If you’re already doing Atkins, or purchased this book because you’re pretty much convinced that controlling your carbs is effective for weight control, right on! But if that’s your only reason for doing Atkins, you’re not seeing the forest for the trees. Losing weight makes you look better and feel better about yourself, but even more important than these compelling motivators is attaining—and then maintaining—health. That’s what Atkins for life is really all about. Weight and health are two sides of the same coin.
Most people start doing Atkins for weight loss but wind up staying with the program because they experience a life-altering bonus: better health and a sense of well-being. Now, with increasing research supporting the benefits of controlled carbohydrate nutrition, more and more people are coming to Atkins for health reasons. To turn that around, even if you’re not overweight, if you’re consuming the standard American diet (SAD) jam-packed with white flour, sugar, and other junk foods, you may have some serious health problems—of which you may or may not be aware. And if you do have a tendency to gain weight, you have a double reason to control your carbohydrate intake. Carrying around extra pounds and putting your glucose and insulin supplies into overdrive are both serious health risks, which is why Atkins is not merely a weight-loss program. In fact, you might go so far as to say that using Atkins only to lose weight, and then going back to your old eating habits—which will cause you to gain weight again—is a waste of time and potentially harmful, to boot. On the other hand, doing Atkins for a lifetime will enhance your chances of living longer and enjoying good health.
Let’s take a closer look at how cutting down on carbs can improve some common health problems.
Because Atkins allows you to consume dietary fat, many people worry that it will raise their cholesterol levels. Actually, it will—but in a highly beneficial way. That’s because doing Atkins will almost certainly raise your HDL (“good”) cholesterol; at the same time, your triglycéride (TG) level will probably drop sharply. This is an excellent outcome because high TGs and low HDL are considered a very dangerous combination, one that means a heart attack or stroke may well be in your not-too-distant future. Most people also experience a drop in LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol. It is possible that a small percentage of you will see your LDL level rise slightly.
Recent research points to the possibility that the type of LDL that increases on Atkins is the low-risk variety of LDL (large, fluffy LDL particles). This slight increase in LDL is more than offset by the improvement in other numbers, but it may raise your total cholesterol number, which can be slightly misleading.
For a large percentage of adults in the United States, low-fat dieting may be a serious risk to cardiovascular health. That’s because it has recently been found that a certain subset of the population has a genetic predisposition to a type of LDL cholesterol that means low-fat dieting could greatly increase cardiovascular risk. What happens is that when this subset of individuals eats a low-fat diet, their bodies convert the large, fluffy kind of LDL cholesterol, which is not dangerous, into the small, dense kind of LDL that is dangerous.1 (Moreover, a related study showed that saturated fat intake increased large, fluffy LDLs and lowered small, dense ones in healthy men.2) Since there is no easy way to know which subset you fall into, why would you take such a chance?
If you’re overweight or have struggled with your weight in the past, chances are you’re extremely sensitive to carbohydrates. Small amounts of carbs can make you produce large amounts of insulin. That’s probably what originally helped make you gain weight—and that’s why controlling carb intake helps you drop pounds so easily. But carbohydrate sensitivity has a darker side than mere weight gain. As explained in chapter 1, for you, eating excess carbs puts you on a blood-sugar roller coaster. When you’re on the down side of the ride, you feel tired, shaky, depressed, and unable to think clearly, and crave your next carb fix. But when you control your carb intake, your fluctuating or unstable blood sugar stabilizes quickly and you avoid low blood glucose levels—a condition called hypoglycemia. Why? Because when you don’t feed your body heavy doses of sugars and starches, you don’t produce big swings in your blood sugar. Your energy level stays constant, your blood sugar stops its wild ride, and it doesn’t interfere with maintaining your weight. What’s more, you may have put the brakes on the almost inevitable descent into diabetes that comes after years of unstable blood sugar.
Obesity and diabetes are clearly related. If you’ve come to Atkins because you’ve already developed Type 2 diabetes, you’ll find that controlling your carbs will put you in control of your diabetes as well. You’re probably diabetic because you’re overweight or you are overweight because you’re insulin resistant. (If you’re addicted to sugar, you are tempting fate in terms of developing diabetes.) The insulin resistance that causes diabetes (along with many of the medications usually prescribed to treat diabetes) makes it very difficult to lose weight. Insulin resistance occurs when the body becomes desensitized to insulin, meaning that the transport of glucose to the cells for storage is disturbed. The pancreas then releases additional insulin, which becomes increasingly ineffective over time.
