Following the Atkins Diet

The popular name for the ‘Atkins Nutritional Approach’ is the ‘Atkins Diet’ which was the invention of Doctor Robert Atkins. He had put on a lot of weight while in medical school & after reading about a certain diet in the medical journal he decided to improve it & release it under his own name.

Atkins in his Atkins diet book stated that he was sure that the prevalent 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 declared that on the contrary our obsession with avoiding fat actually aggravated 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 shifts 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 question of eating less. Atkins postulated that your diet could actually help you burn calories & The Atkins Diet supposedly burned more calories than were consumed everyday. But the claims were contested.

Dr. Atkins also promulgated the positive influence that his diet should have on people with Type 2 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is disease you usually get early in life but Type 2 is more often closely associated with diet & excess body weight. Therefore 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 ought to be avoided by those with Type 2 diabetes regardless of the caloric intake which the Atkins diet does so Atkins claimed that those who suffer Type 2 diabetes would no longer need medication such as insulin. Doctors do not agree with Atkins on this point although they do agree that a lower carbohydrate intake helps control Type 2 diabetes but there is no proof that carbohydrates cause diabetes.

What are the procedures one has to follow to do the Atkins diet? It goes in four phases Induction; On-Going Weight loss; Pre-maintenance; & Lifetime Maintenance. Here follows a brief precis of the most important phase The Induction Phase.

The Induction phase is the most difficult of the phases in the Atkins diet. Atkins is flexible about how long it should last ” but recommends it lasts for two weeks. During this phase carbohydrate consumption is severely limited ” you can only eat up to 20 grammes per day. The idea is to enter a fat burning metabolic phase called ‘ketosis’ wherein the body starved of glucose starts to convert stored fat into the fatty acids needed to power the body. Weight loss during this phase is often large ” some Atkins dieters reported losses of 5-10 pounds a week or more.

Learning the ideal carbohydrate levels for weight loss & for day to day intake after the weight loss ends are the goals 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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