What is the Atkins diet?
Quite simply, it is a popular low-carb diet that claims to incur rapid weight lose.
Are you still curious about the Atkins diet? Let's look at this diet's history and application to better understand this American legend in the low-carb round-up.
The diet was developed by (surprise, surprise) Dr. Robert Atkins and first published in his book Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution in 1972.
Why was this diet child of the 70's so revolutionary? First of all, this diet requires a high intake of fats (meats, oils, etc.) and suppresses the ingestion of carbohydrates (breads, pastas, grains, etc.). This was completely opposite of all mainstream medical advice at the time.
How was it so different? Well, think back to the good 'ole FDA approved food pyramid. As you might recall, the foundation of the pyramid was carbohydrates! So Dr. Atkins was suggesting that people forsake the foundation the FDA setup to promote the general health and welfare of the people by practically eliminating the foundation of the pyramid and replacing it with foods that were recommended to be consumed in moderation - and they were seeing results.
Since the diet's emergence into the weight-lose scene in the early 70's it has underwent countless updates and renovations to reflect what the Atkins Group believe to be the latest and greatest in low-carb science.
So we've established the the low-carb nature of this diet, but that alone leaves a vague description of what it actually means to be an Atkins dieter. (I've taken the information from the Atkins diet and distilled it to quickly answer your questions, but for more complete information please refer to the actual Atkins Website: http://www.atkins.com/)
"When you eat too many carbohydrates, your body burns some of those carbs for energy and stores the excess carbs as fat..." Even the Atkins summary of the diet is not much more complicated than lowering your carb intake, but as you dig further into the diet, you discover that the whole point of using the diet is to organize and optimize a low-carb lifestyle.
The program is broken into four basic phases: (1) Introduction, (2) Ongoing Weight Loss, (3) Pre-Maintenance, (4) Lifetime Maintenance.
From the first phase, you start off by eliminating mostly all of the carbohydrates from your diet. According to them, this will "rev up your metabolism" and you will see a lose of "up to 14 pounds in two weeks."
Not to stray too far away from simply answering the question of "what is Atkins diet," I will just quickly say this now - take any claims made by people trying to take your money with a grain of salt. There is always exaggeration, embellishment, and sensationalism involved in them. And I guarantee you, if there is any truth to their claims, you will quickly notice that the full fulfillment of their truth is found in the exception, not the usual case. Now, more about the phases:
Phase two and three then begin to introduce some carbohydrates back in your diet, while still controlling the weight you loose from the introduction. You continue to loose weight and moderate carbs for awhile. Gradually you arrive at the forth and final phase: lifetime maintenance. This phase will show you how to find a balance in eating some carbs while maintaining your weight.
So, just time sum it all up: The Adkins diet is a diet that aims to organize and optimize the low-carb approach to losing weight, with its final goal is to develop a personalized long-term solution for weight management.