By trimming carbs from your diet, you can break out of the insulin/weight trap, because processing fewer carbs means less insulin in your blood and less fat storage. As you slim down, the insulin resistance of diabetes usually lessens and your blood sugar levels improve, often to the point where your doctor may determine that you no longer need glucose-lowering drugs—or at the very least, you can reduce your dosage. You’ll feel better and have more energy—and the many health problems related to diabetes, such as high cholesterol and high blood pressure, improve.
Hypertension, or high blood pressure (meaning more than 140/90), is the flip side of the blood-sugar coin. If you have high blood pressure, the chances are excellent that you will soon also have high blood sugar—if you don’t have it already. The reverse is also true: If you have high blood sugar from insulin resistance, you very likely will also have, or will soon develop, high blood pressure. Doing Atkins helps bring your blood pressure down in two ways. First, simply losing weight can lower blood pressure. Even better, cutting down on carbohydrates helps the underlying insulin resistance and high blood sugar that are a big part of why you have high blood pressure.
There’s an additional benefit if you’re among the people with high blood pressure who are also sensitive to sodium (salt): You eat a lot less salt when you do Atkins. That’s because about 75 percent of the salt most people eat comes from processed foods and salty snacks—and on Atkins you won’t be eating those foods. (Salt-sensitive people may need to stay away from even low carb foods with high salt contents.) Moreover, reducing your insulin level contributes to reduction in water retention, which results in a lower sodium level.
Many digestive problems, such as gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD, better known as severe heartburn), gallstones, diverticulitis (a painful colon problem), gas, and bloating improve significantly when you start controlling carbohydrates. If you have reflux problems or gallstones, for instance, your doctor may have recommended a low-fat diet. In fact, there’s no evidence that a high-fat diet causes GERD or gallstones and no evidence has been found to link fat intake with gallbladder disease.3 Likewise, cutting fat in the diet doesn’t reduce GERD symptoms or help prevent gallstone attacks. Cutting carbs, however, does seem to help reduce symptoms. Colon problems often improve markedly on a controlled carbohydrate regimen. That’s, in part, because Atkins replaces highly refined, low-fiber carbohydrates with salad greens, fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, and whole grains. These foods are high in fiber—and a high-fiber diet is a natural and very effective treatment for diverticulitis and constipation. (Some people initially experience constipation in the Induction phase of Atkins, but supplementing with fiber until more vegetables are added back should alleviate any problems.) If you have any bowel problems consult with your physician, who may recommend tests. Numerous scientific studies have shown that overall, people who eat a high-fiber diet have lower cholesterol levels and less incidence of heart disease than those who eat a low-fiber diet. They may also be less likely to get colon cancer, although the evidence is less clear.
Food Allergies
Headaches, abdominal pains, asthma, eczema and other rashes, and other reactions can signal sensitivities to certain foods. Many of the foods that most commonly provoke an allergic reaction are high carbohydrate foods such as corn, wheat, rye, oats, peanuts, milk, chocolate, and white potatoes, all of which are eliminated during the Induction phase of Atkins. If symptoms disappear until a specific food is reintroduced, it is pretty clear that this food is an allergen. Other foods, to which people are often sensitive but that can be eaten while doing Atkins from the start, include shellfish, mushrooms, cheese, soy, and members of the nightshade family (as is the potato), specifically tomatoes, eggplant, bell peppers, and other peppers. If you were not aware of being sensitive to one of these foods, doing Atkins will have allowed you to become aware of the sensitivity when you reintroduce it to your diet. This process is referred to as “elimination and challenge” by health care professionals, and unlike costly allergy tests, costs nothing. Although the above foods are allowed in Lifetime Maintenance, if you are highly sensitive to any of them, eliminate them altogether.
