This is only an opinion; were it a real argument I would do more research and provide relevant reference URLs. :-)

Diets suck. All of them. The concept of radically changing what you eat for a period of time in order to rapidly lose weight is inherently flawed. Here's why:

• The more radically your new eating habits differ from you original eating habits, the more deprived you feel. Particularly bad at this are diets that have food or food groups that you're never allowed to eat. Deprivation leads to cheating.
  
• The more radically your maintenance habits differ from your original eating habits, the less likely you are to stick to them for a lifetime. Again, deprivation leads to cheating.
  
• The more rapidly you lose weight, the faster your body image gets out of sync with your body, and the more psychological work you have to do to keep a reasonably accurate body image. IME, keeping a happy and reasonably accurate body image is critical to weight loss success -- specifically to not gaining the weight back afterward.
  
• Additionally, the faster you lose weight, the more people compliment you on your accomplishment. On the surface, this would seem to be a good motivator. However, it's my experience that, taken to the extremes it can be taken when you lose a lot of weight quickly, it often puts pressure on the dieter that interferes with their success.

What do I suggest instead? Well, tweaking your current exercise and diet habits to make the simple caloric input/output equations work slowly in your favor. I did this primarily by lifting weights, and by becoming more knowledgeable about caloric densities of foods. Basically, I started lifting weights to build some muscle to raise my metabolism so I'd burn more calories at rest; and I read a lot about nutrition and calories so I could modify my diet on the fly to still eat what I wanted, but to want things that are a little better for me. This eventually created some practical changes to my diet, like the fact that I eat less pasta now because I understand that the caloric density is pretty extreme for a non-desert food, and it's just not worth the cost to me. But none of it feels like deprivation, because I decided on the minor changes based on my own preferences, a sound understanding of nutrition, and the knowledge that the cold equation of (caloric intake - caloric outgo = weight gain/loss) applies.

It's not as easy as following someone else's lead... but then, nothing ever is.

[auros]

Cutting out refined stuff, as advised above, seems to be the basis of the South Beach diet; I was just discussing this with my dad the other day, and apparently he regards South Beach as still kind of annoyingly faddish, but fundamentally a "fixed" version of Atkins. The idea underlying Atkins -- that carbs convert to glucose too fast -- is basically true, but that doesn't mean it's healthy (or even easy) to cut them completely. But cutting out sugars (esp high fructose corn syrup, which fails to trigger satiation because fructose, unlike sucrose, produces no leptin when broken down into glucose) and simple starches (white bread, potatos, essentially all junk food) is a great idea. (Just to make clear that I'm not completely bad-mouthing the Atkins folks, I'll note that the sane doctors that advise people on Atkins basically have you go through an "induction" where you cut all carbs, and then have you add back in unrefined carbs, which basically makes it look a lot like South Beach. Unfortunately, there are also some rather wacky Atkins advocates.)

It's also good to cut hydrogenated oils completely, if possible, and red meat as much as possible, in favor of firm-fleshed fish like salmon, tuna, etc; apparently flaky whitefish like cod and flounder don't confer the same advantages.

[auror.livejournal.com]

i've been off an on atkins for about the last year. i've lost about 30 pounds. ::shrug:: it works but after a YEAR its tiring!