Chewing The Fat

Richard Lewis

Dr. Ron Hunninghake has been getting excellent results by using the Atkins Approach with co-learners and the people who have come to the Lunch and Lectures he has given covering this subject.

Dr. Atkins' book. Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution, was first published in 1970 and has sold millions of copies. His latest book, the one Dr. Ron is using, was published in 2002 as Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution.

Dr. Ron does not see the book so much as a diet to lose weight but as a guideline for a new lifestyle. When used in this way, it works much better. But Dr. Ron points out that Dr. Atkins was the doctor to promote the diet plan in the United States and the doctor to take the heat for promoting it. But there were others in Europe who promoted the low carbohydrate method before 1970.

Speaking from his home in the United Kingdom, Barry Groves, an engineer and author, told the Townsend Letter for Doctors & Patients, "My interest in nutrition and its effects on health really began in 1962 when I was working in Singapore with the Royal Air Force. We had a problem, my wife and I were overweight. Since our marriage in 1957, each of us had gained nearly 18 Kilos. We had tried all the usual ways to lose weight: cutting calories, eating inert fillers, taking appetite suppressants, wearing sweaty clothes, indeed we tried just about every weight-loss idea goingãwith results that were decidedly short-term."

Then he came across a book, Eat Fat and Grow Slim by Dr. Richard Mackarness. It changed their lives. The book advocated what they thought was impossible: an unrestricted calorie diet for weight loss. This was a high animal fat, low carbohydrate way of eating. So they tried it. It worked and they have been doing it for over 40 years with success.

He retired from the Royal Air Force in 1982 and devoted himself to a full-time job of literature search, writing, and lecturing to support his way of life in the United Kingdom.

Life Without Bread by Dr. Christian Allan is based mostly on the clinical results of Dr. Wolfgang Lutz, an Austrian physician, who used low carbohydrate diets on thousands of patients for decades with success. Dr. Lutz had little success in the English speaking countries even though he published in several of the European medical journals and even wrote a book in 1967, that is until Allan published his book in 2000 that supported the low carbohydrate approach.

A Polish doctor, Jan Kwasniewski, is credited with developing the "Optimal Diet." His diet was one that used high animal fat, moderate protein, and low carbohydrates. Dr. Kwasniewski has published several books in Polish on his research, along with a cookbook designed to support his diet plan. Two English translations of his books are available, with the most recent one being Homo Optimus. This book contains both recipes and clinical effects of the Optimal Diet on a variety of diseases.

Michael and Mary Eades, who are both MDs, have authored two books recently: Protein Power and The Protein Power Lifesty Ie. The Eades' books grew out of their clinical experience with patients. Dr. Ron has used both of these books as part of his work with co-learners and lecture attendees.

Diana Schwarzbein, M.D., the author of The Schwarzbein Principle, is another proponent of the low carbohydrate diet principle. Schwarzbein has worked with type II diabetics using the low carbohydrate diet and discusses its success in this book. She feels that the low fat, high carbohydrate diet pushed by most medical and nutritional authorities is the path to disease.

This is a short review of those who promoted the Atkins plan in Europe before Dr. Atkins began in 1970 and of those who have supported the process in recent years. But Dr. Atkins was the person to push the plan in the United States and the one who took on the medical and nutritional authorities for over 30 years to see the plan become a popular success.