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weight, as well, because if you don't have as much glucose circulating in your blood then your insulin drops as well, which means you can finally burn off your fat stores.

Some of the most common low-carb plans are the Atkins low carb diet, South Beach, Protein Power, and the GO diet. The Atkins plan is the best-known, but Dr. Atkins did not invent low-carb dieting. The effects of eating too much starch and sugar have been well-known for a long time now; a British man wrote a treatise on the subject back in the 1800s, and researchers have observed the negative health effects that result when near-carnivorous hunter-gatherers like the Inuit change over from high-fat meat-based diets to diets based on grains. Dr. Atkins, however, made this information popularly available for the first time in the late 1960s.

The Atkins diet has four phases: Induction, Ongoing Weight Loss, Pre-Maintenance, and Maintenance. The goal of Induction is to eat 20 grams or less of glycemic (glucose-forming) carbohydrates per day for at least two weeks to kick-start your body into a process called lipolysis, or fat-burning. The side-effect of this is that your body begins forming ketones to use for energy, since 20g a day of carbs isn't enough to meet most people's energy needs. The other phases of the diet are about learning to eat in a more healthy way for your personal metabolic needs, while learning how many grams of carbohydrate you can consume daily and still lose weight. Your final goal with Maintenance after you have lost the weight you want to lose is to figure out how many grams you can eat and stay at your goal weight.

A common criticism of low-carb dieting, and Atkins in particular, comes from the whole-grains-are-good-for-you camp. They claim that Atkins and other low-carb plans cut carbohydrates completely out of the diet. It is true that Atkins calls for the elimination of grains from the diet for at least the first two phases, but as we've already seen, grains are not the only source of carbohydrate. Actually, from Induction onward the Atkins diet calls for several servings of vegetables a day, which meet most of a low-carber's dietary needs for that phase. Other sources of carbs include cheese, cream, nuts, and low-carb fruits, since these all contain small amounts of natural sugars. In other words, you cannot do Atkins properly if you only eat meat and eggs (although eggs contain a little carbohydrate too!).

And the truth is that a human being can feasibly cut grains out

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