Is Atkins the best diet approach to lose weight?

For the thousands who are fighting the battle of the bulge, the good news is the time tested Atkins approach has been found to be better over other weight management plans like Zone, LEARN and Ornish.

A group of researchers at Stanford University compared the four plans in a year-long study of 311 women. They found women who ate the very low-carbohydrate Atkins diet had the greatest weight loss than those who stuck to other groups. They also did not complain of other complications related to the high-protein component of the diet.

The central question is: does this mean there should be renewed enthusiasm for the much flogged Atkins diet? The answer surprisingly just seems to be, well may be.

All the four diet plans have been created by medical practitioners with years of experience in clinically evaluating weight problems. Therefore, it implies the pathways suggested by each would depend on attacking the problem of obesity from a different perspective. Moreover, each method had not been compared against others. This is the first study to have accomplished this.

Atkins diet is based on the premise the body needs a low supply of carbohydrate, so that it would turn to stored fat for obtaining the energy for metabolism. The diet program insists on intake of wholegrain sources of carbohydrate, with adequate quantities of fats and proteins. For many years, the fat and protein components had been the point of contention in the scientific community. The diet program was railed for including fat while it professed people had to lose weight and the long-term side effects of high protein had not been adequately studied.

There is a shift in perceptions now about the correct approach to losing weight. Most medical and weight loss experts agree not all fat is bad and only the fat from hydrogenated sources need to be avoided. In fact, in the Atkins program, the combination of complex carbohydrates and unsaturated fats led to the improved level of high-density cholesterol or the ‘good’ cholesterol. The women in the study also showed lower levels of low-density or ‘bad’ cholesterol.

Medical practitioners however caution, there is no one-approach-suits-all solution to the obesity problem. Each patient needs to be clinically evaluated, especially with respect to lipid profile, muscle metabolism parameters and lifestyle factors. Only then a suitable plan should be prescribed.

Criticism for the conclusions of the Stanford study has come in predictably from the developers of the other diet programs. Dean Ornish claims the study is flawed in reporting greater weight loss amongst the Atkins followers, because most of the women who had lost weight regained it more quickly. He also said the 10-pound loss in one year of Atkins does not offer more significant benefits compared to the six pounds lost by following others. He also said the weight loss was significant only when compared to the Zone diet.

In another study last year by Willett and colleagues in the New England Journal of Medicine found women who ate low carbohydrate enjoyed lower risk of heart disease only when they ate fat and protein from plant sources. So, girls, go for wholegrain cereals but if you wish have olive oil and soy milk rather than butter and sausage.