The Atkins Diet Plan - What You Need To Know

The Basics

The Atkins diet is based on the theory that overweight people eat too many carbohydrates. Our bodies burn both fat and carbohydrates for energy, but carbs are used first. By drastically reducing carbs and eating more protein and fat, our bodies naturally lose weight by burning stored body fat more efficiently.

The Atkins diet promises that not only will you lose weight and not be hungry with a low-carbohydrate diet, but you'll also be on the road to better heart health and memory function, as well as other wellness benefits.

Things to Eat

The Atkins diet sets few limits on the amount of food you eat but instead severely restricts the kinds of food allowed on your plate: no refined sugar, milk, white rice, or white flour.

On the Atkins diet, you're eating almost pure protein and fat. You can consume red meat, fish (including shellfish), fowl, and regular cheese (not "diet" cheese, cheese spreads, or whey cheeses). You can cook with butter, have mayo with your tuna, and put olive oil on your salads.

Carbs are dramaticallyrestricted in the first two weeks. You are allowed the equivalent of three cups of loosely packed salad or two cups of salad with two-thirds cup of certain cooked vegetables each day. There are no exceptions to these rules during the first two weeks.

Later, the carb allowance is increased in the form of fiber-rich foods, but you do not return to eating refined sugar , milk, white rice, white bread, white potatoes or pasta made with the dreaded white flour. Those remain on a lifelong list of forbidden pleasures. The diet does allow for adding fruits, vegetables, and whole-grain foods after the two-week induction period.

Why They Claim It Works?

By restricting carbohydrates drastically to a mere fraction of that found in the typical American diet, the body goes into a state of ketosis, which means it burns its own fat for fuel. As a result, your body changes from a carbohydrate-burning engine into a fat-burning engine.

Instead of relying on the carbohydrate-rich items you might typically consume for energy, and leaving your fat stores just where they were before, your fat stores become a primary energy source. The result - weight loss.

Some Opinions I Found

The Atkins diet remains highly controversial. Many health experts remain wary. They say that the Atkins diet works at producing weight loss and for improvement in triglycerides and HDL cholesterol. But they are concerned about the long-term safety of the diet.

They have concerns over whether this is a healthy diet for preventing heart disease, stroke, and cancer. There is also potential loss of bone, and the potential for people with liver and kidney problems to have trouble with the high amounts of protein in this diet.

No one has shown, in any studies, that anything magical is going on with the Atkins diet other than calorie restriction. The diet is very restrictive, and limits half of the foods we normally eat. In the end it's not fat, it's not protein, it's not carbs, it's calories. You can lose weight on anything that helps you to eat less, but that doesn't mean it's good for you.

My Thoughts

This is a diet plan that can show some great, early results. Becuase of this, many people will be convinced that it is a "good" diet. With all of the controversy, I am hesitant to recommend this kind of diet. I think we are better off choosing a diet plan with a more sensible balance of carbs, proteins, and fats.

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