Are you kidding me with the farking Atkins craze. Do people really think that completely neglecting an entire group of macronutrients is a good idea? If I told everyone to quit eating protein they would look at me like I was a 3-eyed astronaut, but some cretin decides that carbohydrates are not necessary in the diet, write a book about it, and now it's legit? I'm gonna write a book about how puppies should be skinned alive and turned into loin cloths. By the same logic, I'll be heralded as a genius by idiots everywhere.
Carbohydrates are actually used by the body as an energy source and more importantly for you dieters, carbs are REQUIRED by the body to use adipose (fat) tissue to fuel metabolic processes, unless you're Michael Moore or course; at which point you use frogs, rocks, and litterally anything you can shove past your 9th chin. Breaking it down into layman's terms: If you want to lose fat, your body requires you to eat carbs in order to be able to use that very fat which you're trying to lose. When you don't ingest carbs and force your body to use fat to fuel your day, the body will derive the necessary energy from other places (like muscle tissue). In the mean time, the fat that does get used only gets partially used and riddles your body with ketone bodies. These are basically undigested fat (kind of like Rosie O'Donnell). I don't want to get too far into it, but ketone bodies will hamper your dieting efforts and these are one of the many reasons why people on Atkins rarely keep their fat off.
The takehome messages are these: get off the Atkins diet, get off your ass, and go for a walk. Eat a balanced, well proportioned diet and if you really get after it with exercise you can expect to lose somewhere on the order of 2lbs per week safely. Have fun.
Zachary Tyrl
15 years ago
