The Atkins Diet

The Atkins Diet is the most well known weight loss program in the low carbohydrate diet industry. In the 1960's Dr. Robert Atkins adopted the low carbohydrate idea from a diet he read in the Journal of the American Medical Association and used it to help his own weight problems that he suffered from following his medical and graduate medical training.

After Dr. Robert Atkins had treated over one thousand people he introduced the Atkins diet in a series of very interesting books that began with the Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution in 1972. Dr. Atkins recently revised his book Dr. Atkins New Diet Revolution, and updated some of his ideas, but stayed true to the main concepts.

The introduction phase in the Atkins diet is designed to cause your body to quickly enter the state of ketosis. Your carbohydrate intake is severely limited to 20 net grams per day. You are however allowed to eat foods that include most meats, up to 4 ounces of cheese, 3 tablespoons of heavy cream, 2 cups of salad vegetables, 1 cup of other low glycemic low carbohydrate vegetables. Unfortunately all alcohol beverages are forbidden.

The Atkins diet franchise is a massive industry in itself and bas boosted the sales and arrivals of other low carbohydrate diets. The Atkins logo is visible through licenses proprietary branding for food products and other related merchandise.

With the Atkins diet the main emphasis is on the daily diet, but there are also other factors that include nutritional supplements and daily physical activity. The Atkins diet requires a restriction of carbohydrates in order to force your body's metabolism to switch from burning glucose to burning stored fat. This process is known as lipolysis and begins when the body has entered the state of ketosis because it has run out of extra carbohydrates to use.

The Atkins diet has a theory that western eating habits were the main contributing factor to the high rate of over weight and obese people. The foods were high in carbohydrates especially sugar, flour, and high fructose corn syrups. Their other theory is that saturated fats are highly overrated as being a nutritional problem and only trans fats and hydrogenated oils need to be cut out completely.

Dr. Atkins claims that his low carbohydrate diet causes a metabolic advantage, in which the body is burning more calories than on other restrictive diet and even gets rid of excess calories. One of his studies estimated the advantage to be around 950 calories a day.

The Atkins diet restricts all net carbohydrates which are carbohydrates that have an effect on blood sugar levels. You can calculate net carbohydrates of a food by subtracting sugar alcohols and fiber from the total amount of carbohydrates. You should treat sugar alcohols very carefully because they are slower when it comes to converting to glucose.

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