The Atkins Diet ~ What You Should Know ~ Where Should You Go?

The Atkins diet is really called the Atkins nutritional approach. Dr. Robert Atkins invented this low-carb diet. He had gained a great deal of weight while he attended medical school. A medical Journal had an article about a diet. He decided to improve it and release it under his name.

Dr. Atkins had rather radical theories about the nature of weight gain as expressed in the Atkins diet. He disagreed that saturated fats were the problem. The carbohydrates are the culprits. In fact Atkins thought that the focus on fats had made a problem much worse. Carbohydrates are used to make up for the lack of fat in low fat foods. Dieters were being tricked into eating foods that would cause them to gain more weight.

The Atkins diet changes this. Once Carbohydrates were removed from a diet, people would burn more stored body fat. That’s the goal of weight loss. The goal wasn’t necessarily to take in fewer calories. The diet would work because it burned calories. In fact Atkins cited a study that claimed the body would burn an extra 950 calories on his diet. But later reviews of his studies found that his claims were false.

The Atkins diet also could help people with type 2 diabetes.. Type 2 diabetes is most often associated with obesity. Weight loss associated with the Atkins diet, as with any diet, would therefore help people manage type 2 diabetes. In addition the Atkins diet also addresses the measure of taking in fewer carbohydrates which is part of managing type 2 diabetes, so that Dr. Atkins suggested people on his diet would no longer need to monitor their blood sugar or take insulin. The medical world, in general, disagrees with Atkins on this point. They agree lower carbohydrates help with type 2 diabetes, but there is no proof that carbohydrates cause the disease.

What are the specific rules of the Atkins diet? It consists of four steps or phases which are induction, ongoing weight loss, pre-maintenance and lifetime maintenance. Here are more details of Induction which is the most crucial of the phases.

The Induction phase is the most difficult phase of the Atkins diet. It lasts for about two weeks. During induction the dieter can consume only about 20 grams of carbohydrates on a day to day basis. The lack of carbohydrates will prompt the body to convert fat into fatty acids for fuel, a process known as ketosis. Weight loss of 20 pounds over this period isn’t uncommon and that’s a staggering amount.

The other Atkins diet phases are generally used for determining the levels of carbohydrates ideal for losing weight and for maintaining a standard weight‚ not gaining weight. The diet lost popularity after Dr. Atkins died, but it’s still popular.