I’ve tried a number of diets, and I can tell you from experience that you’ll be thinking of food all the time if you try a low calorie approach, you’ll hate life if you try a low fat approach, and your wallet will thin considerably if you try a low carb approach. You can lose weight on any diet – but the problem is that the diet you chose must be a new lifelong habit, not a 2 week sacrifice. This is where most people go wrong – and fail to reach their desired goals – they don’t understand that it took a lifetime of bad habit to put the weight on, now it must take the rest of your life eating correctly to take it off.

The most rapid weightloss diet I’ve found is the Atkins (or similar low carb) diet. The big advantage that low carb has over low calorie diets is that you’ll literally forget to eat! Because your blood sugar levels don’t spike extremely high, then low (as happens when you eat a high carb meal), you’ll find that the body signals for hunger simply go away – and as I discovered, you actually have to remind yourself that it’s time to eat!

There are also many great food choices that you can have on a low carb diet that simply don’t exist on a low fat or low carb diet. This makes your dinner times much more enjoyable than those who suffer through a low calorie meal, or people trying to eat a low fat diet.

One tremendously useful way to wade through the misinformation and factoids found in this arena is to examine what we fatten pigs on – and it’s not fat or high calories. It’s carbs. Grain is the recommended feed to fatten pigs, and the typical ‘Hard Red Winter Wheat’ that most bread is made out of has the following components:

71% Carbohydrates
12.6% Protein
1.5% Fat

It’s not the protein or fat that’s fattening up those pigs for slaughter! It’s that incredibly high amount of carbohydrates. So if you want to get fat, high carb (and conversely, low fat) is certainly a great way to go. If you want to constantly be thinking of your next meal, and have food on your mind all the time, and know what constant hunger feels like, then low calorie diets are going to be the favored choice. But if you’d like a rapid weightloss diet that you can live with for the rest of your life – try Atkins, it simply works.

But to really change your lifestyle, you have to not merely imitate your old one – let’s face facts, no low-carb replacement is going to even come close to replacing that donut. (or that one or two bananas I used to eat every day!) The real McCoy will always be hiding right around the corner – whispering to you to come back… come back…

I used to stock up on low-carb ‘equivalents’ when I’d go to specialty stores, and when the local supermarket started carrying low-carb items, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven! But then the specialty stores started closing, the supermarket slowly gave up on supplying low-carb items, and now if you want to try to replace your high-carb foods with low-carb ‘copies’, you have to order over the Internet, or mailorder.

But the real question is why are you trying to duplicate the old way of eating that got you into such big trouble? Why make it so difficult, always trying to duplicate old eating habits? The real method is to simply break away completely, and change your entire eating lifestyle to a complete low-carb way of life – and not try to find refined and manufactured low-carb duplicates of real food. After all, getting away from refined foods, and manufactured “foods” is a part of my life now – I want to continue eliminating ‘fake’ foods, and learning to eat real food.

I’ve not completely succeeded; I truly do love the low carb ice cream, and the sugar free gelatin. I don’t know if I can ever give up on those two items, but I have given up on all the other ‘fake foods’ that were low-carb, but little else. How about you? If you’ve been low-carbing it for awhile, have you drifted away from the non-foods and manufactured low-carb “foods”?

What I do like about the low carb lifestyle is that I’ve been forced to try many different foods that I never before have eaten, or would have ever eaten. Modern supermarkets make it easy, with such wide varieties of vegetables, and even odd meat choices… I saw ground Bison in the store the other day. Didn’t immediately buy it, as it wasn’t on my list, (I’m already regretting that decision!), but I’m already wondering what I can do with some ground Bison. By the time you read this, I’ll have tried Bison meat in some recipe or another.

Sometimes we need to look at the positive side of Low-carb, rather than just what we can no longer eat. (Or rather, no longer eat regularly!) What do you think?

“Of all the bizarre diets that have been proposed in the last 50 years, this is the most dangerous to the public if followed for any length of time.” – President of the American College of Nutrition

“People need to wake up to the reality that diets that restrict the consumption of entire food groups – especially essential carbohydrates like fruits and vegetables – are unhealthy and can be dangerous,” – Former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop

“The Atkins Diet is nonsense… Any book that recommends unlimited amounts of meat, butter, and eggs, as this one does, in my opinion is dangerous. The author who makes the suggestion is guilty of malpractice.” – Professor Fredrick J. Stare, Ph.D. – Chair of Harvard’s Dept of Nutrition

Since the Atkin’s diet in its most simplistic form is simply telling you to stay away from excess carbohydrates, one can legitimately wonder just why all the venom.

