The Diet Martyr
Health Maintenance
“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” (WHO, 1948) I cannot emphasize the importance of health maintenance too much. For a lot of people, combining exercise and work is a challenge because their bodies do not respond well to a morning regimen and they get home too late to go to the gym in the evening. Recently, Americans are willing to try a regimen first promulgated by Dr. Robert Atkins several decades ago-The Diet Martyr, which means that a diet low in fat and high in legumes and vegetables helped a person lose weight and stay healthy. (Fishman, n.d)
Atkins, a voracious reader of medical literature, decided to conduct an experiment with the low-carbohydrate approach, …show more content…
A concerned Congress called him to a hearing on fad diet in 1973, where he was labeled not only bad for your health but impudent. But, clearly, Atkins had an appetite for controversy. He was pugnacious, almost aggressively open-minded, and also, says his wife, “a showman”.
“He was pugnacious, open-minded, ‘a showman,’ says his wife-he did a stint as a Catskills comic waiter.”(Taubes, 2015) This was the glorious summer that a piece by Gary Taubes in The New York Times Magazine asserted that low-fat diets had failed, and provided scientific evidence, of the kind Atkins himself never did, for why. The article did not claim that Atkins was right, but said he might be, and that was enough. The American Heart Association had got it wrong. Instead, the article said, this cocky diet doc-who’d always seemed a sideshow to real obesity research-might just be on the money.
In 1963, Atkins read about a low-carbohydrate diet in the Journal of the American Medical Association. (Efficacy and Safety of Low-Carbohydrate Diets, 2003) But the JAMA article argued that the real cause of weight gain wasn’t fatty food but carbohydrates, like
“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” (WHO, 1948) I cannot emphasize the importance of health maintenance too much. For a lot of people, combining exercise and work is a challenge because their bodies do not respond well to a morning regimen and they get home too late to go to the gym in the evening. Recently, Americans are willing to try a regimen first promulgated by Dr. Robert Atkins several decades ago-The Diet Martyr, which means that a diet low in fat and high in legumes and vegetables helped a person lose weight and stay healthy. (Fishman, n.d)
Atkins, a voracious reader of medical literature, decided to conduct an experiment with the low-carbohydrate approach, …show more content…
A concerned Congress called him to a hearing on fad diet in 1973, where he was labeled not only bad for your health but impudent. But, clearly, Atkins had an appetite for controversy. He was pugnacious, almost aggressively open-minded, and also, says his wife, “a showman”.
“He was pugnacious, open-minded, ‘a showman,’ says his wife-he did a stint as a Catskills comic waiter.”(Taubes, 2015) This was the glorious summer that a piece by Gary Taubes in The New York Times Magazine asserted that low-fat diets had failed, and provided scientific evidence, of the kind Atkins himself never did, for why. The article did not claim that Atkins was right, but said he might be, and that was enough. The American Heart Association had got it wrong. Instead, the article said, this cocky diet doc-who’d always seemed a sideshow to real obesity research-might just be on the money.
In 1963, Atkins read about a low-carbohydrate diet in the Journal of the American Medical Association. (Efficacy and Safety of Low-Carbohydrate Diets, 2003) But the JAMA article argued that the real cause of weight gain wasn’t fatty food but carbohydrates, like