News Flash About Atkins Diet
The short name for the Atkins nutritional approach is the Atkins diet. Dr. Robert Atkins invented this low-carb diet. He put on a lot of pounds 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 disagreed that saturated fats were the problem. 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. Dieters were being tricked into eating foods that would cause them to gain more weight.
The Atkins diet shifts the focus. Once Carbohydrates were removed from a diet, people would burn more stored body fat. Once the fat was burned, the pounds will follow. Atkins flipped the equation from lowering caloric intake. Now it was all about what your diet can help you burn. In fact Atkins cited a study that claimed the body would burn an extra 950 calories on his diet. That sounded good but it wasn’t true.
In addition to claims of weight loss, Dr. Atkins said his Atkins diet could help 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. 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 medical world, in general, disagrees with Atkins on this point. They agree lower carbohydrates help with type 2 diabetes, but there is no proof that carbohydrates cause the disease.
What are the specific rules of the Atkins diet? It follows four phases – induction, ongoing weight loss, pre-maintenance and lifetime maintenance. Here are more details of Induction which is the most crucial of the phases.
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 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. Weight loss of 20 pounds over this period isn’t uncommon – 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. The diet lost popularity after Dr. Atkins died, but it’s still popular.
What are the best diet programs? Read here!
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Filed under: Health Problems
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