Atkins Diet
The short name for the Atkins nutritional approach is the Atkins diet. It’s a low-carb diet created by Robert Atkins. He had gained a lot of weight in medical school. He read about this diet in the medical journal. He decided to improve it and release it under his name.
Dr. Atkins had rather radical theories about the nature of weight gain as expressed in the Atkins diet. He disagreed that saturated fats were the problem. 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. Carbohydrates are used to make up for the lack of fat in low fat foods. Eating a low-fat version of foods was actually less healthy.
The Atkins diet shifts the focus. 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. The diet would work because it burned calories. Dr. Atkins claimed that his diet would result in the body burning an extra 950 calories each day. 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. Type 2 diabetes is most often associated with obesity. 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 are the specific rules of the Atkins diet? It consists of four steps or phases which are induction, ongoing weight loss, pre-maintenance and lifetime maintenance. Here are more details of Induction which is the most crucial of the phases.
The Induction phase is the most difficult phase of the Atkins diet. This phase should be followed for a period of two weeks. Carbohydrates are nearly removed entirely from the diet, only 15-20 grams can be consumed each day. 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. Weight loss of 20 pounds over this period isn’t uncommon and that’s a staggering amount.
The other Atkins diet phases are generally used for determining the levels of carbohydrates ideal for losing weight and for maintaining a standard weight while 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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