The short name for the ‘Atkins Nutritional Approach’ is the ‘Atkins Diet’, which was the brainchild of Doctor Robert Atkins. He had gained a lot of weight while in medical school and after reading about a certain diet in the medical journal, he decided to improve it and release it under his own name.
Atkins, in his Atkins Diet book, wrote 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 caused the weight problems Americans have these days. Atkins held that our obsession with avoiding fat actually worsened 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 stated that by avoiding carbohydrates, people would consume their stored body fats. And, of course, if you lose the fat, you lose the weight. He said it was not only a matter of eating less. Atkins held that a diet could actually help you burn calories and that The Atkins Diet supposedly burned more calories than were being consumed everyday. But the claims were contested.
Dr. Atkins also touted the positive influence that his diet should have on people with Type 2 diabetes. Type 1 diabetes is a disease you usually get early in life, but Type 2 is more often closely associated with diet and surplus body weight. Therefore, 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 ought to be avoided by those with Type 2 diabetes regardless of the caloric intake, which the Atkins diet does, so Atkins claimed that those who suffer Type 2 diabetes would no longer need medication such as insulin. Doctors do not agree with Atkins on this point, although they do agree, that a lower carbohydrate intake helps control Type 2 diabetes, but there is no proof that carbohydrates cause diabetes.
What are the steps one has to take to follow the Atkins diet? It is followed in four phases – Induction; On-Going Weight loss, Pre-maintenance and Lifetime Maintenance. Here is an overview 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 idea is to enter a fat burning metabolic phase called ‘ketosis’ wherein the body, starved of glucose, starts to convert stored fat into the fatty acids needed to run the body. Weight loss during this phase can be large ” some Atkins dieters reported losses of 5-10 pounds a week or more.
The aims of the final three phases in the Atkins diet are to learn the ideal carbohydrate levels for the next two phases, which are continued weight loss and weight maintenance. Many millions of people are still losing the weight they want to on the Atkins Diet ” but be aware of the risks of consuming in too much cholesterol and fat.
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