Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution (1999) - Plot & Excerpts
Robert Atkins, Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution (Quill, 2002)Well, you can't beat the Atkins Diet for sheer number of coverts. Millions of people are following the Atkins Nutritional Plan, and all of them seem to be losing weight. The only "official" bureau to have come out against it has been exposed as a lunatic fringe of militant vegan doctors, and once again all is right with the world. Or is it?I'm not going to deny that the book is accurate in its claims of helping people lose weight. It sometimes seems that everyone in the country knows two or three people who are on the Atkins Diet. I know, casually, seven (and those are just the ones whose eating habits I know). Of those seven, I know four who have been on it for more than two months, and all four have lost significant amounts of weight. Can't argue with stats like that. And most of the scientific stuff the late doctor puts in the book is backed up with an almost endless list of scientific papers and abstracts listed in the back. Hard to argue with that. In those places where the science is still somewhat in the future, he goes to pains to point that out, saying certain things are still in question, or are still being researched. All well and good, and on the surface it looks fantastic.The problem is that one irrationality can throw the whole thing into question. And there is one. It is a glaring one for any professional skeptic. (Before writing this review, I wrote to the Atkins Center folks for confirmation that the Atkins people espouse the beliefs below, and I received a response in the affirmative.) Dr. Atkins and his professional followers are believers in what professional followers of urban legends have come to call the Aspartame Lie. There is a small, and very vocal, segment of the American population who believe, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, that aspartame is the Great Satan, and causes everything from cancer to multiple sclerosis. All claims have been refuted multiple times (Amazon does not allow the posting of exterior links in reviews, or I'd send the same fifty or so links I sent to the Atkins Center), and yet Atkins holds onto the belief, saying there are "questions about aspartame's safety." One has to think that if the man is still holding to a view espoused only by a few so far out on the lunatic fringe they're liable to fall off a tassel, there may be some other urban legend-style skeletons farther down in the man's closet. Everyone reading this book, and adopting the Atkins Nutritional Plan, is encouraged to do as much research as necessary to convince yourself that he's on the money. And because of the belief Atkins holds in the junk science of the dangers of aspartame, "none" is not, in any way, an option.
depending on how you execute his dietary guidelines, you may or may not be setting yourself up for an increased risk of cancer and heart attack. there's lots of long term evidence that increased intake of animal proteins is linked to increased risk of a wide spectrum of cancers. that said. holy crap it works. if you're obese, diabetic, or suffering from an enslavement to refined carbohydrates, this diet can break you of that cycle and leads to rapid weight loss. if you're not interested in the causes of obesity, you're not interested in current events. it's overtaking everyone. worldwide. i found this book to be powerful reading. his decades of clinical practice in treating morbid obesity and type II diabetes really are the foundation of this book. the "diet" takes up perhaps one of eleven chapters, and one more for recipes. the rest are clinical observation, observations on published studies, complex nutritional theorizing revolving around trace minerals and vitamins. the book is really an outline of his argument that our ideas about food in the late 80s, early 90s, were toxic and inaccurate.this man is a pivot point in modern nutrition and dietary theory. remember margarine? low fat high calorie "diet" foods made of synthetic substances bound with sugar? more modern permutations of his thinking like the south beach diet have trumpeted the virtues of complex carbohydrates and steady protein intake. you can follow this diet as a vegan or vegetarian, but doing so lowers the "satiety" aspect that makes the diet approachable. Dr. Atkins coined the phrase metabolic syndrome, and defined it as a clinical diagnosis. he also began to redefine diabetes as a treatable, reversable illness.the most recent editions published since he's passed away are garbage, his estate is now pushing products for sale. the new editions are true "diet" books. the same artificial diet products and crap that he argued against in his original editions, just formulated to fit within his dietary guidelines.
What do You think about Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution (1999)?
If you want, check out Perlmutter's "Grain Brain," and Taubes' "Why We Get Fat." I believe it'll solidify the science for you and make it very easy for you to adopt this eating style for the rest of your life. It helped me immensely. I truly understand it now and am loving this new way of viewing food as fuel.
—LaTonya
I tried, I ate a lot of meat, I failed and I went back to my couscous and chickpeas and veggies. The diet was developed in the 40s for uncontrolled diabetics who bodies could not handle any but a minimal amount of carbohydrate. Since carb molecules take on 4 times as much water as protein ones, water weight was lost very fast and then, since proteins are filling because they are digested very slowly, people snack less and true fat is lost, but a huge amount of cholesterol is consumed. It was realised that if you actually stuck to the diet rigidly you would put yourself at risk of heart disease, but when the diet was still current for diabetics, it was realised that without the diet they weren't going to live long enough to get clogged arteries from all that red meat's cholesterol.The book does not make any of that clear. It is a dangerous book that puts weight loss for vanity (surely not health) above a long and healthy life. It should be noted that when Dr. Atkins died, he was obese and had heart disease himself.
—Petra X
I wouldn't have read this book except that my husband was advised by his doctor to try out the Atkins diet, and I'm glad I did. In fact, I was primed, because a well-known sports scientist had been talking about a low-carbohydrate eating plan on the radio and I had already experimented, with positive results. I just wasn't aware that Atkins and low-carb meant the same thing. So many diets do the rounds that I am generally suspicious of "named" ones, as if the mere fact that they come with books and products makes them fads.The book immediately addressed this issue and got it out of the way. After that, the case studies and explanations of how various processes in the body work convinced me that Atkins is a lot more than a deprivation regime. In fact, I became increasingly excited and inspired. Both my husband and I finished reading the book within two weeks - which is proof of its readability - and we embraced the programme enthusiastically. It gave us new hope for losing the weight we had been carrying around for years.A review should, strictly speaking, be about the quality of a book in terms of style and content. But I have to add that Dr Atkins brings something else to the mix - namely, his personal compassion for and commitment to overweight people. This feeling of caring transmits itself to the reader, making you really want to succeed for health reasons and not just for the sake of a slimmer silhouette. In fact, after reading the book, that feeling of care had communicated itself to me, so that I wanted to help my friends and family see the benefits of a controlled carbohydrate diet as well. Certainly, society has become obsessed with avoiding fat in dairy, meat and poultry, and it is immensely liberating to discover that fat actually trims your waistline and fuels your brain.
—Leanne Hunt
