The Atkins Diet

The common name for the ‘Atkins Nutritional Approach’ is the ‘Atkins Diet’, which was the brainchild of Doctor Robert Atkins. Dr. Atkins had put on a lot of surplus weight while he was studying in medical school and after coming across a new diet in a medical journal, he made up his mind to improve on it and publish it as his own.

Atkins, in his Atkins diet book, wrote that he believed that the current theories about weight gain were terribly wrong. First, he dismissed the idea that saturated fats were bad for weight loss; instead he said it was it was the carbohydrates that led to the weight problems Americans have these days. Atkins held that on the contrary, our obsession with avoiding fat actually worsened the problem. He pointed out that the low-fat diet foods on the market were high in carbohydrates but were not helping the nation, which probably meant that people on a ‘normal’ diet often ate foods that were worse for them than what they had been eating before.

The Atkins diet moved the focus. Atkins said that by avoiding carbohydrates, people would consume stored body fats. And, of course, if you lose the fat, you lose the weight. He said it was not just a matter of eating less. Atkins postulated that your diet could actually help you burn calories and The Atkins Diet supposedly burned more calories than were consumed everyday. But the claims were contested.

Dr. Atkins also touted the positive influence this Atkins diet could have on suffers of type 2 diabetes. As opposed to type 1 diabetes, type 2 is often closely associated with diet and surplus body weight. So, it should follow that any diet that helps decrease weight will help people with type 2 diabetes. The Atkins diet is low in carbohydrates, which must be avoided with type 2 diabetes regardless of caloric intake, so by means of this aspect of the diet Atkins claimed those who suffer type 2 diabetes would no longer need medication such as insulin. The medical world, in general, disagrees with Atkins on this point. They do agree, however, that a lower carbohydrate intake helps with type 2 diabetes, but there is no proof that carbohydrates cause the disease.

What are the steps one has to take to follow the Atkins diet? It is followed in four phases – Induction; On-Going Weight loss, Pre-maintenance and Lifetime Maintenance. Here is an overview of the most important phase – The Induction Phase.

The Induction phase is probably the most difficult of the phases in the Atkins diet. Atkins is rather flexible about how long it should last ” but recommends two weeks. During this time, carbohydrate consumption should be severely curtailed ” up to 20 grammes per day. The idea is to enter a fat burning metabolic process called ‘ketosis’ which is when the body, being starved of glucose, begins to convert previously stored fat into the fatty acids needed to run the body. Weight loss during this period is often extreme ” some Atkins dieters report losses of 5-10 lbs. a week or more.

Learning the ideal carbohydrate levels for weight loss and for day to day intake after the weight loss ends, are the purposes of the three final phases in the Atkins diet. Millions of people are still losing the weight they want to on this diet ” but beware the dangers of taking in too much fat.

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