Somewhere between 6 and 10 percent of all women between the ages of twenty to forty have polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a hormonal imbalance that causes painful, irregular menstruation, infertility, weight gain, excess body hair, and even symptoms of diabetes. PCOS can be hard to diagnose. Even though there is no cure for it, it is probable that abnormal insulin production and/or insulin resistance play an important role in causing PCOS—researchers don’t know for sure. What we do know is that a controlled carbohydrate program can help keep PCOS symptoms under control and help its sufferers avoid long-term complications.
As women (and some men) age, they need to take steps to avoid osteoporosis, the condition in which bones become thin, brittle, and prone to breakage. There have been charges that the amount of protein in the Atkins program causes bone-thinning calcium loss. In fact, numerous solid studies show the opposite is true: The more protein you have in your diet, the less likely you are to experience a bone fracture as you age.4–8
Despite these impressive health benefits of moderating carbohydrate intake, chances are that at least one of the low-fat worshipers has told you that the only way to trim down is by cutting out most fat and counting calories. These same people also worship at the base of the Food Guide Pyramid, where they blithely devour white flour and other high carbohydrate foods. Don’t let them influence you. Reading this book will soon help you understand why controlling your carb intake is more effective for most than obsessing about calories and fat. To add some ammunition to your arsenal for a friendly dialogue with your calorie-conscious cohorts, let’s review the facts on low-fat versus controlled carb approaches to weight control. We prefer to use the term controlled rather than low because the right amount of carbs varies widely from person to person; for some fortunate individuals, it doesn’t even need to be all that low.
The most noticeable difference between a program that limits fat and one that limits carbs is a no-brainer: hunger. Low-fat diets require that you suffer some degree of deprivation. Let’s face it: Salads (dressing on the side, please) and bagels (minus the butter or a schmear of cream cheese) don’t make for highly satiating meals. Plus, these high carb foods are digested relatively quickly, so your stomach empties much sooner than when you eat foods containing fat, which digests more slowly. You already know about the second issue: blood-sugar spikes, and nosedives, resulting in more hunger. So while you may lose weight initially on a low-fat diet while you restrict your calories, over the long run you’re almost bound to gain it back because we humans just don’t like to go hungry. On the other hand, on a controlled carbohydrate eating plan, which allows you to fill up on satiating proteins and fats and select the carbohydrates that don’t send your blood sugar soaring, hunger need not be a problem.
Another reason that controlling carbs works better is that most people see results right away. On a low-fat diet, the pounds come off slowly, so it’s hard to stay motivated. When you strictly limit carbs while enjoying sufficient protein and fat, as you do in Induction, your body goes into fat-burning mode (called lipolysis/ketosis). What better motivator is there than stepping on the scale after a week and finding yourself several pounds lighter? Or zipping into a pair of pants a whole size smaller? Such visible results help people stick with the program and reach their goals. So instead of feeling deprived, you feel proud of your accomplishment, which, in turn, strengthens your commitment.
Only seven years out of high school, Ralph Drake, 6 feet 1 inch tall, weighed close to 300 pounds and looked as if he were traveling the same road as his father, who had died at the age of forty-nine of a heart attack. After being unable to adhere to a calorie-restricted diet, Ralph turned to Atkins, quickly dropping the weight, as well as finding that after being asthmatic all his life, he was now breathing normally.
Years later, after a divorce, Ralph’s weight seesawed back and forth, and he suffered a severe asthma attack that put him in intensive care. “The only way to control my breathing was through massive amounts of steroids,” recalls Ralph. “One of the side effects was that I started eating everything in sight.” His weight climbed to 280 pounds again and he was waking up in the night short of breath and with heart palpitations.
A deejay, on April 1, 2000, Ralph announced to his listeners that he was going back to doing Atkins, he says, “because I didn’t want to die. As the weight fell off, I felt like a jerk for ever letting myself slide.” Now a trim 175 pounds, forty-nine-year-old Ralph is in Lifetime Maintenance, consuming less than 100 grams of carbs a day. He has no problems with asthma. His blood pressure has gone from 110/70 to 92/56, which his doctor says is fine. His LDL cholesterol has dropped from 170 to 118, his total cholesterol from 230 to 172, and his triglycérides from 232 to 69. Newly married and with twin babies, Ralph has everything to live for.
