Atkins Diet Pro and Cons

There are many variations of the low carb diet available today.

Many variations have tried experimenting with different low carb dieting techniques to improve the effectiveness of low carb dieting.

Even so, the Atkins diet is the first and most popular low carb diet program.

Atkins Diet Pro and Cons

Created by Dr. Robert Atkins in the 1970s the Atkins diet is considered by some to be the most extreme low carb diet plan.

This is a misconception. In fact, you could even argue that the Atkins Diet is not really a low carb diet.

The idea of the Atkins diet is to find the amount of carbohydrates that you as an individual can eat each day without gaining weight in the form of body fat.

For some people this may be 40 grams a day while for others it could be 400 grams a day.

Dr. Atkins believed that nearly all obesity is caused by overactive insulin production and not by overeating. He believed that overeating could be caused by carbohydrate addiction and that most overweight people actually ate less than their slim counterparts.

However, they crave and eat carbohydrate, which raises their insulin levels and suppresses fat burning.

In the atkins diet pro and cons, elimination of these foods is a big con for carb addicts.

Dr. Atkins is a proponent of ketogenic fat burning.

He advises his followers to buy testing strips so that they can measure the amount of ketones in their urine daily to confirm that they are in a constant state of ketosis.

He also recommends the use of dietary supplements to help balance nutrition and the body's systems.

The Atkins Diet is divided into four stages:

• The Induction diet
• The Ongoing Weight Loss diet
• The Pre-Maintenance diet
• The Lifetime Maintenance diet

The Induction diet is very strict as far as carb elimination (20 grams or less per day), but generous in the allowance of fat and protein.

It should be noted that low starch vegetables are the recommended source of carbs.

This phase of the diet lasts 14 days and is followed by the Ongoing Weight Loss diet (OWL).

The OWL phase allows for the reintroduction of certain good carbs but the levels are kept below 40 grams a day. Dieters stay on OWL until they reach their ideal weight.

Once the ideal weight is reached dieters transition into the Pre-Maintenance diet, where they experiment with reintroducing certain good carbs until they discover their carb tolerance level (the total carb grams they can consume in a day and not gain weight).

When dieters understand how much carb they can consume and they maintain their ideal weight, they will enter Lifetime Maintenance. Here they will continue to avoid sugar, processed foods, white flour and hydrogenated fat/oils. (continued below)