Diet - Atkins Diet: Weight Loss and Better Lipids Don’t Lie
The low carbohydrate Atkin’s diet invites controversy and skepticism.After all, how could a diet laden with fats, cheese, and red meat be good for you? How could it help you lose weight? How could it lower your blood cholesterol or your blood fats leading to those fatty cholesterol plaques?
It doesn’t make sense. It’s just plain counterintuitive. Besides, its creator, the late Doctor Robert Atkins, was an unabashed self-promoter, writing best selling diet books and building a company to make Atkins diet products. No self-respecting doctor toots his own horn. He relies on scientific evidence.
The evidence has just arrived. A July 17 New England Journal Report, in a “tightly controlled” 2 year, 23 author study of 322 overweight Israelis, compares low-carbohydrate, Mediterranean, and low-fat diets It finds Atkins dieters lost more weight, lowered their “bad” cholesterol (LDL cholesterol) more, boosted their “good” cholesterol (HDL cholesterol) more, reduced their triglycerides more, and dropped their ratio of total cholesterol to HDL cholesterol more.
How could this be? Well, figures don’t lie.
