The common name for the ‘Atkins Nutritional Approach’ is the ‘Atkins Diet’, which was the invention of Doctor Robert Atkins. Dr. Atkins had put on a lot of surplus weight while he was studying in medical school and after reading about a new diet in the medical journal, he made up his mind to refine it and publish it as his own.

Atkins, in his Atkins Diet book, stated that he believed that the prevailing theories about putting on weight were completely wrong. First, he dismissed the idea that saturated fats were bad; instead he said it was it was carbohydrates that led to the weight problems Americans have these days. Atkins declared that our obsession with avoiding fat actually aggravated the problem. He pointed out that the low-fat foods that were high in carbohydrates were not helping the nation, which probably meant that people on a diet often ate foods that were worse for them than what they had normally eaten.

The Atkins diet shifted the focus. Atkins said that by cutting out carbohydrates, people would burn stored body fats. And if you lose the fat, you lose the weight. He said it was not just a matter of eating less. Dr. Atkins held that your diet could actually help you burn calories. The Atkins diet supposedly burned more calories than were consumed everyday. But the claims were contested.

Dr. Atkins also touted the positive influence that his diet could have on suffers of type 2 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is a disease you get early in life, but type 2 is often closely associated with diet and excess body weight. So, it should follow that any diet that helps decrease weight, will help people with Type 2 diabetes. The Atkins diet is low in carbohydrates, which must be avoided with type 2 diabetes regardless of the caloric intake, so because of this aspect of the diet, Atkins claimed that those who suffer type 2 diabetes would no longer need medication such as insulin. In general, doctors disagree with Atkins on this point, although they do agree, however, that a lower carbohydrate intake helps control Type 2 diabetes, but there is no proof that carbohydrates cause diabetes.

What are the procedures one has to follow to do the Atkins diet? It goes in four phases – Induction; On-Going Weight loss; Pre-maintenance; and Lifetime Maintenance. Here follows a brief precis of the most important phase – The Induction Phase.

The Induction phase is the most difficult of the phases in the Atkins diet. Atkins is flexible about how long it should last ” but recommends it lasts for two weeks. During this phase, carbohydrate consumption is severely limited ” you can only consume up to 20 grammes per day. The goal is to enter a fat burning metabolic phase called ‘ketosis’ wherein the body, starved of glucose, begins to convert stored fat into the fatty acids needed to power the body. Weight loss during this phase can be extreme ” some Atkins dieters reported losses of 5-10 pounds a week or more.

The aims of the three final phases in the Atkins diet are the learning of the ideal carbohydrate levels for the next two phases: continued weight loss and weight maintenance. Millions of people are still losing the weight they want to on this diet ” but beware the dangers of taking in too much cholesterol.

Do you need to lose those excess pounds quickly? Well, take a free look at The Atkins Diet, by visiting our resource called The Atkins Diet Plan

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