Atkins, Fruit and When I’m Wrong

For as long as I’ve been interested in nutrition, I’ve acknowledged that the Atkins diet is an excellent way to lose fat quickly. However, I’ve also thought the diet was nutrient poor due to its restrictions on whole grains, some vegetables and fruit.  I eventually saw the light on whole grains as nutrient robbing and unnecessary. Then I came around to Atkins point of view that it is best to avoid the starchy vegetables. What about fruit?

This is what I wrote last June in the post When Writing a Diet Book, The First Rule is to Slam the Competition:

Dr. Atkins taught the world about ketosis and low-carb dieting.  He understood the damage sugars and processed carbohydrates were doing to the dieter.  Again, despite his nonsense about avoiding fruits and his obsession with staying in ketosis for fat loss, the book held clues to at least part of the equation.

I now think I’ve been wrong about fruit as well. Maybe fruit should also best avoided on a fat loss diet.  What about all those vitamins? As I discussed in the post My Super Immunity Project Revisited, once you remove the insulin spiking carbohydrates, vitamin absorption increases. Meat, seafood and non-starchy vegetables provide all the nutrients a body needs.

Photo itty bitty baby pear by suttonhoo

Then there is damage caused by fructose. More  evolutionary nutritional writers are coming to the conclusion that fructose may be more responsible for fat gain than even glucose. From the post Fructose, Vitamin C and Calcium by NephroPal:

It should be no coincidence that fruit trees had a survival advantage with the bearing of their fruit. Fructose inhibits the brain entry of the satiety (fullness) hormone LEPTIN into the brain. This would entail increased hunger and encourage greater intake of the tree’s fruit – ensuring further seed dispersal. This is why I have referred to them as “sneaky fruit trees.” They produce the sweet substance fructose that in return not only increases hunger but also is addictive. Such that withdrawal of sugar (which is 50% fructose) stimulates stress.  Glucose (as seen in starch) is not the problem but fructose. Thus, high fructose consumption correlates with the metabolic syndrome – diabetes, hypertension, obesity, high uric acid levels, and low HDL, high LDL, high triglycerides.

Dr. Atkins was right, I was wrong. If you are trying to lose fat, you are best to avoid fruit as you are sending hormonal signals to store body fat and inhibiting leptin, which tells your brain to stop eating. In the December post Physique Hacking, I alluded to a new experiment. Since mid-November, I’ve cut my fruit intake down by 80-90%. For my entire life, I’ve consumed fruit daily. Most days, I would consume multiple servings. Instead of treating fruit as a healthy store of nutrients, I now treat it as something to eat more like a dessert.

I’d love to say that cutting my fruit intake leaned me out, but I’m already pretty lean. I will say that I tend to gain some weight during the low daylight months of December and January. Not this year.