Ralph is only one of countless Atkins followers who enjoyed the two sides of the weight-loss/health improvement coin. Thirty-eight-year-old Luann Lockhart is another success story. After a hysterectomy at thirty-two, her struggle with her weight began—compounded by her decision to quit smoking. Despite walking three miles a day and following a low-fat diet, she reached 211 pounds—she is 5 feet 4 inches tall—and her total cholesterol was hovering at 250. She also suffered from esophageal reflux and colon problems for which she was taking medication. After reading Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution, Luann realized that she was addicted to carbohydrates. Although her doctor was not familiar with the program, he was concerned enough about her health that he was willing to give Luann his blessing, so long as she returned every three months for a checkup. After two weeks on Induction, Luann had shed 12 pounds; at the one-month point, she was able to eliminate her pills for her gastric problems. Over nine months Luann lost 75 pounds to reach her goal weight of 136. “Now that the weight is off, I feel absolutely wonderful,” says Luann. “I have tons of energy and my health problems have disappeared. My cholesterol is down to 175, my blood pressure is 92 over 50, and I have enough energy to referee volleyball and keep up with my seventeen-year-old daughter.” But the benefits don’t stop there. “People look at me differently,” she adds. “Even though my daughter never said anything about it, I could tell that having a heavy mother embarrassed her. Now she’s proud of me. In fact, when we go out together, people think we’re sisters!”
The Faulty Food Guide Pyramid
Frequently you may find that outside forces—whether friends, nutrition “experts,” or media reports—challenge your way of eating. Don’t let commonly accepted misconceptions about nutrition mess with your new mindset. The all-powerful and omnipresent Food Guide Pyramid, created by the United States Department of Agriculture in 1992, represents one of the worst nutritional blunders in our nation’s history. It promotes a high carbohydrate diet, which an increasing number of mainstream medical experts acknowledge may contribute to an increased risk of health problems and certain chronic diseases. Furthermore, the pyramid advises us to eat liberally—six to eleven servings a day—of “bread, cereal, rice, and pasta,” without making any distinction, for example, between wild rice and a slice of Wonder bread or whole oats and Cocoa Puffs! The other major problem with the pyramid is that it lumps fats together at the top (with sweets), in the “use sparingly” area, making no distinction between good fats such as olive oil, and bad fats such as the hydrogenated vegetable oil found in most commercially prepared foods.
We give the pyramid a unanimous thumbs-down and encourage you to look for nutrition guidance elsewhere—starting right here, of course. The pyramid is currently scheduled for revision and one can only hope that the increasing dialogue about excessive carbohydrate intake and awareness of the benefits of many fats will be reflected in a new pyramid (or whatever other shape) that more clearly reflects good nutritional principles. If motivation is lacking, our government “experts” need only look at the outrageous twin epidemics of obesity and diabetes, what we’ve dubbed diabesity, facing this country today.
We are not alone in calling for a revised food pyramid. According to the Alternative Healthy Eating Index (A.H.E.I.), guidelines developed by a team at the Harvard University School of Public Health, a few simple changes to the federal government’s “Dietary Guidelines for Americans” could further reduce the risk of major chronic diseases. Its recommendations are based on studies on 150,000 men and women enrolled in the “Health Professionals’ Follow-Up Study” and the “Nurses’ Health Study,” who filled out detailed lists of their food choices. Researchers then looked at the diseases these individuals got over a fifteen-year period. For example, instead of reducing all fats, the A.H.E.I, guidelines recommend a lower intake of trans fats, which come primarily from margarine and vegetable shortening. They also note that too much emphasis has been placed on carbohydrates. Moreover, nutrient-dense carbohydrates such as broccoli should be stressed and potatoes, which are generally consumed in the form of french fries, should be de-emphasized. Also recommended are one serving a day of nuts and soy protein, moderate alcohol consumption, and multivitamin supplements.
