Diet
During the early years of his medical practice, stress and poor eating habits led Atkins to gain a considerable amount of weight. In 1963, at a weight of 224 pounds (100 kg), he decided to go on a restrictive diet based on the research of Dr. Alfred W. Pennington, who recommended removing all starch and sugar from meals. The article exploring the study of Pennington's work, titled "A New Concept in the Treatment of Obesity", was published in the October 1963 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association by Edgar S. Gordon, Marshall Goldberg, and Grace J. Chosy, and advocated for the complete elimination of sugar from the diet and a marked increase in both fat and protein. Atkins found immediate and lasting success on the plan, and began advertising its effects to his patients. While working as a medical consultant for AT&T, he even managed to help 65 patients there reach their ideal weight with his low-carbohydrate, ketogenic diet program.
In 1965, Atkins appeared on The Tonight Show to promote his weight loss plan and the diet he recommended was subsequently published in Vogue in 1970. The popularity of the plan with the magazine's female readership caused a surge in popularity for both Atkins and the magazine, and his dietary regime was known for many years as simply "The Vogue Diet". Atkins finally published his meal plans along with his own findings based on patient research in the book Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution in 1972. The book became an instant bestseller selling in millions of copies and led Atkins to release a series of cookbooks, health guides, and diet products in the coming decades.
The success of Atkins' commercial diet products also allowed the doctor to open the "Atkins Center for Complementary Medicine" in Manhattan, an holistic medicine center advocating alternative medicine practices. By the early 1990s, the center employed 87 people, and reported treating more than 50,000 patients. In 1998, Atkins also founded the nutrition and supplements company Atkins Nutritionals to promote his high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet, and the brand grew to include not only diet controlled carbohydrate, low-glycemic food products, but also a variety of lifestyle items that generated a revenue of over $100 million. By this time, Atkins' had revised his approach to allow for more flexibility and variety in the weight loss plan and had published Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution in 1992, which again became a best-seller selling more than 15 million copies nationwide.
Read more about this topic: Robert Atkins (nutritionist)
Famous quotes containing the word diet:
“I learned from my two years’ experience that it would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one’s necessary food, even in this latitude; that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength.... Yet men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Literary tradition is full of lies about poverty—the jolly beggar, the poor but happy milkmaid, the wholesome diet of porridge, etc.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The pills are a mother, but better,
every color and as good as sour balls.
I’m on a diet from death.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)