JGL53

This is what happens when you just jump into a thread without reading the previous posts. Both of your concerns have already been adequately addressed.

Have a nice day. And, remember, "A" always equals "A".

Red Expendable

I train for strength, and from what I've seen, a lot of bodybuilders train for strength as well. If you see someone is is muscular like a bodybuilder - it's safe to say that they are strong.

Strength has practical advantages OUTSIDE of the gym. Unless you push pencils and jockey computers all day and nothing else.

Of course, a 'bodybuilder' might be training in the gym or at home so they can shape their body to look good (to them) or for other people (competing for money! or showing off at the beach) - but the muscularity you see in someone who lifts weights is for the most part the by-product of strength training (hopefully not steroids!). What is building all those big muscles on a body builder? Lifting heavy weight.

Practical strength training is something that I practice routinely. Certain strength training exercises are more practical than others.

Example: Deadlift, pull-ups, squats, overhead pressing type exercises, etc.

In doing so, I have shaped my body where I look good (to me and my g/f at least!) - although I don't consider myslef a bodybuilder per se, and I'm not as nearly bulky and huge as what you would see in the muscle mags.

Also, if you are getting your idea of a body builder from what you see in the mags, remember that these guys probably pump up on all kind of steroids, and supplements, etc., and who knows what else. Not to mention the tans, diueretics, and waxing, oil, etc - to make'em look even more muscular.


If you training for STRENGTH - pushing your body's limits continuously, to get as strong as possible - you can have a body with great muscle definition as well as have a powerful body you can use to defend yourself in a fight, help you excel in sports or other like activities, and also to benefit you in everyday activities or situations you might encounter. Like getting down that heavy box on the top shelf while balancing on a ladder...


Well, I've babbled enough off the subject, I'm shutting up now.

RedEx

Nuno Figueira

Now, now, are you trying to make us go crazy? Please read the damned thread. Do you have ANY proof that atkins isn't healthy?


Did it ever cross your mind that this exact statement holds true for ANY OTHER CALORIE RESTRICTED DIET???:banghead:

Of course that if you go back to eating a crappy hypercaloric diet you gain back weight, this is not the diet's fault, it's your fault.

JGL53

http://www.lowcarb.ca/articlesb/article344.html


This is the highly influential article published late last year in THE NEW YORK TIMES that was a good gathering up of the facts that show our government has been bullshitting the American people for about 30 years regarding what has or has not been demonstrated to a healthy diet - not that they don't bullshit us on other issues like the Iraq war.

this is a rather long article, but for those that are interested in the subject, there it is.

Godot

Thanks for the link, JGL53. A long read, for sure. It should be noted that the author is strongly biased (hell, just from reading the title, that much should be obvious!), and the entire article is his opinion supported largely by hearsay.
I'm also 'mildly' annoyed by the tone of the article that the public has been conscientiously lied to, and that the results of a single study can be taken as 'proof' either for or against an issue.
As to the public being lied to, this suggests that: 1) there is a concerted effort on the part of the establishment to hide information from the public (cast yourself as maligned! It's a great way to garner support!). Guidelines and recommendations are based upon the best available data. What determines which research is to recieve grants (and therefore add to our knowledge base) is definitely controlled by politics to some extent. Always has, and always will; scientists and funding boards are human and are susceptible to whims and bias of their own. 2) there is an ultimate 'truth' to be dispensed and every change in position demonstrates that the scientific community was 'caught with its pants down.' This is patently absurd. Dieticians/nutritionists are still trying to combat the misapprehension that dietary sources of cholesterol are bad for you. When the recommendation was made, it was done so on the basis of the best evidence at hand. We now know otherwise, but the old message isn't being wholly dissregarded for the new message.
This kind of misinterpretation of the scientific process as definitive really bothers me. Causal relationships do not exist when dealing with food/nutrition/diet. There are too many confounding variables involved to make a claim of sufficient strength to be causal.

JGL53

Well, fine, maybe you have a point here, or maybe even several points. Or maybe not.

