Dr. Atkins' Age-Defying Diet

For someone who was brought up believing that the way to dietary health and happiness was to avoid red meat, eggs, butter and saturated fats, and to load up on complex carbohydrates and use margarine, Dr. Atkins' ideas are indeed a revolution. In an incisive and extremely confident style, Dr. Atkins sets out what he believes are the components of a healthy diet for those of us past, say, fifty. First, "eat foods low in carbohydrates and high in antioxidants" (p. 277). These would be especially vegetables like kale, carrots, spinach, broccoli, etc. Second, eat natural fats and oils from butter, meat, fish, eggs, nuts and olive oil, and avoid all "trans fats" or highly processed fats in general. In fact, avoid highly processed foods of all kinds. Third, supplement your diet with what he calls "vitanutrients," i.e., vitamins like A, B, C, E etc. and minerals like zinc, calcium, etc., hormones like DHEA and melatonin, etc., and food supplements like ginseng, ginkgo biloba, etc.Atkins himself is a medical doctor who practices alternative and complementary medicine. He is an enterprise himself with his many best-selling books and his Atkins Center for Complementary Medicine. When I first heard about him and his all protein and vegetable diet some years ago, I figured he was the charlatan author of yet another fad diet, and I ignored his books. This one is the first I've actually read, and I must say immediately that he is certainly not a charlatan. He is obviously a man who knows as much about diet as anyone could hope to know. Whether he is entirely correct in his ideas is not something I am incapable of assessing; but I am willing to bet he is mostly right. He has had an enormous experience treating patients, and it is encouraging to note that as a medical doctor he tends to write relatively few prescriptions. He even warns of the harm that can come from the use of commonly prescribed medicines and their side effects.The most important claim he makes about ageing is that it is primarily caused by free radicals and that a diet high in antioxidants can reduce the number of free radicals in our bodies.His central idea about diet is that it is not fats that are the enemy of health for people in the industrialized world (as we have so long been taught) but carbohydrates, especially highly processed ones. This is indeed a revolutionary idea, or at least it was when it was first expressed some years ago. Fat people are not fat because they eat too much fat. They are fat because they eat too many carbohydrates. When you think about it, especially from the point of view of evolutionary biology it suddenly makes enormous sense. What was it in the prehistory that we humans never had enough of to overindulge on? Not meat, and for many cultures, not fat, but carbohydrates. There were no fields of amber grain waiting to be harvested and made into flour and bread. There were no rice patties or acres of pot

Last fall I successfully lost 20 lbs on the Atkins diet - and changed my eating and nutrition habits entirely. Six months into low carb life I have lots of energy and feel good in general. As an added bonus, my husband tried the diet with me to help me with the menus - he dropped 43 lbs and lowered his cholesterol and blood pressure. My goodness. This book came just at the right time when the long term nutrition questions about how to go forward and feel healthy needed answering. Just finished reading this book, and much of the advice has appeal. I find it extremely useful as a guideline for the nutritional supplements that should be part of the daily regimen. I suppose I'll have to make an effort to include kale and spinach in our eating more regularly. We have recommended the diet book to many friends - and everyone who followed the rules lost weight and felt good. Am now sending this book to those good friends and family.

I must say that anyone, who has tried this diet and failed, did so because thay didn't follow it correctly. I have been using the plan from Atkins other book New Diet Rev. and have lost 50 pounds in three and a half months. This new book teaches about healthy herbal supplements that further increase energy and well being. If you are a person who has tried one of the propaganda diets from someone who adheres to what everyone else says, then try this one. At least it comes from a man who is brave enough to go against the establishment, which I must say has failed to help anyone be happy eating lettuce or to lose weight, and show his plan which is backed up by researchable medical facts to the world .

Once again Dr. Atkins has forged ahead and set the standard for lifestyle enhancement. Those of you who suffer from unstable blood sugar, and ailments that stem from it must read this book. As a life long suffer of hypoglycemia this program has literally saved my life, plus letting me drop pounds easily and keep them off for years. This new book only adds to his plan, by describing how, through supplementation, to improve your life. His approach is intelligent and well researched, and you come away from reading his books like you read a fun to read medical text rather than some breezy, pie-in-the-sky (no pun intended) diet plan.

Dr Atkins has synthesized all off the latest research on nutrition and aging and has put together a up-to-date plan to help extend your life and improve the quality too. This is the best book on the subject since the bestselling classic, Life Extension, by Dirk Pearson and Sandy Shaw, from the late '70's. The difference with Atkins book though, is that he cites a lot of credible research that will become accepted at some point by the medical community. He is ahead of his time as usual. The gist of the book is to tell readers what steps they need to take to promote heart and brain health, mostly through diet and readily available nutritional supplements. He contends that many of the most common diseases can be delayed or avoided by following his regimen. This is an important book, a gift from Dr. Atkins to people interested in their own healthful longevity.