Thread: The Atkins Diet Problems

I lived a good portion of my early life on the Atkins diet. Meat, potatoes, very few vegetables. Milk, cereal, meat laden sandwiches, the whole nine yards.

I literally lived the book.

Consequently, I was underweight, chronically constipated, always sick, getting sick, getting over being sick or wondering how soon I'd be sick again.

Even carnivores don't live a life devoid of lots of vegetable matter.

Back in 1979, I designed a health food for tropical fish. That started as an effort to find a way to feed newly hatched fry - that's what you call fish just hatched from an egg. They're so small they only are able to eat exceptionally tiny food morsels. Liquified egg yolks is one popular alternative to newly hatched brine shrimp - nauplii they're called. The eggs are the size of a period in Arial 8pt. Anyway, egg yolks foul aquarium water pretty fast if you feed too much and the fry die. If you don't feed enough, the fry die.

After a lot of experimentation, I came up with a recipe that involved beef heart and a wide variety of vegetable material including pond algea. I used an industrial Cuisinart food processor to liquify the beef heart and a blender to mix the rest of the ingredients.

When I was finished with the beef heart, I always had to scrape hard white fat out of the Cuisinart barrel. There was a lot and it stuck fast to the smooth plastic.

Before liquefying the beef hearts, I spent a lot of time cleaning the fat and connective tissue out of the hearts. The beef heart that went into the fishfood recipe was pure meat - no fat because aquarium fish cannot digest animal fat - it plugs them up solid and they die quickly.

The thing is, beef heart is the leanest meat in a cow and I removed all that the human eye could see. Yet there was still a substantial amount of fat stuck in my machine.

The rest of a cow is much fattier than the heart.

When you eat a steak or any other red meat (from domesticated animals) you're ingesting a large amount of fat. You do need a certain amount of fat for energy. But most of what you eat reverts back to hard white globules of fat so tiny that they migrate from your colon into your bloodstream.

If you are a person who does not do enough exercise to burn the fat, the excess is stored throughout your body - essentially wherever it sticks. It's very sticky and extremely difficult to remove without soap and water. You can't do that to your insides. So how do you get rid of it?

You don't unless you learn to fast. Another thing that helps is drinking vegetable juice fresh from your own juice machine in conjunction with a cleansing program.

You often hear of people having plaque blockages removed from their veins and arteries at or near the heart. That works for the biggest veins and arteries but does nothing for the smaller ones that are even more likely to be clogged. When blood circulation to say a finger or a toe, a foot or a hand stops, the appendage dies. Then it gets amputated. If it's not amputated it starts to rot. That's called gangrene. It's a process by which you have an armslength box (casket) seat from which to watch yourself die inch by inch.

What saved me from an early grave was the fact that I was always extremely active and did a lot of physical work. But even so, when my health deteriorated to the point where I was coughing up black blood, I finally had to admit that my doctor's advice had to be wrong.

My only alternative, even with absolutely no nutritional training whatsoever, was to take responsibility for my own health. I had to find out what it was that makes a person healthy. I knew how to be unhealthy.

My fish food, which became a top seller in pet shops in the Toronto area proved to be capable of transforming a fish terminally ill with consumption, the fish equivalent to tuberculosis from a skinny, animated corpse to a perky animated, healthy fish in two days. They could be induced to breed in two weeks. It seemed like magic.

How was it I could heal a fish but not myself?

In 1980, I was given a booklet about Iridology. In it was the first description I'd ever seen about the relationship between diet and good vibrant health.

The key to health proved to be vegetables. Mostly raw. Just what I'd put in my fish food. Even supposedly blood thirsty piranhas loved it. They thrived.

The Atkins diet does assist in weight loss. But since excess weight is caused by a lack of understanding of how to manage health and thus weight, losing weight by the Atkins method or any other diet fad doesn't solve the initial or core problem. Therefore, as soon as the person reverts to the habits that caused the weight gain in the first place, the weight goes right back on.

After you do that a few times, your body stops cooperating and hoards the fat. At that point, you have a real challenge to lose a single ounce. Meanwhile, the fat is not your only problem. Fat always comes with constipation. I don't mean a simple bowel blockage although that can happen too. I mean a total body form of constipation where all the organs and glands start filling with pus and infection.

When that happens, the body is heading towards a functional breakdown - the most damaged organ first followed over time by others until the body finally goes into shut down mode when it has finally had enough abuse.

While the body is in breakdown mode, all sorts of symptoms show up. Doctors and medical scientists have invented lots of spiffy names for them and the pharmaceutical industry runs on these ignorance induced conditions.

The medical profession also makes its money treating dietary induced afflictions and have for many generations.

Of course the real answer to weight loss and degenerative conditions or diseases is to relearn how and what to eat and how to cleanse the body.

I've asked doctors, "Have you ever instructed any of your patients about the health benefits of fasting and cleansing?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"The public just wants to take a pill and forget about it."

"Did you ever give them the choice?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"There's no money in telling people to eat more raw vegetables and teaching them to fast. I couldn't make a living at it."

"So you give them incorrect advice instead, knowing you're giving them incorrect advice."

"That about sums it up. It's too bad but I have a family to feed and they eat the same as anyone else and have the same outcomes. You can't beat it."

The doctors are wrong. You can beat it. You can choose to eat properly and live a longer, happier life.

See the Isagenix thread to learn how to beat the odds with and without their products.

The true is that everything is marketing !

First don't give us information, and tell us that the pills are the best way. That is industry ! Who will make money if we don't buy pills!

You don't need to worry about the people making pills. They are likely making better money and will continue to make better money than you or I will ever see. Concentrate on eating nutritious raw vegetables and fruit if you want to get healthy.

sounds like what you are advocating is close to the ornish diet

"There's no money in telling people to eat more raw vegetables and teaching them to fast. I couldn't make a living at it."

Isn't it their responsibility to take care of their patients? That's just wrong.

Originally Posted by gullyfourmyle

I lived a good portion of my early life on the Atkins diet. Meat, potatoes, very few vegetables. Milk, cereal, meat laden sandwiches, the whole nine yards. I literally lived the book.

Consequently, I was underweight, chronically constipated, always sick, getting sick, getting over being sick or wondering how soon I'd be sick again.

Even carnivores don't live a life devoid of lots of vegetable matter.

Therefore, as soon as the person reverts to the habits that caused the weight gain in the first place, the weight goes right back on.

1. If you were eating meat, potatoes and few vegetables, you weren't doing Atkins. Atkins is protein and green vegies.
2. If you were sick, it was not a result of Atkins. I've maintained my current weight for several years now. I still eat less than 30gm of carbs per day - no grains, starches or rice.
3. Even Atkins followers don't live a life devoid of vegetables. They are an important part of his program.
4. Of course they will regain their weight when they revert to their old habits. The same is true of Weight Watchers or any other WOE/diet.

I think different diets do work for different people. Like I mentioned before, if you are not comfortable you will find yourself battling whether it is good for you or not. In my opinion, you have to believe on the program and follow it by the book to be successful. For me a weight loss program either has to be personal or something you want to do truthfully because if you are not 100% you want to do it, I think it's a waste of time and effort