Personally, I get the feeling, perhaps in error, that yours is a case analogous to the 'unreconstructed' white southerners that live around me in fairly large numbers. The civil war (or war for southern independence) was lost. The slaves were set free. After a longer struggle, segregation was ended. Though many of them made the ultimate sacrifice, MLK and the forces for good reigned triumphant in the end.
And, yet, the rednecks still wave their stars and bars as an "in your face'. As long as THEIR flag is on various southern state flags, they affect a 'What defeat?' air of superiority, ignoring the rest of reality.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I just observe that people in general, similar to the aforementioned rednecks, have a tremendous desire NEVER to be seen as losers, no matter what the facts obviously are, no matter how the tide has turned. Apparently, you and yours are no different. You and yours are human. Congratulations.

But I digress. Actually, in rereading Taubes, I see the articles title is in the form of a 'What if' question, and he uses qualifiers in the first few paragraphs like 'might', 'maybe' and 'possibly'. Maybe Taubes is biased, but you have to give him credit for subtlety, don't you think? And maybe he was just 'biased' by the facts. Possible? Maybe? Might be?

The facts were clear and obvious to the 'non-biased', i.e., those who had nothing to lose, in terms of 'face' or income (e.g. Godot) for several decades (As previously observed, Atkins got his low carb diet idea from an article in the AMA journal in 1963).

Taubes just listed the facts in an highly influential public arena. He poked the stick in the hive - and mightily pissed off the little government-ass kissing dieticians, government paid(off) researchers, et al. How could Mr. Taubes be so mean? Didn't he realize that people's feelings could get hurt?

For those indisposed to reading the whole article, here's an excerpt revealing a sample of Taubes alleged fact-free opinion and bias (Ha, Ha, fucking Ha) in revealing the 'thinking' that lay behind the governement's dietary 'recommendations' in recent decades:

".....the N.I.H. spent several hundred million dollars trying to demonstrate a connection between eating fat and getting heart disease and, despite what we might think, it failed. Five major studies revealed no such link. A sixth, however, costing well over $100 million alone, concluded that reducing cholesterol by drug therapy could prevent heart disease. The N.I.H. administrators then made a leap of faith. Basil Rifkind, who oversaw the relevant trials for the N.I.H., described their logic this way: they had failed to demonstrate at great expense that eating less fat had any health benefits. But if a cholesterol-lowering drug could prevent heart attacks, then a low-fat, cholesterol-lowering diet should do the same. 'It’s an imperfect world,’ Rifkind told me. 'The data that would be definitive is ungettable, so you do your best with what is available.'’’

ps418

I did not get the impression from Taube that nutritionists have been lying. Maybe a wee bit dogmatic about low-carb alternatives, sure, but not lying.

Patrick

JGL53

Godot may, possibly, could have a genius IQ. Hard to say. But most dieticians, nutritionists, whatever the heck they're called, are not that bright. They are merely required to have excellent rote memory, i.e., the ability to regurgitate government dietary 'recommendations' to whoever will listen - or, unfortunately, to whoever will pay them for their 'advice'.

The dietician used by our local state newspaper (circulation several hundred thousand) just this last week repeated the "eat a diet less that thirty per cent fat" BS in her weekly column.

(Actually, the government has recently revised its recommendation to 'allow' up to thirty five per cent fat in ones diet. Apparently the post office lost the last notice sent her by her reptilian overlords.)

Godot

Just for the record: my meagre income is derived from teaching and the occasional third-party lecture, not as a practising nutritionist. I was getting at the sensationalism present in the media. The story wouldn't have read half so well if he had spent his time sitting on the fence. I interpreted his statements couched in qualifiers as rhetorical rather than genuine uquestions. I see this as leading the reader to his predetermined conclusions. Biased? Damn straight. Unexpected? No; it's something we're all guilty of. You're doing it too. Unproved (and unprovable) assertion. Thanks, anyways. It all boils down to the evidence as circulated in the reputable journals and the individual practitioner's willingness to devote the time to remain current.

JGL53

Sick humor break - see obit for Robert Atkins.


http://stiffs.com/recentdeaths.cfm#bottom