Dr. Atkins Views on Low-Carb Sustainability

Just how sustainable is a low-carb diet?
Here is Dr. Atkins perspective.

As most of you know, I’m extremely partial to the 1972 and 1992 versions of The Atkins Nutritional Approach. In my personal experience, Old-School Atkins works much better than the newest version called Atkins 20.

The 72 version was based on Dr. Atkins own experiences following a ketogenic diet and a few initial clinical observations when he tested his own results on his patients.

The original 92 version (the first edition) was based on the feedback that he got from his patients.

The media, and even medical-based websites, often claim that a low-carb diet is not sustainable, and from the perspective of A New Atkins for a New You or Atkins 20, 40, and 100, they might just be right.

With thousands of people trying to use carbohydrate-restricted diets to manage their weight, why are so few making it all the way to goal?

And if the Atkins Diet works as advertised, why does Atkins Nutritionals keep changing it?

Are the Changes to the Atkins Diet to Blame for Its Non-Sustainability?

Dr. Atkins' early patients eventually admitted that they were cheating on the original Atkins Diet. Not by eating carbs, but by adding vegetables to their meals.

These patients lost weight easily eating more vegetables than just a skimpy salad, so Atkins decided it was okay to add 2/3 cup of cooked vegetables to his initial Induction Plan.

Because of that addition, he lengthened Induction from one week to two.

The second edition of Atkins 92, printed around 1999, was exactly the same as the 1992 version except for a one-line comment Atkins made about how he couldn’t find anything unreasonable about deducting soluble fiber grams from the total carbohydrate count.

Soluble fiber attracts water and turns into a sort of gel during the digestion process. It's found in the psyllium husks that Dr. Atkins was recommending for Induction during that time.

This was the main reason why Atkins allowed this exception to the carbohydrate rule. He knew that the body didn't process psyllium husks in the same way that it processes other types of carbs.

Other low-carb foods that contain soluble fiber include:

• oat bran
• nuts and seeds
• soybeans

So the list of foods that you could initially deduct the fiber from was quite small.

Insoluble fiber, the type of fiber that Dr. Atkins didn't allow you to deduct in 1999, adds bulk and passes quickly through the digestion process. This type of fiber is found in vegetables and whole grains.

Many people did not understand the difference between soluble and insoluble fiber, especially since the Protein Power Life Plan was recommending dieters not count any type of fiber in their ketogenic foods at all.

Dr. Eades, the author of the plan, explained that fiber was converted in the colon to a small amount of fat, and since fats are carb free, the fiber in your food should be free, too.

The low-carb community started making the conversion to net carbs long before 2002, even though that wasn't what the Atkins Diet allowed.

The original Atkins Diets were also not the super-sized, narrow-minded, high-fat, and low-carb products plan the nutritional approach has evolved into today, either.

It was extremely individual.

There was no Carbohydrate Ladder and no one telling us what we should or shouldn't add to our diets.

In fact, the chapter on Real Life published in 1992 showed you how to add baked potatoes to your diet. Not sweet potatoes -- but real honest-to-goodness real Irish potatoes.

In addition, the sugar substitutes available at that time were terrible, so no one confronted anyone else for eating a small amount of cane sugar instead.

What most people did back then was multiply the carbohydrates in the sugar by two to make up for the insulin response to the pure fructose and glucose they were getting. You just ate half as much.

There was no low-carb products, no wheat-protein saturated recipes, and no genetically-modified corn being used to create maltodextrin, sugar alcohols, and ethanol. Corn starch wasn't used to process and package meats and vegetables yet.

The Atkins Diet was quite sustainable. It worked, and it worked well.

Why is Atkins Not Sustainable Today?

So what happened?

Why don’t we have hundreds and thousands of dieters reaching their weight-loss goals every year?

Why has Atkins and other low-carb diets become unsustainable?

Food allergies and sensitivities, plus leaky gut syndrome, are definitely a large part of the problem, but there’s more going on than just food and chemical intolerance.

Since this problem hits extremely close to home for me, I started looking at Dr. Atkins original diet, searching for clues on sustainability. I read about how Dr. Atkins discovered and created his own original diet.

I listened to the folks who were testing their blood ketone levels and what they had to say about the state of ketosis being a direct relationship between protein, fat, and carbohydrate consumption.

I also filled out the JUDD calculator to see if a calorie-cycling diet was even possible for someone like me.

Atkins 72 was a derivative of Dr. Bloom's
Bacon-and-Egg short-term experiment.