But the trick – when you can’t figure something out – is the old bit of wisdom you’ve all heard: “Follow the money”. So where is the money, in this case? Is there any industries threatened by the simple truth that refined carbs, white flour, and sugar is bad for you?

The number of industries that are threatened by Atkins is actually quite a large number. Obviously the Sugar industry would wish Dr. Atkins ill will, but so too Wheat, Corn, and most, if not all large food industries. There is an inherent conflict of interest between food manufacturers and the end user – you and I, who eat the food. The Food Industry wants food that has a long shelf life, can be easily shipped, and yet is as inexpensive as possible. I don’t want a long shelf life, I want something fresh – I don’t care about shipping, I want food that is fresh and undamaged.

So the list of people who naturally despise what Dr. Atkins teaches is a long one… but who is on the side of the consumer? It’s not the nutrition industry… they are paid by the food industry. It’s not the medical industry – they really don’t care for you to be healthy, it would be a disaster for the health industry if everyone were healthy.

There’s no one left to champion Dr. Atkins, except those who want to lose weight, and regain health – and buy his book in spite of the vast Governmental, Medical and Agricultural ‘conspiracies’ against him. Read his book yourself, study the issue, and decide if you’d prefer to leave your health in the hands of someone who has a conflict of interest with your health.

You see, if you went to a gym, and repeatedly lifted weights with just your right arm, and ignored your left arm – there isn’t anyone in the world who wouldn’t believe that your right arm will become more muscled, more defined, and stronger. It’s a simple case of cause and effect.

Likewise, when you cut out wheat and sugar (the two major forms of carbohydrates), it’s simply not believable that your body won’t react to the restriction of calories that it used to be able to count on to keep your weight up. The body can’t replace the lack of carbohydrates with the air you breathe, or the water you drink – and it’s extremely difficult to eat too much meat, fish, and vegetables to replace the carbs that you’d ordinarily eat on a normal American diet.

So what is really happening here? My theory is that people simply don’t understand what low carb is… even those who prepare carefully to change their lifestyle can be fooled. I recall the first time that I looked up how many carbs there were in an average apple. I’d thought that an apple was a perfect addition to my lunch that I packed every day – but when I found out with horror that I’d basically doubled my carb count for the entire day with that one apple, I quickly stopped eating apples!

So some people think that they’ve tried a low-carb diet, and really didn’t restrict their carbs as much as they thought they were doing – so their body recognized the slight dip in usable carbs, and simply slowed metabolism to keep the body weighing the same. (Which, of course, leads to the ‘blahs…’, that tired feeling of helplessness)

Other people may have actually understood what a low-carb diet consists of – and simply couldn’t make the drastic change that’s required. I recall when I started Atkins, I went through my kitchen and gave away or threw out quite a bit of food that I knew I could no longer eat. This can be a step that people don’t take, and they hate the idea of throwing away money – and rationalize that they should eat what they paid for.

But regardless of the reason – there are no known examples of people who’ve switched to low-carb, and actually eaten low-carb, who have not lost weight if they were previously overweight. God did not design the human body to naturally be fat – our society and food industry have provided us with the tools to do that.

Let’s face it, carbohydrates are cheap, and most meat and vegetables are not. Before I went on Atkins, I used to buy a 25 pound bag of rice for around $8-10 as I recall – and that bag would last for months. That was with me eating rice nearly every day for one or more meals. Rice is one of the perfect meal extenders, since it can take on the flavor of whatever you put it in. Friends used to marvel at how little I spent grocery shopping, as I had learned in my college fraternity just how to buy cheap meals…

Chili was another favorite of mine – beans have always been quite cheap, so too with pasta of many types. I even used to make my own bread; I used to make a loaf of Sourdough bread for around 25 cents total cost. All very low cost ways to eat, and all chock full of carbohydrates.

But Atkins easily doubled my grocery bill – since now I actually had to buy different cuts of meat & fish, and actual vegetables… even the occasional fruit. (Although, as you will learn, the common phrase ‘fruit & vegetables’ equate the two far more than they deserve) Shopping low carb is not a cheap way to go, perhaps the biggest bargain I found was the many different ways that hamburger and eggs can be prepared. (Even together!)

