High+Fat


 * High Fat Diet**

The belief that carbs, nor fat, are what makes people obease

Of course the low-carbohydrate diet works. If you cannot eat cookies, candy, cake, doughnuts, bagels, french fries, pie, ice cream and a host of other high-carbohydrate, high-calorie, high-fat favorites that people typically overeat, you are likely to consume fewer calories than you were eating before and you will undoubtedly lose weight. At first, the loss will be mainly water, because carbohydrates are the nutrients that hold water in your body.

A friend who had been on one of the low-carbohydrate diets for three months lapsed one day and ate a baked potato, which, she said, caused her to gain three pounds overnight. Now, the potato weighed only about half a pound, so even if she digested and assimilated every bit, it would not have been possible to gain three real pounds. What her dehydrated body gained was water, drawn in by the carbohydrates in the potato.

Furthermore, if you follow the Atkins regimen to the letter, substances called ketones will accumulate in your bloodstream and can make you slightly nauseated and light-headed and cause bad breath. This state is not exactly conducive to a hearty appetite, so chances are you will eat less than you might otherwise have of the high-protein, high-fat foods permitted on the diet. A ketogenic diet also has risks: excreting potassium and sodium along with the ketones can disrupt heart rhythms, an increase in uric acid can cause kidney stones, and a loss of calcium in urine raises the risk of osteoporosis.

The questions to ask yourself are not whether you can lose weight on this or any other diet, but whether you can stay on the diet indefinitely and keep the sweight off permanently and whether you can do so without incurring other health risks. Where are the long-term follow-up studies to show that this is a once-and-for-all, safe and effective weight-loss program? Where are the people who have been on this diet for the 20-plus years since Dr. Atkins first published his "diet revolution?" Did they lose the desired amount of weight and keep it off? And are there any long-term ill effects?

http://www.nytimes.com/specials/women/warchive/961225_1124.html