Personally, I am on the maintenance phase of Atkins. If you read the book, you might realize that the previous phases have hopefully prepared you for the maintenance phase, where you aren't on a restricted carboyhydrate plan..but are eating the amount of carbohydrates that YOU personally need to maintain your weight. If you are a heavy duty exerciser, then your CCL will be much higher than someone who is less active. So, basically, your whole post is useless for someone who is following the plan as intended.

Here's something interesting I'd like to see if anyone has an opinion about: I'm sure by now you have all heard about "The Warrior Diet". Interestingly enough, I adopted a dietary pattern very similar to this years ago, before that guy ever had a book or a website. I didn't conciously choose to eat that way, it just sort of happened naturally. As we all know, eating (especially carbs) leaves some people sleepy and groggy, not energetic. I'm such a person. I don't care if I work like a dog all day or sit on my but, I don't eat anything till about 11 pm. Why? I feel better this way, I keep alert and I keep my edge. At one time I would come home and have a big snack around 6 pm. This only served to make me hungry enough to eat wood in a few hours. I don't beleive in pre-workout pick-me-ups, they have a negative effect for me. I feel much better in the starvation mode. Also, when you only eat one huge meal per day, there's only so much you can eat at one time, which helps to keep you from over doing it. Oddly enough, I was always in my best shape when I adhered to this dietary pattern. When I heard about the Warrior Diet, I went to the website and read up on it. I couldn't believe someone else was actually promoting the way I had been eating for years. I can't say I agree with all of the foods he promotes, or some of his crazy comparisons to Roman Legionaires, but much of what he says is true and it does work.
In response to some other comments, yes I use the "caveman" picture and it does say "Paleo" up there. I happen to like what the Paleo crowd has to say and and there is a lot of common sense in that diet; I mean, if all you eat is what is/has always been available in our natural habitat, how can you go wrong? If one can afford to eat that way and function well on that diet, then more power to you. However, were it not for agriculture, most of the planet would starve. That's reality. Why do you think rice is the big staple for most of Asia? Do they like it? Sure, because that's what they are adapted to eating and its what they were raised on. Would they prefer a big juicy steak if they could get one? You bet your ass they would! But the reality is, they eat what they can afford.

There we go with the "I'm on maintenance" thing again....do you know how creepy that sounds? You have your own life, you're not "on" anything. It's just a book, the good Doctor is not God and that book is not the Bible. Yes, read the book and extract the knowledge from it, but please don't follow it line for line, word for word, as if it were the gospel. They are just guidelines. If you blindly adhere to every aspect of somebody's diet book, you are setting yourself up for failure. He didn't invent the concept of low carbohydrate dieting. Take me for example: I work better on an ultra low fat diet (not superior or inferior to your diet, just different). Who is the "guru" of low fat? Dean Ornish? Pritikan? I've read their books and think they have some good ideas, but for the most part I strongly disagree with most of their theories. Come on, you have to read everything with an open mind and realize that none of these guys who write diet books are right about everthing. When someone publishes a diet book to promote their own theory and make money, there has to be some kind of "plan" for people to follow. Do you think these plans and "phases" were tested with real people in a scientifically controlled environment? No, they just seem like logical approaches so they write it down and publish it. Anyone who has experience in the highly competitive self-help publishing field knows exactly what I'm talking about. In conclusion, you should read the information and build your own plan around it. I submit that most of you here have a higher I.Q. than the good Doctor that many have promoted to god-like status.

Big Steve

I feel you are definitely right and probably this dietdoes not suit everyone. That said, on another board I am on there are a dozen or so marathoners (long-term ATkineers of up to 4-5 years duration) who are very strict followers of the Atkins diet, are certainly lean, and have no problems with energy levels etc. I think it probably comes down a lot to genetic makeup as to how we absorb nutrients from our food.
It is interesting that you said you like the way you feel on low carb but have to eat carbs to look how you want. If I eat any refined carbs now I have the most dreadful acid indigestion and feel very ill. (I had this periodically before and did not realsie it was caused by carbohydrate intake.)

We all just have to find what works for us, and obviously you are happy with what you've devised for you.

They were tested with real people in his medical practice.
I seriously doubt that. Becoming a doctor of any stripe isn't easy.Why not? Dr. A saved my physical life as much as Jesus saved my spiritual life.

Steve, the only one who gives religeous overtones to low carbing is you. Everyone else knows that it is a way of eating.

There have been quite a few scientific tests of low carbing. Do some research and get the facts.

Steve, you have some good points, which nobody fundamentally disagrees with, then you kind of side-drain into stuff like this...



I don't, probably because it isn't creepy. It's just a way to eat; a way to describe a way to eat. It sounds lots better than a pompous phrase, like, say, "The Warrior Diet" (I'm channeling an old song...Quarterflash, was it?).



Few do, although some might. You're far less qualified to make that recommendation than Dr. Atkins, I'd say.



No data to support this. No firsthand anectdotal experience of any real value either. You're talking to hundreds of people who do have that experience, Steve. You might listen to them instead of preaching. Although at a point, I'm still not sure why you're here...what you hope to accomplish by coming to a message board of people who have lived months or years (3 for me) on low carbohydrate and stumbling through cliches and misconceptions, making generalizations, and pompous judgments you're incapable of really backing up.




