Scientific View of Cutting Carbohydrates

The Atkins diet is a high protein, high fat diet, with very low carbohydrate intake (Willett and Skerrett, 2004, 44-48). It has been shown to work for weight loss over the short-term, but there are doubts about its ability to work over the long-term. Two recent studies reported in the New England Journal of Medicine found that people on the Atkins diet lost twice as much weight over a six-month period as those on a standard low-fat diet recommended by most major health organizations (Two, 2003). However, one study, conducted by the Veterans Affairs Department, found that those on the Atkins diet regained much of the weight by the end of the year, at which time the difference in weight loss between the two groups was not significant. The weight lost by people on the Atkins diet was also relatively minor compared to their starting weight (Atkins, 2003). The average starting weight for participants in the first study was 288 pounds, but the average weight loss was only 13 pounds. In the Veterans Affairs Study, the average starting weight was 217 pounds, but the average loss after one year was only 9.7 pounds.

There are doubts about the credibility of any diet that recommends you can eat as much fat as you want (Willett and Skerrett, 2004, 44-48). High protein die

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er who was surprised to see so few Atkins plan dieters among the study participants said she wondered if the diet worked only for short-term weight loss, but was too hard to continue for several years down the road for most people. Proponents of low-carbohydrate high-protein diets claim that these diets nudge the body into ketosis which occurs when fat is burned for energy instead of carbohydrate (High-protein, 2001, 1-3). This can be toxic to the body if continued for long periods. However, when investigators from New York tracked the food intake of overweight people who stuck to the Atkins diet by the letter for four weeks, they found that these people trimmed over 1,000 calories from their daily food intake, which is enough to make anyone lose weight no matter which calories they trimmed. Experts believe that it is not the amount of carbohydrates you eat so much as the types of carbohydrates (Willett and Skerrett, 2004, 44-48). Some carbohydrates give the body a high glycemic load, that it, they are rapidly turned into sugar by the body. This means extra insulin has to be secreted by the pancreas to move the sugar out of the bloodstream and into the cells where it is used for energy. Problems occur here, because such a
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