The Atkins diet is really called the Atkins nutritional approach. It’s a low-carb diet created by Robert Atkins. He had gained a great deal of weight while he attended medical school. A medical Journal had an article about a diet. He decided to improve it and release it under his name.
Atkins, in his Atkins Diet, believed prevailing theories about weight gain were all wrong. He held that saturated fats weren’t as bad as people claim. Instead it was carbohydrates that led to the weight problems Americans have. Atkins held that our obsession with fat actually worsened the problem. Many low-fat foods are packed with carbohydrates. That meant people on a diet often ate foods that were worse than they normally ate.
This all changes in the Atkins diet. By cutting out carbohydrates people would burn stored body fats. Once the fat was burned, the pounds will follow. The goal wasn’t necessarily to take in fewer calories. 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. As opposed to type 1 diabetes, type 2 is often closely associated with diet and people who weigh too much. So in general any diet that helps decrease weight will help address type 2 diabetes.
In addition the Atkins diet also addresses the measure of taking in fewer carbohydrates which is part of managing type 2 diabetes, so that Dr. Atkins suggested people on his diet would no longer need to monitor their blood sugar or take insulin.
But that’s counter to the prevailing medical theories regarding type 2 diabetes which, although recommending that lowered intake of carbohydrates and weight loss help manage diabetes, ascribe no causal relationship between carbohydrates and type 2 diabetes.
What steps does one take to follow the Atkins diet? It consists of four steps or phases which are induction, ongoing weight loss, pre-maintenance and lifetime maintenance. Here is an overview of the most important phase – Induction.
The Induction phase is the most difficult phase of the Atkins diet. This phase should be followed for a period of two weeks. During induction the dieter can consume only about 20 grams of carbohydrates on a day to day basis.
The goal is to enter a fat burning metabolic phase called ketosis when the body, starved of glucose, will begin converting stored fat into fatty acids needed to power the body. During this phase weight loss can reach as much as 10 pounds per week.
The other Atkins diet phases are generally used for determining the levels of carbohydrates ideal for losing weight and for maintaining a standard weight – not gaining weight. Millions of people are still losing weight on this diet – but beware the dangers of taking in too much fat.
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