This is not news, Steve. And it's acknowleded by Atkins. He never claimed to invent it, and he did cite the earlier work of others. He did popularize and distill it, inject some science into it, and make it easy to follow and understand.



Thanks. Us close-minded, low-carbers are grateful to you for opening our eyes. Did you perhaps think that you were the only independent thinker out there? Did you perhaps look at some profiles and see how many books people have read? Before you enlightened us, did you perhaps look at some long threads with highly divergent viewpoints on this forum that argue about everything from the effects to the methodology of low carb? Did you do any of that, or did you just make an ignorant judgment, absent information?

Just curious.



Thanks again for the enlightenment. Seriously, I'll take my shrine down tomorrow. Anyone need any candles?

As a runner, I will absolutely say that low carb - FOR ME - does not jive with distance running. I absolutely have to carb up before a marathon or an important run

That being said, I usually do so for about 2 days and I'm fine during the race

I am intolerant to carbs (although not as much as others here) and so I really need to limit them to stay lean

Sounds like you have found what works for you in a high-carb diet. If thats what works, I would go for it

I believe the "Good Doctor" says many times in his book that the plan MUST be customized to meet the needs of the individual. Some people have different carb threshholds than others. Some are less resistant, some are more. That's what he was talking about when he discussed finding one's CCLL. Some people require more carbs for athletic performance, and still manage to continue to lose. Others can exercise 'til the cows come home, and they still will not lose unless they're consuming less than 30g of carb a day.

But you'd KNOW all of that, if you'd bothered to read the book.
And if you've READ the book, you'd know that the "Good Doctor" encouraged individual experimentation, not a strict regimen that had to be followed, letter by letter.

BigSteve, have you read DiPasquale's 'Anabolic Diet'? It is widely used by natural bodybuilders and power- and weight-lifters. It is similar to Vince Gironda's recommendations from the muscle beach days to stay pretty low carb for a few days, then raise the carbs for a day or two. (Gironda preferred a 3-1 cycle, while DiPasquale prefers a 5-2)
It is really interesting how they work LC into a bodybuilding plan but carb-up to keep insulin, glycogen, and muscle mass at good levels.

I'm in the same boat. I need carb to be able to run well. Without enough, I can run but not too fast. So at that point I'm probably using mostly fat for energy. Carb can be intoxicating. Too much and I'm burning up the track but crashing eventually. Finding the middle ground is difficult for me. I live in extremes.

Ok, I'm sick of hearing "If you had bothered to read the book...."! I have read the book! No. 1: It's not that well written. No. 2: Some people cling to these acronyms like CCL as if they were some industry standard accepted by the medical community. Wake up! Its just crap he made up. There are no set in stone ranges of grams of carbohydrates per day that one has for his/her threshold. Look, many people lose weight on a low carb plan simply because they eliminated an entire food group and ended up consuming fewer calories. If you already had a fat filled diet combined with sugary junk and then eliminated the sugary junk BINGO! WEIGHT LOSS! No mystery here folks. I know, many will say "I was eating low fat before". More than likely you thought you were but were probably still consuming at least 30% or more calories from fat. The food pyramid definition of "30%" is NOT low fat.

I exercise all the time. When I exercise a lot, I need more carbs, but never as much as the low fat crowd demands. If I am in maintenance and running 5 miles a day (plus weights), then I can eat 50 to 60 carbs a day without problem. If I am not exercising as much, I need to lower my carbs accordingly.

I suspect your issue is simply that you are not adjusting your carb intake to suit your needs, as per the Atkins diet. Atkins called for 20 grams of carbs for induction.. two weeks! After that, it varies based on metabolish and activity level.

Brobin
By the way, anyone running 56 miles is running on fat, the body cannot supply enough carb energy for that, regardless of the amount of carbs you stuff down prior to the race.

Yup, you're right. Out of all of us here on the forum and low carbers around the world none of us knew how to diet on low fat. Only you knew how to. We were all eating tons of junk food until we discovered low carb.

I am sure I was doing it all wrong! 10-15g of mono/poly fat a day. 1100-1300 calories a day. Starving, tired and sick all the time, cold all the time, yellowing dry skin and my hair falling out. Horrible cholesterol numbers, needing half a dozen prescribed meds to function and complete infertility.

I was obviously doing it wrong. Thanks for showing me the light. I will go eat a 1 cup serving of special k with half a cup of skim milk and 1/4 of a banana.

I don't know if it's true but I read it decades ago and still see it often; Fat burns in a carbohydrate flame. For me, if I run out of carbohydrate completely my running slows and it is not fun. The point is there must be a small amount of carb handy to prime the fat-burning pump. That's another statement I read many years ago. With zero carb on board, the body is making more through gluconeogenesis. I imagine for some it could produce enough to continue running hard for 24 hours straight. But it never worked for me. I tried all sorts of experiments trying to get better at fat-burning. The worst mistakes involved eating fat before going for a run. There's nothing worse than being on a mountain trail 20 miles from toilet paper.