A big hat tip to Levi for pointing out this article from 2003 about how computer geeks love Atkins because it works, goes against the mainstream, and is almost the equivalent of "hacking" the body instead of software.
Many times in working with software programs I have tried to get the system to do things by tricking it. No, the software wasn't built for it, but if we did this and then did that, it might work. Now, is Atkins like that or is the problem that we have been following the wrong "software procedures" in the first place. We have been stuffing our bodies with carbs per the US Mandate that everyone's body works the same way. We've been drinking high fructose corn syrup and avoiding fat of any kind, the fat that satiates your hunger.
The most controversial aspect of low-carb dieting -- which is only now being studied -- is the claim that you can actually eat more calories on a low-carb regime than you could on a low-fat one, and still lose weight. To borrow some jargon from the world of engineering: There's the possibility that you can actually run your body at a "specification" it wasn't designed for, in order to burn off more fat.
"I firmly believe that the low-carb system used by Atkins is a perfect example of hacking your body," writes Sosik-Hamor. "Massive reduction of carbs and carefully designing a balanced diet allows you to safely push the body into a state of ketosis and excrete fat out of the system faster than the standard burn rate of 1 pound per 3,500 calories. When in full induction mode I can eat 3,000 to 4,000 calories per day and lose up to 4 pounds per week."
But Searls warns against taking the hacking metaphor too far. Overclocking a computer processor has negative aspects that he believes don't have parallels in the low-carb dieting world.
"I think on the downside of what that metaphor suggests is that you are operating your body out of spec," says Searls. "Overclocking says that your body is specced for a certain performance speed, and overclocking it gets you a tradeoff between performance and heat, essentially."
"In a way, you are in fact burning off some of your body fat, and in that respect the metaphor is accurate. It's not accurate in the sense that you may be damaging your body in some way. It raises the suggestion that maybe you're doing something a bit unhealthy. And I don't think that's the case."
Godwin goes even further: "It might be that we're designed actually to operate that way, instead of eating a whole bunch of processed carbs. [With a low-carb diet] it actually may be that we're gearing our diets to how we should be eating. It might be a feature, not a bug."
It is a feature! And read the whole article on hackers and low carbing!
I'd be interested to know if any of my readers are in the computer field... Please comment!
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