And my food choices actually expanded, as I began to learn about many different ways to prepare fish & meat, and learn about vegetables that I’d never tasted before. I learned that not all squash is “mushy” (ever tried Butternut Squash?), and I actually learned a few ways to prepare Zucchini that made it edible. I learned to cook Eggplant (thanks to the Internet!), and the variety of food that I eat now is far greater than in my Pre-Atkin’s days.

But the cost is still higher than ‘normal’ eating… and yet, it can be justified easily. You see, the unseen factor here is my health – I enjoy better health, and that has surely resulted in fewer visits to the doctor over the years, and will undoubtedly result in many more years of living. So while eating low carb may seem more expensive – it’s actually cheaper in terms of benefits received.

It simply takes a while to learn to appreciate it! Give low carb a try, your body will thank you for it!

Even people who want to start a low-carb diet don’t properly understand it, because reading has become such a lost art in America – many people get their information in short snippets on the Internet, or from casual conversation – and don’t take the time to study the issue themselves. As a result, many people have ‘tried’ Atkins – yet few people have actually followed the Atkins Diet.

If you are interested in one of the truly great ways to lead a healthy life at the proper weight, you owe it to yourself to actually read Dr. Atkin’s book – for only then will you understand just what the diet actually consists of. Don’t presume that what you believe the diet is, is what Dr. Atkin’s said it was!

Nor is Atkin’s the only ‘low-carb’ diet out there – there are many others, Atkin’s is merely the best known. Other somewhat lesser known low carb diets are:

1. Southbeach
2. Charles Hunt’s Diet Evolution
3. Sugar Busters
4. Neanderthin
5. Dr. Sear’s Zone Diet

And many others… the key to all of them is the realization that the body doesn’t need carbs, and that most carbs are treated the same way in the body. As simply sugar. Eating a simple banana, for example, is just the same as popping three spoons of sugar. I must confess that giving up bananas was one of the sadder things I had to do on Atkins.

The USDA and the medical industry will decry the Atkins Diet – and you’ll not hear very much good about it in the traditional mass media – but everyone must examine the facts for themselves, and make their own judgment. The place to start is Dr. Atkin’s own book, where you can understand just what the diet consists of. And since his book is available in just about any used bookstore in the country for a dollar or so, there’s no excuse you can have not to go to the source and read it!

I’ve lost over 80 pounds on Atkins, and I continue to lose weight. More importantly, I’m never hungry… for the first time in my life I’ve actually gone through a day ‘forgetting’ to eat lunch. Skipping a meal wasn’t something I could ever visualize pre-Atkins, and it’s still not a healthy thing to do – but can you imagine yourself not being hungry?

Read Dr. Atkin’s book and judge for yourself.

If the title didn’t give you an idea, the answer is ‘Carbohydrates’. There are, in fact, societies that thrive quite well with little to no carbohydrates in their diet – Australian Aborigines and Eskimos are two examples. The fact that you can be quite healthy, and live a long lifespan without any carbohydrates at all should be a wake-up call to those of you who believe that the USDA recommended levels of carbohydrates.

Back in 1989, the USDA was recommending that more than 50% of your calories come from carbs. Fast forward to the year 2002, and they modified that recommendation down to just 45%, and specified that at least 25g of these carbs were to be fiber, and that less than 25% of this be from added sugars.

Does it seem strange to anyone that the government is begging you to eat no more than a quarter of your calories in the form of sugar? Prior to the 1900’s, the average consumption of sugar was no more than 5 pounds per year… it’s currently around 135 pounds per year!

In fact, if you want to eat healthy, its actually quite hard to come up to the levels of carbohydrates that the USDA is recommending, unless you eat a lot of junk food.

If you want to gain the most benefit from eating carbohydrates, you should try to stick with nutritionally dense carbs, such as vegetables. When eating a carrot, or squash, or spinach – you’re getting not only the carbs that are contained in the vegetable, but you’re also getting fiber and vitamins – something that raw sugar isn’t going to give you. (and no, bread is not a ‘nutritionally dense’ source of carbs – it’s simply carbs & fiber).

The USDA is in the corner of agricultural business – and is not going to tell you the best way to eat. Learn the facts, and avoid the common ‘wisdom’ of healthy eating – and you’ll end up living a far more healthy life.