Here are some secret "confessions" I found in Dr. Atkins own book "Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution".
I am deliberately avoiding going into more depth about other errors I think he makes and things I think he implies, or believes, because I don't want to assume anything, I just want to stick to what he's saying in plain english. There are only a few but they are critical:
1. "... and an extreme low-fat diet, which can be healthy if it excludes junk, is simply too austere for most people and infinitely more austere than the Atkins diet". (14)
Ahh so that's what it's about, gluttony!
2. "When I speak of carbohydrates, I'm referring to the unhealthy ones- sugar and white flour, milk and white rice, processed and refined foods of all kinds, junk foods and the like" (20)
Then why doesn't he title his book something like "sugar blues" or "sugar, the deadly poison", or "sugar: the bitter truth: pure white and deadly". Why confound things? Why not be more specific in their aim. Because of where this sentence above was located, it means in the entire book, when he speaks of carbohydrates, it is referring to junk carbohydrates.
3. "now the answer to the question at the head of this section: What's wrong with carbohydrates? The answer is, nothing, if you're not trying to lose weight and if they're the right carbohydrates" (22)
Why not if you want to lose weight? He goes into that, I guess, in the other parts of that book, but let's not focus on this part here. So good carbohydrates are ok for someone of optimal weight? great! I can agree with this and that refined sugars are toxic. I think they are now being implicated in such things as liver problems, diabetes, obesity and heart disease, if I'm not mistaken.
4. "If all the glycogen storage areas are filled, and there is still more glucose in the blood beyond that which the body needs to function, insulin will convert the excess to fatty tissue called triglyceride...- the stuff you're reading this book to get rid of" (51)
So is that what makes triglycerides? I don't know much about them. But in any case, who has the problem of too much glycogen?
Projection, projection projection! I imagine that my issue is getting enough, not having too much, trying to get my stores up. Why does he assume our stores are already full? Again I can only speculate but maybe it has something to do with liquid calories, corn syrup, but then again why doesn't he call his book "sugar metabolic syndrome?" On the one hand he says that if our glycogen stores are full, and we still have glucose in the blood, we'll make triglycerides. On the other hand, he says that on a low fat diet, we are only temporarily satisfied. How can our glycogen stores be so full when we are not even eating that much to satisfy our hunger? He's already ruled out or spoken against refined sugar consumption
5. Not confessions per se but worth quoting:
"It's not that you eat when you're not hungry, but you seem to be always hungry. And yet when you eat the carbohydrate food you crave, you feel only briefly better". (43)
Projection! Projection! Projection!
Not true in my case. I can see how it's true if one starves oneself, if one restricts one's calories. Is it gluttony to eat two platefuls of rice or a lot of fruit? I can see how some maybe measure gluttony by food volume, others by calorie, and still others, by cost of production of the good. In the latter, consuming meat is generally more gluttonous than plant foods, although eating rare fruit from halfway over the world versus local seafood in subsistence societies. In any case, in my opinion, carbohydrates do not make one a glutton, ever, if that's what he's implying. I don't relate to lack of food satisfaction on low fat diet. I do relate to cultural frustration, but if given the choice to follow culture, or nature, I'd chose nature for sure. So what makes him think that people are always hungry, only feeling 'briefly better'. I can only speculate, why he says such things. My theory is that people don't up their food intake when they switch to low fat diets. Or they do the idiotic thing of going on calorie restriction diets, which are probably (cf Francis Moore Lappe) designed by the food industry to sell more food.
Not a confession, but just curious: Did I read this right?
6. "so they did a study and found that those on a 90 percent protein" (67)
Do people even survive on 90 percent protein let alone lose weight? I had thought that even a 50 percent protein diet is highly toxic, but maybe I'm misinformed? Awaiting correction..
Anyway I have learned some things from this book for sure. A few things. I'll have to verify and corroborate these things, as with any author, McDougall or anybody.
ps He writes about insulin resistance. I thought some about this. How can a carbohydrate actually cause insulin resistance? I can understand how it causes a rise in carbohydrates, but what is about carbohydrates that make insulin stop working? I don't understand what could possibly be the mechanism, in the blood. If insulin was designed and created for carbohydrates, how can carbohydrates make it stop working? remember that in the blood, insulin is insulin and has no past history. I could see theoretically how a great demand for insulin could theoretically damage the islets of langerhans where it's secreted in the pancrease, although from what I understand this is not the problem faced by Type Two diabetics. So, organic damage to the pancrease cannot be the mechanism. That to me is like saying too much water damages the kidneys, which are designed to filter water. Even that is a bad analogy because the kidneys could theoretically suffer organic damage over time, even though I think they wouldn't, whereas insulin molecules are whole and complete and have no memory in the blood. maybe the receptor sites of the cells are damaged? I don't think likely. Anyway that's cellular damage, systemic, and unlikely. I respect that people have insulin resistance but a part of me just thinks there is a completely different cause of insulin resistance- that has to do with oils, fats and junk calories
