How to Know if It’s Right for You
Dr. Robert Atkins started the Atkins diet in the 1960s. Robert Atkins wrote a book to layout a diet plan for people that would actually help them lose weight. Because of the success of the diet, people everywhere jumped onto the bandwagon.
Dr. Atkins was known as rejecting the food pyramid. He believed that saturated fat shouldn’t be considered to be such a problem. Instead he believed that eating refined carbohydrates (sugar, flour, and high-fructose corn syrup) is the main cause of obesity, he used this as the base for his diet plan.
The Atkins diet restricts carbohydrates in an attempt to switch the body’s way of metabolizing foods. Instead of burning glucose, the idea is to get your body to burn fat instead.
There are four phases involved in the Atkins diet.
The first phase is called, Induction. During this stage of the diet, participants are allowed only 20 grams of carbohydrates per day and caffeine and alcohol are completely avoided.
The reason for doing this is to get your body into a state of ketosis; burning fat not sugar. Participants lose the most weight during this phase of the diet; it’s common to lose 6-8 pounds for every week that you’re in this phase.
The next phase is called, the ongoing weight loss phase. The goal during this phase is to slowly introduce carbohydrates back into your diet without consuming too many of them.
You need to find the critical carbohydrate level your body needs in order to continue losing weight. Finding the proper level will allow you to eat carbohydrates without putting on extra pounds. This phase goes on until the participant comes within 10 pounds of what they want to weigh.
Next is the pre-maintenance phase. Participants continue adding carbohydrates to their diet following 10 grams per week schedule. The goal of this stage is also to find the critical carbohydrate level in order to keep your weight where you want it.
During this stage you will find your maximum daily carbohydrate level. This will be the amount of carbohydrates you will be allowed to eat for the rest of your dieting days.
The last phase of the Atkins diet is the Lifetime maintenance phase.
This phase is to help the participants continue to follow the eating habits they picked up during this diet. If you are in this last phase and start to gain weight you are supposed to regress to an earlier stage and start again from there. From here on out you’re supposed to have a new way of eating.
This diet became very popular and then, like many other diets do, it died back down. At the fall of the diet’s popularity there were plenty of rumors flying around about the diet. People claimed that restricting carbohydrates was threatening to your health and that it caused heart-attacks and even cancer.
On the flip side people say that the diet is perfectly healthy and it’s a great way to lose weight. There was also a rumor that Dr. Atkins died from following his own diet. These rumors, of course, weren’t true. In fact Dr. Atkins died in 2003 from a fatal head injury.
There are still many people that follow the Atkins diet but it’s purely the individual’s choice of which diet they will follow. It’s good to do your own research on any diet before starting it because there are pros and cons to every diet out there.
The final decision about which diet plan is best for you should be made after speaking with a qualified physician.