Following the Atkins Diet

The popular 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 reading about a new diet in the 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 prevalent theories about putting on weight were completely wrong. First, he dismissed the notion that saturated fats were bad; instead he said it was it was carbohydrates that led to the weight problems Americans have these days. Atkins held that our obsession with avoiding fat actually aggravated the problem. He pointed out that the low-fat foods that were high in carbohydrates were not helping the nation, which probably meant that people on a diet often ate foods that were worse for them than what they had normally eaten.

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 held 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 that his diet could have on suffers of type 2 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is a disease you get early in life, but type 2 is often closely associated with diet and excess 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 ought to be avoided with type 2 diabetes regardless of the caloric intake, so because of this aspect of the diet, Atkins claimed that those who suffer type 2 diabetes would no longer need medication such as insulin. In general, doctors disagree with Atkins on this point, although they do agree, however, 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 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 consume 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 extreme " some Atkins dieters reported losses of 5-10 pounds 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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