Usefull Info About Atkins Diet

The Atkins diet is really called the Atkins nutritional approach. It was the brainchild of the doctor named Robert Atkins. He had gained a great deal of weight while he attended medical school. He read about this diet in the medical journal. He built on that diet and eventually made it popular.

Dr. Atkins had rather radical theories about the nature of weight gain as expressed in the Atkins diet. He held that saturated fats weren't as bad as people claim. Carbohydrates, found in potatoes, and breads, were the real problem. Atkins held that our obsession with fat actually worsened the problem. Carbohydrates are used to make up for the lack of fat in low fat foods. That meant people on a diet often ate foods that were worse than they normally ate.

The Atkins diet changes this. He shifts dieters' metabolism to burn body fats by cutting out carbohydrates from their diets. That's the goal of weight loss. It's not just a matter of eating less. Now it was all about what your diet can help you burn. The Atkins diet supposedly burned an extra 950 calories everyday. But the claims were not true.

Dr. Atkins also touted the positive influence this Atkins diet could have on people with type 2 diabetes. Being overweight is generally considered the major cause for type 2 diabetes. Therefore, by means of losing weight a person on the Atkins diet would be addressing their type 2 diabetes. But the Atkins diet is also 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 jury is still out in the medical world as to the causes of type 2 diabetes. So while science agrees with Atkins that lowering intake of Carbohydrates will help with the disease, it would disagree that the step alone would remove the necessity for medicine.

So just how does this Atkins diet work? It consists of four steps or phases which are induction, ongoing weight loss, pre-maintenance and lifetime maintenance. The details of the induction phase are as follows.

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 result of this phase should be ketosis; a metabolic reaction by which the body converts stored fat into fatty acids, generally prompted by a lack of glucose. Weight loss of 20 pounds over this period isn't uncommon and that's a staggering amount.

Learning the ideal carbohydrate levels for weight losing and for day to day intake after the weight loss ends are the purposes of the final three phases in the Atkins diet. Dr. Atkins himself died of complications of increased fat intake in his diet, which is something to keep in mind when choosing this diet.