Why Is The Atkins Diet Still So Popular

The Atkins diet is really called the Atkins nutritional approach. It was the brainchild of the doctor named Robert Atkins. He had gained a lot of weight in medical school. Atkins read about a low-carb diet in one of his medical journals. He built on that diet and eventually made it popular.

Dr. Atkins had rather radical theories about the nature of weight gain as expressed in the Atkins diet. He disagreed that saturated fats were the problem. Carbohydrates, found in potatoes, and breads, were the real problem. Atkins held that our obsession with fat actually worsened the problem. 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.

This all changes in the Atkins diet. He shifts dieters’ metabolism to burn body fats by cutting out carbohydrates from their diets. Once the fat was burned, the pounds will follow. The goal wasn’t necessarily to take in fewer calories. Dr. Atkins held that your diet could actually help you burn calories. The Atkins diet supposedly burned an extra 950 calories everyday. That sounded good but it wasn’t true.

Dr. Atkins also touted the positive influence this Atkins diet could have on 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 medical world, in general, disagrees with Atkins on this point. They agree lower carbohydrates help with type 2 diabetes, but there is no proof that carbohydrates cause the disease.

What are the specific rules of the Atkins diet? Induction, ongoing weight loss, pre-maintenance and lifetime maintenance are the four necessary phases of the diet. Here is an overview of the most important phase – Induction.

As the first phase, Induction is the most crucial and most restrictive portion of the Atkins diet. It lasts for about 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.

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. Dr. Atkins himself died of complications of increased fat intake in his diet, which is something to keep in mind when choosing this diet.