Atkins study

May 19, 2004 · Comments

Found “this page”:http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99995003 via “Dean Esmay’s site”:http://www.deanesmay.com/archives/007430.html

bq.. Stern’s year-long study (Annals of Internal Medicine, vol 140, p778) was twice the length of any previous study. Half the patients followed the Atkins regime, limiting daily carbohydrate intake to just 30 grams. The rest tried losing weight through a conventional low-fat diet much richer in carbohydrates.

By the end, both groups had lost about the same amount of weight, between five and eight kilograms for the Atkins group and three and eight kilos for the low fat group. But the Atkins dieters lost almost all their weight in the first six months, then remained at a steady weight.

p. A whole year. Woo hoo.

March 3, 2004 was my 3 year anniversary of making my goal weight with “Weight Watchers”:http://www.weightwatchers.com after losing 50 lbs. It took me about 11 months to lose the weight. I haven’t been perfect, but my weight has been within 5 lbs. of goal ever since. I had been battling my weight since I was about 10 years old. I graduated high school at about 180 lbs. In college I went on Herbalife and got down to 128 lbs. but that wasn’t healthy for me at all. I couldn’t maintain that and gained it all back, most after my father died (and Laini was diagnosed with Autism around the same time). I joined Weight Watchers (again) in 2000 after I was turned down for donating blood. It wasn’t due to my weight, but I knew I wasn’t healthy and I was sick of it. Literally. Now I wouldn’t define myself as “skinny” by any stretch but I’m a comfortable size 8 (size 6 depending on the cut) and that’s good for me and I can stay at this weight and eat this way for the rest of my life.

Anyone can lose weight. Really. Eat less, move more. Do it for long enough and you lose weight. The hardest part is *keeping it off.* If you have a lot to lose, the challenge is in sustaining the enthusiasm to make it to goal once the novelty starts wearing off. Especially for women. We come out of the womb conditioned to say “I need to lose weight.” We are constantly in diet mode, and we never learn how to maintain. We have to learn how to indulge for a special ocassion and get right back on program without giving ourselves a guilt trip. We are either overeating, or we are depriving. The middle ground is the hardest. And I’m sorry, but I think Atkins is a fad. I know there are many that have been successful on it, but come back and talk to me when you have enough people like me…people who have maintained their weight loss for 2 years, 3 years. Or longer. There are people who have lost significant amounts of weight on Weight Watchers and have kept it off for 15-20 years. All the studies in the world aren’t going to give Atkins that kind of credibility yet. Find people who have maintained weight loss for years, and you’ll find that they did it the old fashioned way (Weight Watchers and/or fat & calorie cutting). There’s no shortcut. I think there’s validity in cutting back on carbohydrates. I know that when my weight creeps up, the first thing I do is cut back on the carbs and it goes right back down. But long term, the key to sustained weight loss is *moderation* not deprivation.

BTW, I had a page on my old site design that had before & after pictures of Eric and me since we lost weight. “You can see them here.”:http://www.momathome.com/misc/weightloss/ It’s one of those pages that I haven’t gotten around to bringing into Movable Type yet.

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