Meat is Murder

Now on to the next of my diet reviews. I'll just clump all of these in the same bunch: Protein diet, low carb diet, Atkins diet, South Beach diet, etc.





They are basically all built around a basic concept: increase the protein and decrease the carbs. What you do with 'fat' varies from one diet to the other. Here's the secret (and the thing you can really take away from these diets when coming up with your own personal diet): protein/meat has relatively low calorie density (compared to carbs and fat) but helps you feel satisfied sooner and stay full longer. So in other words, this is another low calorie diet 'in disguise'. You'll see that ALL weight loss diets are just way to get you to eat less calories.

Ease of following: In the short term, not too difficult, especially if you are a carnivore. Due to the popularity of these diets, there are tons of recipe books and frozen dinners available. In the long term, some people have hard time staying on a diet with so many rules. Some are more strict than others on the amount of carbs you can take. The 'no carb' diets can be very difficult, because carbs actually make up a high percentage of Americans' diets and are difficult to avoid.

Medical safety: Pretty safe. There are some concerns about the extreme diets that force your body into ketoacidosis (due to no carbs) which is basically a form of starvation. WARNING: any time your body thinks its starving the metabolism slows down, and you NEED exercise to keep it up. All weight loss diets cause your metabolism to go down to some extent, but these tend to do so a little more (theoretically). Also there are some that feel so much protein can be hard on the kidneys if the diet is maintained for an extended time, but I haven't heard that this has shown to be true when studied.

Chance of keeping weight off: If you stay on the diet, it will. But if you come off of the diet, you will likely gain the weight back and more (due to decreased metabolism) if the diet was done without exercise. The best practice would be to transition to a more 'regular' diet that still keeps the calories down enought to maintain your weight.

Conclusion: It works... But long term is rarely successful.

What you should take from this diet: LEARN about calorie content in your food. Eat foods you like, but limit your portions to limit your calories (see previous posts on this). But feel free to add some additional protein in if you are finding it difficult to stay satisfied/not hungry before your next meal.