Atkins - the King of Diets?

The Journal of the American Medical Association released a study today entitled, "Comparison of the Atkins, Zone, Ornish, and LEARN Diets for Change in Weight and Related Risk Factors Among Overweight Premenopausal Women. The A to Z Weight Loss Study: A Randomized Trial".

The media are going to have a field day talking about how this study proves that Atkins is the way to go.

I disagree.

Read the study and you'll learn some things.

Firstly you'll learn every participant in the study receieved 8 hours of lectures from registered dietitians on how to follow their respective diets - real world, people buy books, skim them and kind of follow them.

Next you'll learn that every participant receieved $150 for their efforts. Real world you don't get anything.

Lastly, and most importantly you'll learn that even on Atkins, the crowned king of diets in this study, the average person, in an entire year of effort, only lost 10lbs.

Does that make you want to rush out and cut your carbs?

Fact is most people quit Atkins because it's tough to live that way - it's tough to eat out and it's tough to cook for your family.

Best diet in the world for you involves two components: First, you have to eat fewer Calories than you burn, otherwise you won't lose weight. Second, you have to like what you're eating, otherwise you won't keep it off. On Atkins' it's the second part that's hard.

The reason why there are 194,218 diet books today on Amazon.com is that none of them have proven themselves to be remarkable at long term weight loss. If one had, there'd only be one diet book on Amazon.com and it's the one we'd all be using.

Bottom line - the only way I'd recommend Atkins is if you happened to love your life on the Atkins diet and felt that you could honestly and happily live that way forever. Otherwise, it's just another diet.