The Atkins Diet

The common name for the ‘Atkins Nutritional Approach’ is the ‘Atkins Diet’, which was the invention of Doctor Robert Atkins. Dr. Atkins had gained 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 release it as his own.

Atkins, in his Atkins diet book, stated that he believed that the prevalent theories about weight gain were terribly wrong. First, he dismissed the notion that saturated fats were bad for weight loss; instead he said it was it was the carbohydrates that caused 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 shifted the focus. Atkins said that by avoiding carbohydrates, people would burn their stored body fats. And, of course, if you lose the fat, you lose the weight. He said it was not only a matter of eating less. Atkins postulated that a diet could actually help you burn calories and that The Atkins Diet supposedly burned more calories than were being consumed everyday. But the claims were contested.

Dr. Atkins also touted the positive influence that his diet should have on people with Type 2 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is a disease you usually get early in life, but Type 2 is more often closely associated with diet and surplus 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 does one have to do to follow the Atkins diet? Well, it goes in four phases – Induction; On-Going Weight loss; Pre-maintenance; and Lifetime Maintenance. This is a brief synopsis of the first 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 limited ” up to 20 grammes per day. The goal 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 large ” some Atkins dieters report losses of 5-10 lbs. a week or more.

The purposes of the final three phases in the Atkins diet are to learn the ideal carbohydrate levels for the next two phases, which are continued weight loss and weight maintenance. Many millions of people are still losing the weight they want to on the Atkins Diet ” but beware the risks of taking in too much cholesterol and fat.