clint michels wrote:
>
>
> ok, id like go against the grain a little bit here and get some info
from you folks. ive been doing the atkins diet ( <20 per day) for the
last month. i have to say it works alot better then just doing what
mentzer says is the "optimal" diet plan.

I'd agree. I've been on a low carb plan for a year and a half now and
have stripped 90 lbs off. Now the trick is to keep adding muscle and try
to hold my bf% where it is.

> 1. you can eat as much as you want as long as your carbs are low. in
his book dr. atkins states this isnt a true statement, but that leads me
to reason #2.
>

Depends what you believe. Here's a study where the fed people on a low
carb diet up to *5400* additional calories from corn oil before they
started putting on weight. Perhaps there's a limit to how much fat the
body can deal with at once, but it does kind of throw a wrench in
calorie theory.

"In normal subjects, the fat content of a formula diet in the form of
corn oil and olive oil (but with constant carbohydrate and protein
intake) was raised continuously up to a daily ingestion of more than
6,800 fat calories. Under normal utilization of fat in the
gastrointestinal tract, it was seen that there was only a slight weight
gain, compared with the caloric intake. This effect was particularly
conspicuous with corn oil and less so with olive oil. The two oils
differ by their linoleic acid content. Based on these results, we
treated obese subjects with high fat, low carbohydrate diets. If the
carbohydrate content of the diet was not more than 50 to 60 g/day and
the fat content approximately 150 g/day, an average daily weight
reduction of 0.3 kg was achieved. The cholesterol and triglyceride
concentrations in the serum, which had been raised at the beginning of
the experiment, invariably showed a tendency towards normalization under
this dietary program."

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/26/2/197

> although mentzer developed the system of hit extremely well, i dont
think he looked at the diet objectively enough. ill be posting more on
this in the future. im hoping this sparks some interesting discussion as
this board has been very sparse as of late.

OTOH, he seemed to feel nutrition was of smaller importance than most.