Sunday, January 11, 2009

Atkins Diet The Low Carb Diet Facts

By Ron C George

The short name for the Atkins nutritional approach is the Atkins diet. Dr. Robert Atkins invented this low-carb diet. He had gained a great deal of weight while he attended medical school. Atkins read about a low-carb diet in one of his medical journals. He perfected it and released it to the public.

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. Instead it was carbohydrates that led to the weight problems Americans have. In fact Atkins thought that the focus on fats had made a problem much worse. Many low-fat foods are packed with carbohydrates. Eating a low-fat version of foods was actually less healthy.

This all changes in the Atkins diet. He shifts dieters' metabolism to burn body fats by cutting out carbohydrates from their diets. Once the fat was burned, the pounds will follow. The goal wasn't necessarily to take in fewer calories. Dr. Atkins held that your diet could actually help you burn calories. The Atkins diet supposedly burned an extra 950 calories everyday. That sounded good but it wasn't 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. Weight loss associated with the Atkins diet, as with any diet, would therefore help people manage 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.

What steps does one take to follow the Atkins diet? Induction, ongoing weight loss, pre-maintenance and lifetime maintenance are the four necessary phases of the diet. Here is an overview of the most important phase - Induction.

The first phase of the Atkins diet, Induction, is like the boot camp for the diet. Atkins is flexible as to the time period but recommends two weeks. During this phase carbohydrates are severely limited only up to 20 grams per day. The lack of carbohydrates will prompt the body to convert fat into fatty acids for fuel a process known as ketosis. Weight loss during this phase can be extreme some Atkins followers reported losses of 5-10 pounds a week.

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. - 16083

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