As we said previously, one of the reasons people stick with Atkins is that they are not ravenous all the time—a common complaint on calorie-restricted diets. Moreover, when you are in the Lifetime Maintenance phase of Atkins, there are few truly forbidden foods. Nutritionally worthless junk foods such as candy and sugary soft drinks are banished forever, of course, but just about everything else is permitted. You can even eat some bread and pasta—but only if they are made from 100-percent unrefined whole grains—if you limit the portions to the amounts that keep you from gaining weight. That won’t be hard to do. In fact, once you’ve been doing Atkins for a few months, your taste for high carb foods may diminish considerably. Cookies and other sugary foods may be far too sweet for your taste and small portions of carbohydrates such as unrefined whole-grain bread or breakfast cereals, brown rice, and sweet potatoes should quickly satisfy you. It all boils down to one essential fact: Virtually the only way you will maintain a way of eating—and by extension, also maintain your goal weight—is if the food you can eat is enjoyable and the quantities are ample enough to keep you from being hungry. As you increase the amount of carbohydrate foods in your diet, you will also learn to distinguish between those that do and don’t cause swings in blood sugar that can lead to hunger. By doing Atkins correctly, you will experience satisfying food in sufficient quantities to make overwhelming cravings a thing of the past.
Some people will tell you that you don’t have to exercise to be successful doing Atkins for life. They couldn’t be more wrong. Exercise is a vital component of any healthy lifestyle and is extremely valuable for permanent weight control. First, as you should know, whether or not you exercise has a dramatic impact on your health. Regular physical activity—meaning an hour a day—reduces your risk factors for virtually all of the most common killer diseases. Second, it does amazing things for people trying to lose or maintain their weight. Burning calories is the obvious one, but exercise also does something much less obvious: It increases your body’s ratio of lean muscle to fat. And the more muscle mass you have, the more calories you burn at rest. So not only does exercise burn away fat while you’re pumping or peddling, it also cranks up the speed at which your metabolism idles.
James Guilbeaux, who lost 100 pounds doing Atkins, explains that his weight loss really speeded up when he began the simple routine of walking on his lunch hour. “It helped relieve my stress and burn off the fat,” he says. Later, he discovered that he could blast off a weight-loss plateau by changing the type of exercise he was doing. If he was walking every day when his weight loss stalled, he’d switch to biking, and the fat burning would kick back into gear. Today, he keeps his weight under control by not going above 70 grams of carbs each day. That’s right: As Guilbeaux has learned, the other great benefit of stepping up your exercise program is that it will likely raise your ACE. In other words, you can eat more carbs every day without gaining weight!
Make sure you include at least two kinds of exercise in your regimen. One should be the aerobic kind, which works your heart and lungs and increases endurance. The other should be anaerobic, which strengthens your muscles. Aerobic exercise includes brisk walking, jogging, swimming, and biking. Anaerobic is weight-bearing exercise, which could be anything from weight lifting in a gym to doing arm lifts with soup cans at home. Both aerobic and anaerobic forms of exercise have been found to be extremely important for your health as well as for maintaining a healthy weight. It is also wonderful to be “addicted” to an activity such as dancing or tennis.
The produce we eat today contains lower levels of many nutrients than it did fifty years ago. Our soil is depleted from overharvesting, and fruits and vegetables shipped from hundreds or even thousands of miles away have lost a significant amount of nutrient value by the time they reach your grocery cart. Finally, some nutrients are lost when food is cooked. So no matter what dietary approach you follow, it is almost certain that your food is deficient in some of the nutrients you assume it contains. Also, there’s the issue of our current diet: We Americans eat a lot of junk.
The Atkins Nutritional Approach™ includes the use of supplements for several reasons. During the Induction phase of Atkins, supplements are extremely important to restore those nutrients lost during your previous way of eating. On the standard American diet (SAD) it is easy to fall short of your nutritional requirements, especially fiber. Environmental toxins, depleted soil, and the everyday stresses of contemporary life also argue for taking supplements as an insurance policy, no matter how conscientious you are about eating well. But even in the more liberal phases that follow Induction, everyone is strongly encouraged to take a daily multivitamin and mineral supplement—at the very least.
With the book you hold in your hands, you’re on your way to adapting Atkins to your own life—for the rest of your life. Pretty soon when you hear people call it the Atkins “diet,” you’ll hear yourself responding, “It’s really not a diet; it’s a way of life.” Atkins can help you lose weight if you’re overweight, improve your lipid profile and blood pressure, increase your energy, and reduce your risk of heart disease, diabetes, and many other life-threatening conditions. It can put an end to the myriad of symptoms caused by unstable blood sugar (hypoglycemia). It can also help you kick a food addiction or uncover a food allergy. Atkins is a healthier, more balanced way of eating and living. Let us be the first to congratulate you on your new lifestyle!
