Many people have heard of the Atkins diet, the short name for 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 perfected it and released it to the public.
source: http://www.instructables.com/file/FH46L8PFE6F1DL5/
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. Instead it was carbohydrates that led to the weight problems Americans have. In fact Atkins thought that the focus on fats had made a problem much worse. Many low-fat foods are packed with carbohydrates. Eating a low-fat version of foods was actually less healthy.
The Atkins diet shifts the focus. Once Carbohydrates were removed from a diet, people would burn more stored body fat. That’s the goal of weight loss. The goal wasn’t necessarily to take in fewer calories. The diet would work because it burned 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.
The Atkins diet also could help people with type 2 diabetes.. Being overweight is generally considered the major cause for type 2 diabetes. Weight loss associated with the Atkins diet, as with any diet, would therefore help people manage 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 jury is still out in the medical world as to the causes of type 2 diabetes. So while science agrees with Atkins that lowering intake of Carbohydrates will help with the disease, it would disagree that the step alone would remove the necessity for medicine.
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. The details of the induction phase is as follows.
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. During this phase carbohydrates are severely limited–only up to 20 grams per day. The result of this phase should be ketosis, a metabolic reaction by which the body converts stored fat into fatty acids, generally prompted by a lack of glucose. 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. Millions of people are still losing weight on this diet–but beware the dangers of taking in too much fat.
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