The Atkins Diet Review

Officially known as the Atkins Nutritional Approach, this diet is a low-carb diet that is promoted by Robert Atkins. He did not create the diet, instead he took the idea from Dr. Alfred Pennington who publish an article called “Weight Reduction” in the late 1950s.

Robert Atkins published three books about this diet, the first one in 1972 called “The Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution”, the second book came 30 years later in 2002 called “Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution” and finally the latest book was published in 2010 and is titled “The New Atkins for a New You”.

This diet claims that you will lose weight, not be hungry, and improve your health and memory all at the same time. Basically, you eat a lot more protein and fat, but you drastically reduce the amount of carbohydrates that you consume.

How it works?

In the Atkins diet you are basically forcing your body to go into a state known as Ketosis. This is where your body gets its energy from ketones, which is where your body breaks down fat reserves and turns it into energy. You do this by eating only a minimal amount of carbohydrates. Basically, you can get as much protein and fat as you want, but you can’t consume any carbohydrates.

When you eat a lot of carbohydrates, sugar enters your bloodstream. When too much sugar is coming into your bloodstream, your body produces insulin and this allows the sugar to be stored in the liver. When the liver is at full capacity, the sugar is then turned into fat. By reducing your carbohydrates, you are reducing the amount of sugar turned into fat.

In the first few weeks of the diet you will be eating nearly no carbs, but you can eat virtually anything you want, including, cheese, fish, meat, butter, mayonnaise. You just can’t eat anything that contains carbs. This is known as the induction stage.

After this stage, you enter the on-going weight loss stage that works very similar to the first stage, but you are very slowly increasing the amount of carbs in your diet. This increase, however, is minimal.

The pre-maintenance stage again sees the number of carbohydrates in your diet increased. Although you still won’t be eating a large amount of carbs.

The final stage is called the lifetime maintenance stage and you carry on in a similar manner like you do in the pre-maintenance stage. With the Atkins diet, you can actually lose a lot of weight in the first few weeks alone.

Is it safe?

So, is the Atkins diet safe? There have been some concerns about the long term effects of this diet. It can cause bones to diminish and it can be exceptionally dangerous for people with liver or kidney problems because the high amounts of protein will require these organs to work in overdrive.

Moreover, carbohydrates are a part of our diet that our body needs to stay healthy. If we cut this part out of our diet, it can lead to other health problems. For example, the brain needs glucose to function properly, being starved of glucose that comes from these carbohydrates could have a negative effect on the correct functioning of your brain.

Although the diet has changed over the years, to include more fruits and vegetables, you are still very restricted on what fruits and vegetables that you can eat. Therefore, it’s advisable to take some vitamin supplements with this diet to ensure that you’re getting all the vitamins you would usually get from the restricted food. Moreover, some people have reported side effects that include bad breath, constipation, nausea and dizziness.

Does it work?

The diet works if you’re looking for short term weight loss, but it can have adverse effects on your health.

Moreover, according to recent research published in the New English Journal of Medicine, the diet is very effective in the short term, but over a longer period of time it isn’t any more effective than a healthy and varied diet that is more nutritional and therefore better for you.

One of the biggest reasons for this is that the diet is incredibly difficult to stick to. You might think that eating bacon and meat every day is a great thing, but that’s pretty much the only thing you can eat. Bread, cake and other sugary foods are simply out of the question.

Therefore, this diet does work in the short term and you’ll lose quite a lot of weight very quickly. However, over prolonged periods of time, research has shown that it is not so effective and there are healthier and less difficult options available to help you slim down.

The Atkins Diet

In this diet, you’re heavily restricted on what you can eat. Some major food groups are not allowed and this includes healthy and nutritious food groups like fruits and vegetables. Our bodies need a varied supply of food to remain healthy and by cutting a lot of these nutritious foods from our diet can be bad for our health.

Moreover, scientific studies have proven that although you initially lose weight, you will quickly gain weight as soon as you stop using the diet and using the diet long term can cause problems. Therefore, if you need to lose a few pounds in a short time, this diet might be for you. If however, you want to lose weight and stay slim over a longer period of time you should consider a different diet.

Another disadvantage for this diet is that it does have some side effects that can cause health problems. Again, if you use this diet for a short time, these side effects are likely to cause no lasting problems.

Personally, I have achieved the best weight loss results from the Dukan diet. This diet is a more all-round program with less restrictions on what you can and can’t eat. It’s very similar to the Atkins diet, but it’s a lot more healthy and safer for your body. On top of this, it is also a far easier diet to stick to.

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