Granted, none of that addresses the problem of sustainability, but research has always been an activity I enjoy. Plus, I never know where I will find the piece of the puzzle I’m searching for.

Once I had my brain wrapped around the implications and consequences of using the latest Nutritional Ketosis theory, and I discovered that JUDD was completely unrealistic (Down Day for me would be 350 calories, and Up Day only 1450), I decided to move forward in my reading.

Dr. Atkins Views On Sustainability - Why Are We Still Fat?

Dr. Atkins had lofty ideals.

His dream was to bring low-carb dieting to the world at large. He wanted to:

• correct your metabolic issues
• change your outlook on life
• and improve your life for the better

To do that, he designed a plentiful, palatable, and varied way of eating. I believe that’s what most of us are searching for too: A diet we can live with for the rest of our lives. A diet that allows us to go out and actually LIVE our lives.

Unfortunately, that’s not what low-carb eating has evolved into today.

• So how did we travel so far away from Dr. Atkins’ intent?
• How did we get from palatable and varied to something that’s a one-size-fits-all approach?
• Did Atkins actually intend for his diet to be a high calorie, high fat, and very low-carb diet?

“I quite deliberately opened up Bloom’s test diet . . . His was a three-day diet," Dr. Atkins wrote. 

"And, as I said earlier, it was designed merely to observe the metabolic effect of a zero carbohydrate diet. It was bacon and eggs, meat and salad, period. This was his purpose – fine for a short-term experimental diet.”

But not fine for a long-term alternative lifestyle.

I can easily agree with this because this is exactly the problem I’m having constructing a reasonable carbohydrate-restricted diet that fits into my current health problems and restrictions.

This is also why the HCG diet was not sustainable for me.

Interestingly enough, in the 70s, Dr. Atkins considered a zero carb or very low-carb diet unsustainable for most individuals, and yet a majority of low-carbers tell those who are struggling to make the diet work to lower their carbs and up their fat.

That wasn't the solution in 1972, and it is not the answer to the problem today.

The diet Atkins started with, what we would call Atkins Induction, a biological zero-carb diet, was simply a three-day test. This type of very low-carb, high-fat meal plan wasn’t a way of living.

Bacon and eggs, meat and salad is far too restrictive for most people to tolerate for very long. It can get you into ketosis quickly, sure, but it wasn’t something that Atkins could enjoy and stick with for the rest of his life.

He knew that.

Over the past few years, I've discovered that it isn’t something I can stick with either, and ditto for the dozens of individuals who fall away from low-carb communities, boards, and egroups.

Try eating nothing but chicken breast and frozen broccoli spears for more than a couple of days, and you’ll see what I mean.

What Dr. Atkins was searching for was a diet he could live with and enjoy for the rest of his life.

Dr. Atkins Changed Bloom's 3-Day Diet to be Sustainable

Dr. Atkins spent a great deal of time adding various foods to the three-day diet. The only fats in that three-day test was a little oil-and-vinegar dressing for the green salad, plus whatever natural fats came with the eggs, bacon, and other meat.

“I added mayonnaise, butter, and the other fats I loved. I also added the concept of gradually adding carbohydrates until the break-off point – the Critical Carbohydrate Level – is reached.”

This is what makes The Atkins Diet special.

This is what makes Atkins unique, and it’s what makes it work long-term.

At its very essence, returning carbs to your diet is what makes a low-carb diet sustainable.

Slowly add your favorite carbohydrates back into your diet, in five to eight gram portions, until you reach the point where you stop losing weight.

Now, how hard is that?

This slow addition gives you the added benefit of discovering unknown food intolerance, provided you add your foods back one at a time instead of as an entire group, and you evaluate the results.

Once you know how your body reacts to particular foods, as well as carbohydrates in general, you can dial the carbs back down to where you’re losing weight again at a reasonable pace.

But What is a Reasonable Weight-Loss Pace?

To Atkins, a reasonable weight-loss pace was about five carbohydrates below the level that causes your weight to stall.
In other words, 5 grams of carbohydrate below maintenance!

Since Dr. Atkins believed people should enjoy dieting, and live their lives joyfully while doing so, he wasn’t in a rush to see the pounds drop off quickly. He was designing a change in lifestyle, so it didn't matter how fast the weight came off.

In fact, the original Atkins Diet was purposely designed to take the weight off SLOWLY.

This desperate need to get the weight off right now, or else, is an entirely new mindset that low-carb dieters have invented today.

