So Just How Does This Atkins Diet Work?

South Beach Diet : So Just How Does This Atkins Diet Work? by Jon Sager

The short name for the Atkins nutritional approach is the Atkins diet. It was the brainchild of the doctor named Robert Atkins. He had gained a great deal of weight 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 held that saturated fats weren't as bad as people claim. The carbohydrates are the culprits. In Atkins theory eating too little fat make things even worse. 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 changes this. By cutting out carbohydrates people would burn stored body fats. That's the goal of weight loss. The goal wasn't necessarily to take in fewer calories. Dr. Atkins held that your diet could actually help you burn 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.In addition to claims of weight loss, Dr. Atkins said his Atkins diet could help people with type 2 diabetes. As opposed to type 1 diabetes, type 2 is often closely associated with diet and people who weigh too much. Therefore, by means of losing weight a person on the Atkins diet would be addressing their 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 jury is still out in the medical world as to the causes of type 2 diabetes. So while science agrees with Atkins that lowering intake of Carbohydrates will help with the disease, it would disagree that the step alone would remove the necessity for medicine.So just how does this Atkins diet work? It consists of four steps or phases which are induction, ongoing weight loss, pre-maintenance and lifetime maintenance. The details of the induction phase is as follows.The Induction phase is the most difficult phase of the Atkins diet. It lasts for about two weeks. During this phase carbohydrates are severely limited, only up to 20 grams per 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 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. Millions of people are still losing weight on this diet â€" but beware the dangers of taking in too much fat.

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