In the next chapter, we’ll explore the intricacies of carbohydrates and learn how to tell the difference between those full of nutrients and therefore less apt to impact your blood sugar and those that you should avoid.
How do you feel most of the time? Check all that apply.
Are you low in energy or does your energy level fluctuate widely throughout the day?
Do you have trouble getting a good night’s sleep?
Are you hungry again a few hours after eating a meal?
Does even mild exertion leave you short of breath?
Do you suffer from mood swings?
Do you get irritable, tired, or light-headed when hungry?
Do you sometimes have trouble concentrating?
Are you tired even after 8 hours of sleep?
Are you depressed?
Do your joints ache?
Do you catch colds and other bugs easily?
Do you have any of these conditions?
High cholesterol
High triglycérides
High blood pressure
High blood sugar
High insulin levels
Unstable or low blood sugar (hypoglycemia)
Prediabetes
Type 2 diabetes
Gastric disturbances, acid reflux, bloating, flatulence, constipation, or diarrhea
Food allergies/sensitivities
ANSWERS:
If you answered yes to more than a few of these questions, it is likely that you will see improvements or disappearance of these symptoms after following the Atkins program for several months.
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you should see improvements in the clinical parameters reflecting these conditions after several months. Seeing a doctor who understands complementary medicine will help you track your progress.
At the age of thirty-two, April Greer was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. But after only three months doing Atkins, her blood sugar level returned to normal. And after six months, she had dropped 99 pounds.
There are three things I do every morning. First, I weigh myself. Next, I measure my waist, hips, and thighs. Last, I do my “fitting.” I try on clothes one size smaller than my current size, checking to see how far I’ve got to go to button that waist or fit sleekly into that skirt.
Not too long ago, I would have added “check blood sugar” to that list. But no more. Not since I started doing Atkins. Controlling my carb intake has helped bring my blood sugar level into a normal range. A year ago it had been so high that I had hurtled headfirst into Type 2 diabetes. I was able to lower my blood sugar without medication, to the astonishment of my doctor, coworkers, and family. As a wonderful side effect, I lost weight faster than I could keep track of it! I’ve now lost a total of 99 pounds, weighing in at 138 pounds.
My weight-loss goal is still to lose another 8 pounds. I’ve already reached my goal of optimum health, of enhancing the likelihood of long life filled with activity and the joys of family life. I’ve been released from living under a cloud of worry that I would someday lose my limbs, and ultimately my life, to diabetes. I know that I will be here for my two young sons for many, many years to come.
My wake-up call came in October 2001, when I went to the doctor for the umpteenth time. For two months, I had been back and forth to his office with either a yeast infection or a bladder infection. A blood test revealed an additional problem: “April, you’re a full-blown diabetic,” my doctor said.
Me a full-blown diabetic? I was thirty-two years old! But, after weighing about 120 pounds throughout my twenties, I then tipped the scale at 237 pounds. I was consuming all the junk food I could get my hands on: doughnuts (homemade, no less), cookies, candy bars, and soda pop. I’d go through a half-gallon of ice cream every other day! Two heaping plates of spaghetti, along with a couple of pieces of bread on the side, were a typical meal for me. I had tried many diets and couldn’t stick with a single one. I couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs without huffing and puffing. But this—diabetes—was more than I could take.
On November 1, 2001, I started the Induction phase of Atkins. The first week was hard; then, suddenly, my cravings for sweets vanished. I also started to feel a little more energetic. By February, I was down to 170 pounds. My bladder and yeast infections had disappeared and my blood sugar was in the normal range. I had improved completely without medication, and my doctor encouraged me to keep up the good work. “Get down to 140 pounds,” he said, “and don’t come back.” So I did.
