Can Quick Weight Loss Programs Work With Low Carb Diets

Posted by Quick Weight Loss Coach on May 7th, 2008 at 11:04pm

Low-carb diets became popular in the 1960s and 1970s, featured in books like The Stillman Diet, The Scarsdale Diet, The Drinking Man’s Diet, and of course. Dr. Atkins, the all-time bestseller. Though there are differences between them, these quick weight loss diets all restrict carbohydrates more or less drastically and emphasize protein (to maintain lean body mass) and fat.

The diets were all wildly successful, partly because they were fun and satisfying and especially because they worked. (Some, in fact, are still in print.) They have a counterpart in England in the work of Dr. John Yudkin, a true pioneer in the field whose popular books on “slimming” were never published in this country. Yudkin’s regimens were based not on hard science (because no one understood why they worked) but on Brillat-Savarin’s system - simple observation.

For years it was a diet commonplace to eschew bread, potatoes, and dessert and stop worrying about calories. In the 1980s, around the time Dr. Dean Ornish began to publish his work on heart disease and the minimal-fat diet, however, the thinking moved in a new direction.

Protein and fat became suspect, and the low-carb diets were seen as dangerous - bad for the kidneys and bad for the blood vessels. Though there are now plenty of studies to refute these allegations, the low-carb diets fell into disfavor and the low-fat regimen won the official endorsement of the government, not to mention the media.

Suddenly there were “bad” foods that could kill you - eggs, butter, red meat - and forget the salt. When cholesterol hysteria hit hard, we chose margarine. Entire industries sprang up around these dietary principles, and some extraordinary careers were made touting them. But little by little the program has begun to fall apart.

In the spring of 1996 Dr. Walter Willett of Harvard, a leading researcher in the field, remarked at the Second international Conference on fats and oil Consumption in Health and Disease that it was time for the scientific community to acknowledge that the results of the low-fat prescription have been a disappointment. According to the latest government statistics, for the first time, more than half the American population is overweight, and extreme obesity has doubled in the last ten years — the era of low-fat.

Dr. Tun Byers of the University of Colorado says, “It’s been clear for several years that Americans are getting fatter, and it’s accelerating.”

Meanwhile, the overemphasis on cholesterol has begun to be corrected, and even the reputation of much-maligned eggs has been rehabilitated - thanks to discoveries that they don’t have as much cholesterol as was originally thought.

Low carb diets do still have an important role to play in any quick weight loss program, but be carefull not to cut out good carbs like veggies and slow release carbs like oats.

Tags: cholesterol, low carb diet