The Adkins Diet and Eating Healthy

I wanted to write a bit about eating healthy while dieting. Admittedly, I'm no expert on the subject as I'm not a nutritionist, however through many years of research and experience I've come up with some conclusions.

The Adkins Diet

I think I've been dieting off-and-on since the late-80's - I think that's when I first noticed a bit of a gut and loss of energy associated with weight-gain - as the decade closed and the 90's started, I also became more sedentary. When I finally decided to do something about it, I started researching the Adkins Diet, as it was the "flavor of the week"  and was in the news quite a bit. I'd see these news stories showing huge pans of sausage, bacon and steak being cooked with the idea that you can have all the fat and protein that you can eat, as long as you limit your carbohydrate (hereafter revered to as "carb") intake. So I took it upon myself to research the diet and picked up a copy of "New Diet Generation" - it was an updated edition of Dr Adkins best selling book.

A little background on Adkins - seems he was a successful MD that found more-and-more of his practice made up of the elderly and diabetic. His initial foray into using diet as treatment was to attempt a through-diet approach in balancing sugar levels in his patients. That led him into formulating his treatment as a commercially available diet via his book(s). Through many years of application he found what works and what didn't work, so from a purely scientific perspective there was (and still is) a lot of controversy surrounding his dieting theories.

Regarding the diet - I know that many who are reading my blog have tried it before, but the question I always ask is "did you actually read the book" and if so "how far did you get." The answer is interesting - I've actually read the book and also did an additional layer or two of research, reading the many opinions or anecdotes of both the various proponents, and detractors of the Diet. What I've found is that almost no one that I know who claims to be doing or has done Adkins, has actually read the book. I guess that's common, as much of the information regarding the diet is freely available online (it wasn't so much back in the early 90's when I first started with it). Of those that have read a bit, most don't really understand it, or they didn't get very far into the book or other resource before starting the initial stage of the diet - once again, to be expected as how much do you need to understand in order to benefit from the Diet? The answer turns out to be a lot.

This is the scenario that usually plays out: In the first chapters or so the Diet calls for you to force a state of Ketosis - basically you have elevated levels of Ketones in your body (Adkins describes the use of Ketone test strips that you can use to detect if you're in this state or not). This is the underlying foundation of the Adkins Diet - when you have elevated Ketones via the Diet, you've basically restricted your carb intake to the point that your liver glycogen stores are depleted. This causes your body to use fatty acids instead of glucose (which is in short supply) for energy. The result is that your body uses the stored fat in your body for energy instead of depleting muscle tissue (those proteins are much more difficult to utilize as energy than the lipids). This all sounds good, right? A byproduct is that you can basically consume as much protein and quite a bit more fat than you normally do because whatever can't be used by your body as energy is passed as waste. Sounds great so far, right? and that's usually the hook that everyone buys into and after reading that to start, reduce your carb intake to about 30 grams a day. So most who read the book or do the research stop right here and start eating massive amounts of animal protein, eggs, etc.

What gets missed is that doing this forced state of Ketosis is pretty rough on the body - it really shouldn't be sustained for very long (Adkin's recommends 2 weeks in this state), then the carb intake should be gradually increased until your body is at a state of slightly Ketonic equilibrium -so over a period of several weeks, you gradually increase the number of carbs your eating until you reach a state where you're still losing weight, but eating an appropriately amount of carb calories to maintain good health. Instead, most continue in that first 2 week state of high Ketosis for weeks on end and in fact go overboard, by eating massive amounts of meat and fat in lieu of anything else (like green vegetables and other stuff that makes up a balance of good calories). Ultimately either your body suffers from this, or you get so bored with the diet that you start eating all the stuff you shouldn't be again, causing you to break out of Ketosis and if you're like me, you see-saw between losing and gaining. The result - you initially lose a bunch of weight but as soon as you blow the diet, you gain it all back quickly, repeat ad nauseum.

Since I actually read the book I was fairly successful in losing weight, at least the first time I did the diet. I also did two things that most don't do: I took an elevated amount of vitamin and mineral supplements; and actually followed the diet by gradually increasing carbs through good quality foods, mostly raw or near-raw vegetables.

