The Atkins diet is really called the Atkins nutritional approach. Dr. Robert Atkins invented this low-carb diet. He had gained a lot of weight in medical school. He read about this diet in the medical journal. He decided to improve it and release it under his name.
Atkins Grapefruit Diet
Atkins, in his Atkins Diet, believed prevailing theories about weight gain were all wrong. He disagreed that saturated fats were the problem. Instead it was carbohydrates that led to the weight problems Americans have. In Atkins theory eating too little fat make things even worse. He pointed to all the low-fat foods that were high in carbohydrates. That meant people on a diet often ate foods that were worse than they normally ate.
The Atkins diet changes this. Once Carbohydrates were removed from a diet, people would burn more stored body fat. That’s the goal of weight loss. Atkins flipped the equation from lowering caloric intake. 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. But the claims were not true.
Healthcare
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. Dr. Atkins also said that his Atkins diet would remove the need for medications such as insulin, because it severely cut down on carbohydrates which Atkins claimed were the major cause of type 2 diabetes. 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? Induction, ongoing weight loss, pre-maintenance and lifetime maintenance are the four necessary phases of the diet. Here are more details of Induction which is the most crucial of the phases.
South Beach Diet Recipes
The first phase of the Atkins diet, Induction, is like the boot camp for the 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. During this phase weight loss can reach as much as 10 pounds per 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. Dr. Atkins himself died of complications of increased fat intake in his diet, which is something to keep in mind when choosing this diet.
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