Hi Lucia,

> my husband has decided to
> try Dr. Atkin's diet to control his hypoglycemia and lose some weight.

Good idea, in my opinion. Atkins has been steadfast for twenty some
years, taken a lot of heat, and stuck to his guns. There's a lot of
merit to his diet, I feel. It's not raw, includes some weird things
(that are problematic for many of the people I've worked with,
anyway, - like macadamia nuts and dairy products for instance), but
for the most part seems to be a sensible diet. (Lots of things are
attributed to this diet which Atkins does in fact advocate, by the
way). It's mostly a paleo diet.

Here's another odd thing I've found in my experience - this diet
seems to work VERY well for men (who LIKE it, first off, and find it
DO-ABLE secondly, and thirdly seem to lose tremendous amounts of
weight easily). But I have had only meager success with women on
this diet. This has been true over and over again - and it's not for
lack of trying. I've seem women who are DESPERATELY determined to
lose weight simply not be able to get into ketosis on this diet, or
lose any weight at all. It's a mystery to me.

This diet, by the way, has a number of web discussion groups (which
I haven't been able to look through), and I'm sure it's been
discussed over on Paleofood (which I am on lurkingly).

> He's been on a vegan diet for over two years now and has been unable to
> lose, believe it or not.  whenever he tried any fasting his blood sugar
> went crazy on him.

As for the first part, I'm not surprised. You can be a vegan and eat
piles of spaghetti and doughnuts, for instance, which might be
fattening. Lots of vegans I see are overweight.

> He heard about Atkins' approach and began to read up on
> it and it's the first time that he has found a health plan he can relate
> to and actively pursuing on his own. usually I drag him into these things.
> so I'm happy about that.

This is typical (at least in my experience). Husbands like this
diet. :) Maybe it's the hamburger thing. :) Or maybe it's just
because guys need more calories than women, and have intuitively
known this and therefore been skeptical about the multitudes of
low-cal low-fat low-health low-compliancy diets that have been
presented over the years.

Well I'd better do some work.

Love Liza
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[log in to unmask] (Liza May)