Reviews

Atkins updates his 20-year-old best seller, Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution ( LJ 9/15/72), with a holistic approach to health and well-being. He repeats his controversial, questionably valid premise that the elimination of carbohydrates from the diet will result in weight loss, good health, and euphoria. Contrary to current thinking, Atkins promotes a diet of protein and fat in four stages: induction, ongoing weight loss, premaintenance, and maintenance. Case histories document his achievements. However, his verbose text, bloated by rhetoric and generalizations, may overwhelm lay readers, who may not be able to distinguish between fact and speculation. Useful appendixes include menus, recipes, and a carbohydrate gram counter. For libraries where Atkins's earlier works were popular.-- Marilyn Rosenthal, Nassau Community Coll. Lib., Garden City, N.Y.

Twenty years after publication of his bestselling Diet Revolution , Dr. Atkins is back and ready to raise a new ruckus. Once again, he contends that weight gain has little to do with fat intake; indeed, he will demonstrate ``how much fat you can burn off, while eating liberally, even luxuriously.''79 He encourages dieters to revel in traditional sources of protein like red meat, and to eat eggs and bacon for breakfast82-3 . Rapid weight loss, he promises, will be achieved through his 14-day ``induction'' diet, in which almost all carbohydrates are virtually banned from the table, forcing the body to go into a fat-burning metabolic state called ketosis. He still urges broad-based vitamin supplements to take up any nutritional slack. So what's changed in 20 years? Atkins says he now is more interested in ``complete wellness'' than in dropping pounds quickly; he stresses that the ``induction'' is not to be considered a lifetime regimen unless, of course, the dieter has particularly stubborn ``metabolic resistance.'' Readers of his last book may notice some defensiveness--two decades of criticism clearly have taken their toll. Nonetheless, there is enough of the old Atkins to make this the most arrogant diet book to appear in a long while. sic, ital `` I hope to amaze you ,'' he writes, `` as I amazed millions of dieters in the past .'' And that's when he's in his modest mode. 75,000 first printing; Literary Guild alternate. (July)