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. A medical Journal had an article about a diet. He built on that diet and eventually made it popular.
Dr. Atkins came up with new ideas, his Atkins diet, about the nature of weight gain. He disagreed that saturated fats were the problem. Carbohydrates, found in potatoes, and breads, were the real problem. 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. Eating a low-fat version of foods was actually less healthy.
The Atkins diet shifts the focus. He shifts dieters' metabolism to burn body fats by cutting out carbohydrates from their diets. That's the goal of weight loss. It's not just a matter of eating less. The diet would work because it burned calories. The Atkins diet supposedly burned an extra 950 calories everyday. But later reviews of his studies found that his claims were false.
In addition to claims of weight loss, Dr. Atkins said his Atkins diet could help people with type 2 diabetes. Being overweight is generally considered the major cause for type 2 diabetes. 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. But that's counter to the prevailing medical theories regarding type 2 diabetes which, although recommending that lowered intake of carbohydrates and weight loss help manage diabetes, ascribe no causal relationship between carbohydrates and type 2 diabetes.
What steps does one take to follow the Atkins diet? It consists of four steps or phases which are induction, ongoing weight loss, pre-maintenance and lifetime maintenance. Here are more details of Induction which is the most crucial of the phases.
As the first phase, Induction is the most crucial and most restrictive portion of the Atkins diet. This phase should be followed for a period of two weeks. Carbohydrates are nearly removed entirely from the diet, only 15-20 grams can be consumed each 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 during this phase can be extreme with some Atkins followers reported losses of 5-10 pounds a week.
The other Atkins diet phases are generally used for determining the levels of carbohydrates ideal for losing weight and for maintaining a standard weight, not gaining weight. The diet lost popularity after Dr. Atkins died, but it's still popular.
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