Now, instead of sitting on the couch watching television, I play football with my sons, who are nine and six. I sprint up the stairs to my office every workday, instead of laboriously trekking up each step, holding my breath at the top so that my coworkers won’t notice that I can’t breathe. I swim, lift weights, and walk on a treadmill. I prefer to have several small meals instead of a real lunch, so I’ll snack on nuts and string cheese and later have a protein bar. A typical dinner is chicken and vegetables. I don’t prepare anything different for my family, so they are also reaping the benefits of eating healthy whole foods. Every night, I have a cup of decaf coffee with sweetener and delicious whole cream. It’s my little cup of heaven, my treat that helps get me through the evening without craving an after-dinner snack.
ACE: 60
Age: 33
Height: 5 feet 3 inches
Weight before: 237 pounds
Weight after: 138 pounds
Weight lost: 99 pounds
Blood sugar before: 208
Blood sugar after: 72
Started doing Atkins: November 2001
My family and many of my friends have followed in my footsteps. I ran into a former coworker recently. She was blown away by the new me. Plagued with weight problems herself, she was eager to learn how I had done it. Now, I’m coaching her, and it’s so exciting to watch somebody change her life for the better!
It’s especially wonderful when that somebody is right there in my mirror!
after a near-fatal heart attack at age thirty, police officer Matthew Holloway tried every diet in the book and failed to slim down. Now he is 78 pounds lighter and in the best shape of his life.
One day four years ago I was having chest pains, which, I knew from my training as a police officer, could signal cardiac problems. I was able to drive myself to the local hospital and then had a heart attack right there in the emergency room. Two days later, my doctors placed two stents in a blocked artery in my heart. It took ninety minutes just to get the artery open. After the surgery, according to the electrocardiogram, I “died.” Fortunately, the doctors were able to resuscitate me, so I’m here to tell my story. When I returned to work in the police department’s Gang and Violent Crime Unit, I had a new nickname, “Flatline,” for my EKG reading.
I had known there was a significant history of heart disease in my family, but I had ignored it until then. But after the heart attack, I was on doctor’s orders to lose weight and reduce my cholesterol level. I tried a low-sodium diet, a low-fat diet, and a low-calorie diet. Instead of losing weight, I ballooned from my pre-heart-attack weight of 275 to 290. Because I was so out of shape, I had to leave my unit for a desk job at the courthouse, which really depressed me. Not long after my transfer, I noticed a state trooper who had lost a significant amount of weight. “How?” I asked him, and he said he’d done Atkins. “Go buy Dr. Atkins’ book and read it!” he told me, so I followed his advice. It made sense to me to cut out sugar and processed food. I had my last high carb meal that Thanksgiving, a little more than a year after my heart attack. It took about three and a half weeks for me to start losing weight, but within two and a half months I had shed 60 pounds. Once the weight started to come off, I felt like I could exercise again. (I had been athletic and even played college football, but had stopped working out when I gained weight.) Now I run two to four miles and lift weights for forty-five minutes, five days a week, on my lunch break. I can’t believe I now have a 36-inch waist. That’s pretty good for a 6-foot 2-inch guy!
A typical breakfast for me is sausage and eggs. For lunch I might eat a chefs salad with ranch dressing. Dinner is usually chicken or steak with green beans. My favorite snack is sharp cheddar cheese. The key to my success is giving up side dishes like biscuits, french fries, and corn. I also take a multivitamin religiously every day. My LDL is down quite a bit. I still take heart medication, but I eventually want to be able to lower the dose. I also take Zocor for my cholesterol. High cholesterol runs in my family.
I have even converted my mother to the Atkins lifestyle. She lost 30 pounds in three months. People say that I’m like a kid because I’m so full of energy and that I look ten years younger. I went swimming recently and took off my shirt in public for the first time in thirteen years. My social life is better than I ever dreamed. And at work, I’m now on the SWAT team, doing the dangerous stuff I love. Doing Atkins saved my life and changed me completely. My outlook and self-esteem have never been better.
ACE: 50
Age: 34
Height: 6 feet 2 inches
Weight before: 290 pounds
Weight after: 212 pounds
Weight lost: 78 pounds
Total cholesterol before: 284
Total cholesterol after: 217
HDL before: 37
HDL after: 67
LDL before: 190
LDL after: 120
Triglycérides before: 150
Triglycérides after: 61
Started doing Atkins: November 1999