Dr. Atkins View on Dietary Fats

Dr. Atkins didn't eat Ribeyes with lots of fat
He ate reasonably lean meat

Dr. Atkins view on the purpose for dietary fats in the diet was drastically different from what is preached today, as well:

“It makes all of the difference in the world, psychologically, to be able to eat luxuriously and substantially on a diet –“

The real reason fats were included in the Atkins Diet at all was only because of the psychological lift they give you, and not because they are physically essential to your health in large amounts, as so many low carbers believe.

Atkins view was that dietary fats make the diet sustainable because Dr. Atkins equated enjoyment with sustainability.

Dr. Atkins next explained what he meant by luxurious eating:

“to have heavy cream in one’s coffee, whipped cream on berries, mayonnaise, fried foods, fatty meats such as pastrami and pate, butter sauces –“

• heavy cream
• whipped cream topping
• mayonnaise in your tuna or chicken salad
• fried foods
• fatty meats, such as pastrami or pate
• butter sauces

In addition, he thought desserts were especially important because they helped to keep you on plan.

Notice that Atkins defined fatty meats as pastrami and pate, which are not very fatty by today’s standards.

In the 1970s, luxurious eating wasn’t a 16-ounce Rib Eye with a huge slice of cheesecake for dessert. It was a serving of reasonably lean London Broil or Top Sirloin with a sliver of cheesecake.

Low Carb Is Not a Short-Term Solution

Although the majority of low carbers have adopted the mantra of:

“This isn’t a diet; it’s a way of life,”

Most of them don’t actually believe that. Nor do they live their lives that way.

At least, that isn’t the way they approach dieting.

From what I’ve seen and heard over the past several years, most people approach a low-carb diet from a short-term perspective.

People want quick weight loss right now and think that once they get close to goal weight, they’ll be able to adjust their carbohydrates and go back to their old eating style.

NOT HAPPENING!

The trouble with that line of thinking is that for most folks, they never make it that close to goal because in an effort to survive, the body will always adapt to drastic ways of eating.

Metabolism slows down, thyroid levels drop, and the body will do whatever it has to do to survive.

It's goal is equilibrium.

It doesn't like it when energy going out doesn't coincide with energy coming in, so it will adapt and continue to adapt until its mission is fulfilled.

This adaption includes adapting to your current carbohydrate level.

What many forget, or don’t want to believe, is that a low-carb diet produces the same type of physical and mental survival responses in the body that starvation does.

While ancient ancestors might not have been exposed to our modern world of food manufacturing practices and plenty, and were therefore healthier, our bodies certainly have!

The body will adapt to whatever type of food you give it. If it doesn’t adapt, then disease and other health problems result.

“This isn’t a short-term approach; it’s a lifelong way of eating. You’ll end up with a diet that’s as personal to you as a pair of contact lenses.”

I just love that line!

This is exactly what happens when you follow the Atkins program as originally designed. You end up with something that’s personal, unique, and fits your metabolism and health issues.

Most People are NOT Doing Atkins

The sad thing I came to realize while doing this research was that most people are not doing Atkins.

They are doing something else.

If something else is working for you, that’s fine, but you need to make sure that if you are not doing Atkins, that you don’t fall into the trap of later on claiming that The Atkins Diet doesn’t work.

You can’t honestly say that Atkins failed if you have never given the actual Atkins Diet a fair trial.

If you follow the Atkins protocol, there is no end to the diet’s flexibility. When you finish the Induction phase, you begin adding back foods you’ve been missing. It’s those missing foods that help to keep the diet satisfying and sustainable.

In fact, in 1992, dieters were given the option of either doing Induction as Dr. Atkins laid it out in that book or tossing out his ideas and eating anything you wanted – provided you kept to 20 full carbs per day, or less.

The Key to Low-Carb Sustainability

Today, the word coming from low-carb circles is that large amounts of dietary fats are necessary for health. Even those with serious fat-malabsorption issues get told that not eating enough fat is the reason why Atkins stopped working.

Others claim you need to follow the carbohydrate ladder laid out in 2002. We’re told to eat a lot of calories per day to stay out of starvation mode, and we’re told to eat lots of vegetables because they are somehow magic to the low-carb process.

None of that is true.

Not only does it go against Dr. Atkins’ views, but those types of demands work to make the diet itself completely unsustainable.

Why?

Because when you follow what appeals to and works for someone else, you often wind up eliminating your own comfort foods. According to Dr. Atkins, your personal comfort foods are the secret ingredient that makes a diet sustainable!