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Ask the Expert
June 28, 2003
Question:
How is the No-Grain Diet different from the Atkins diet?
Answer:
Dr. Atkins provided a major jumpstart to help establish the connection between obesity and insulin, and major studies now validate this approach. I have enormous respect for him for providing us a deeper understanding to the riddle most people face with weight loss.
Unfortunately, Dr. Atkins didn’t take his program far enough as he labeled all carbohydrates as bad.
As most of you already know I happen to believe that vegetable carbohydrates are quite different than grains and as such do not need to be restricted to effectively reduce weight.
When you understand Metabolic Typing it becomes obvious that some people indeed require up to two-thirds of their diet as vegetable carbohydrate. So these people are actually on a high-carbohydrate, but no-grain, no-sugar, diet.
This failure to recognize that each person has a unique biochemistry is the critical piece of the puzzle that Dr. Atkins was missing. However, once you understand this, it is easy to discern why studies that evaluate Dr. Atkins’ approach are not able to consistently validate its effectiveness.
This is largely related to the fact that one-third of people should never be on a low-carb, high-fat, high-protein diet such as the Atkins diet. Although they may lose weight initially, it is ultimately a prescription for disaster for them. These heavy individuals actually require a high-vegetable, no-grain, no-sugar diet along with low fat and protein intake.
This is their ideal fuel mixture, and if they don’t receive it they will not burn calories effectively and will use the extra fat and protein and deposit it as fat in their bodies.
Additionally, in the Atkins program very little attention is directed toward encouraging people to focus on the quality of their food. Dr. Atkins’ newer books provide some mention of the need for this, but the mentions are brief and cursory.
Fried meats like bacon and heavily processed meats like lunchmeats are fraught with their own long-term complications. While they may promote weight loss in the short term, it is shortsighted to load your body up with trans fats, which have been associated with cancers and chronic diseases.
While most people will indeed benefit from restricting grains and sugars from the diet, it is important to remember that there is no perfect diet for everyone or every condition. Diet really needs to be modified and adjusted to fit each specific person with his or her own unique genetic requirements.
