Atkins - Dr. Atkins new diet revolution: completely updated

The revision of this book was a massive team effort. Michael Bernstein, senior vice president of Atkins Health and Medical Information Services at Atkins Nutritionals, Inc., led the team. Olivia Bell Buehl, the companys information director, coordinated and edited the copy. Contributing writer Bill Fryer reworked much of the manuscript.

A heartfelt thanks goes to the following employees at my companies, all of whom contributed time, energy and expertise to this effortAt Atkins Nutritionals, Inc.: Valerie Berkowitz, MS, RD, CDE; Cynthia Cicchesi; Rebecca Freedman; Stephanie Grozdea; Colette Heimowitz, MS; Richard Hirsch; Kathy Maguire; Dan OBrien; Tamara Richardson and Matt Spolar. At the Atkins Center for Complementary Medicine: Geri Brewster, RD, MPH, CDN; Jacqueline Eberstein, RN; Patrick Fratellone, MD; Eva Katz, RD, MPH and Aliceson Swigart, CCN, CPT. A special thanks goes to Paul D. Wolff, the chief executive officer of our company, and Scott Kabak, the chief operating officer, both of whom were instrumental in getting this project off the ground.

The book also benefited from the contributions of Lynn Prowitt-Smith and Janet Blake.

Finally, this project would not have occurred had it not been for the contribution of literary agent Mike Cohn and the superb efforts of associate publisher and editor Jennifer Hershey and her team at Avon Books/HarperCollins.

Lose weight! Increase energy! Look great! This book will show you how its done.

Not only that, it will show you how to change your life once and for all.

You hold in your hands a book that has sold more than ten million copies since 1992. Probably two to three times that number of people have followed its teachings. Most of you will have heard people say its the most effective weight loss plan theyve tried. It is!

If youre like many people, youve been through the weight loss wars. Name it and youve probably tried it, whether its a low-fat diet, a food-combining diet, the grapefruit diet, liquid fasts, other fad diets and on and on. Youve learned how to count calories, but ultimately with no success. Even if you lost weight, you were often hungry and always felt deprived. Then when you went back to your old way of eating, those pounds crept back, often joined by a few more.

If this scenario sounds all too familiar, I have a solution that will help end the game of yo-yo dieting once and for all. Instead, Ill help you adopt a permanent way of eating that:

• lets you lose weight without counting calories.
  
• makes you feel and look better.
  
• naturally re-energizes you.
  
• keeps lost pounds off forever with a new lifetime nutritional approach that includes rich, delicious foods.

But in addition to weight loss, there is an even more important benefit: The nutritional approach youll learn about here is also a revolutionary method for living a long, healthy life. I want my readers to say: I knew Id lose weight, but I never realized I would feel so much healthier.

The typical modern American dietor, as I sometimes call it, the high-sugar horrorsmakes you fat. In the short term, its also a sure road to daily misery, making you irritable and tired during the day and sleepless at night. In the long term, it leads grimly on toward heart disease, hypertension, diabetes and a host of other catastrophes.

What Im going to show you is not just a way to lose weight, but a way to eat for the rest of your life so you can be slim and healthy and stay that way. For too many people, the word diet implies not an approach to eating for a lifetime, but a two-months-on, ten-months-off weight loss game that they play with themselvesyear after year. That is not what this book is about! I believe this so strongly that from now on Ill speak not of the Atkins Diet, but of the Atkins Nutritional Approach or doing Atkins or even just Atkins. Its a shorthand that others have been using, so Im going to start using it, too.

The Atkins Nutritional Approach will make you healthy because it is different from the typical American way of eating. Simply put, you avoid the negative consequences of too much carbohydrate intake, all of which can be attributed to too much insulin release in your body.

Would you like to see what I mean? Well, since they say one picture is worth a thousand words, how about two?

The Two Pictures

In the first picture, I am standing behind a huge table heaped with food. My expression is a mixture of pride and anticipation, and no wonder. There are mounds of seeds and nuts, platters of fish, a lobster in drawn butter, well-seasoned fish, turkey and duck and certainly ajuicy steak. Youll spy an omelette that would do any breakfast table proud. Theres no lack of variety here. I see vegetables in abundance, fresh green salads drenched in healthy olive oil-based dressing over-flowing their bowls, and peeking out through the foliage, blueberries, strawberries and raspberries topped with whipped cream. Theres a variety of cheeses. And since this is a picture of the food youll be eating after youve lost your extra pounds and have reached the Lifetime Maintenance phase of Atkins, you will also notice a glass of wine, pan-fried sweet potatoes, a platter of melon and slices of peaches and plums. Finally, developments in creating controlled carbohydrate substitute ingredients make it possible to also place a pleasing array of controlled carb bread, cheesecake, ice cream and cookies on the groaning table.

Its a mouthwatering spread, and Im hovering over it with a hungry eye. To my mind, the food Ive just envisioned is quite luxurious. If you believe that weight loss requires self-deprivation, Im going to insist on teaching you otherwise. I equate healthy eating with gastronomic pleasure and, soon, you will too.

My second picture is of you. Im very hopeful that it resembles the future you.

The you in this picture Im conjuring up is finally the weight youve always had as your goal, or fairly close. You feel greatfull of energy. Your skin is glowing with health. If youve been exercising, your toned muscles show it. The you in this picture isnt worried about weight loss anymore. You no longer need to spend your time planning the stages of a new diet, constantly concerned about your eating, feeling guilty when you break promises youve made to yourself. After all, youve found a nutritional approach that will last you for a healthy and vigorous lifetime, and its become so natural you hardly have to think about it anymore. Its second nature.