The first is often over-looked by dieters - it's my opinion that when you do any type of dieting, you end up pushing food very quickly through your body (whether it's calorie restriction or a fad diet), thus decreasing your digestive system's ability to harvest those vitamins and minerals in food - the raw materials simply don't stay in your system for maximum effectiveness, so you should bolster the availability through the use of supplements. This is compounded because of the notion that you can eat all the meat you want (often ignoring any veggies that are available) as it processes quick and there aren't much more than fats and proteins in what you're eating. In the real Adkins Diet (which means you're typically a patient in one of his clinics, have medical supervision and a custom plan done just for you), you're taking a broad range of supplements 4 to 6 times a day. It sounds like overkill, but does parallel my own experiences. It also makes sense to me.

The second aspect, gradually increasing carbs, is super important. Treating the Adkins Diet as a fad that you can pick up or drop off at whim, is a huge fallacy. Real proponents of the Diet realize that to make the diet work, it takes an actual lifestyle change. This latter is where it typically failed for me. I simply didn't have the commitment in me towards a total change in what I was eating - I would get to the point where the Diet seemed to deprive me and naturally, I would rebel, causing the see-saw action I've already described.

This time I've gone to true calorie counting, being very honest in my evaluation of the calories I'm consuming - now so much easier through the use of apps like MyFitnessPal - it's actually become easy to do this (and previously, this was the hardest aspect of any calorie restrictive diet and why they never appealed to me).

Eating Healthy

I guess my second topic is really more about eating the right balance of good, high nutrition foods. In general the problem with calorie restrictive diets is that people end up just counting calories and when they get close to their limits, they stop eating. This would and is fine if both the mix of foods and the quality of calories are considered when counted towards this goal. What I've found in practice is that most people will pick up a bag of chips, count the 160 or so calories, and add other crappy food sources until they hit their limit. Since the quality of the food is poor (both in nutrition and especially in fiber), the person using this casual technique will get very hungry after they hit their goal and cheat. Or, if they don't cheat, they end up with weird health side-effects because they aren't eating calories that are mineral or vitamin rich. I don't know about you, but to me either result is a recipe of failure at best, and disaster at worst.

Think about this - if you're basal metabolism requires 2200 calories to maintain your weight, that means that to lose 2 lbs per week you get a threshold of about 1360 calories per day (via MyFitnessPal). If you fill up those calories with junk foods your taking a huge health risk, even if you're taking supplements. Those supplements are no substitute for the minerals and vitamins you absorb through real vegetables, fruits, meats and grains. First there's no guarantee that what you're taking in supplements will be readily absorbed. Second, you may still not be getting what you're body needs - supplements should only be treated as a bit of insurance and not a true substitution.

I suggest a good balance between proteins, fats and carbohydrates. I actually don't agree with what is recommended by the FDA or AMA (I've mentioned this before), as when dieting with exercise I think it's important to boost the amount of proteins you're taking to avert the loss of muscle mass. To me the ideal diet is heavy in proteins with room for as many fresh green vegetables as you can pack in (they have negligible calories) and a smaller portion of whole grain carbs - these should be eaten early in the morning so you have the day to burn them off - they also provide some energy for your activities through the day. I stop eating sugar or sugary foods altogether (no juices either) because when dieting the complex carbs are your friend (takes much more energy to break them down). I also avoid most fructose unless I'm eating fresh fruit - the additional fiber you get from fresh fruit offsets the fructose you're consuming (it becomes more of a byproduct) - stick with berries for the most bang-for-the-buck.

Finally, let's talk a bit about food quality. I think it's a shame that in the United States, where we produce enough food to feed everyone who lives here to excess, at both the conditions of starvation AND obesity exists. Much of this, in my opinion, is due to the commercialism of food in this country and the poor quality of most cheap staples. The more I research this topic the more convinced I am that food production in this country will be found as the cause for the many ailments occurring in people as they age. We put so much effort into quantity-over-quality that what's being produced is just shit. Yes there's plenty of it, but what are the consequences? If you don't know what I'm taking about, compare a tomato grown via conventional methods to an heirloom grown organically. The first will be pretty, big, have questionable texture and be almost tasteless. The latter will be smaller, taste better, and have both a higher nutritional value and fiber. The problem is that the food industry in this country breeds and grows first for yield (size and number), second for appearance (people want RED tomatoes) and third to be grown in multiple climatic conditions. This all produces a lot of crap produce and because it has so little flavor, when processed the manufacturers add a lot of salt and/or other sodium to boost what little flavor remains.

Anyway, I've had my say - I hope there's food for thought in there.

-- John