eMedex Weight Loss Guide

The Atkins Diet is easily one of the most popular and well-known weight loss programs out there, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you should take it up. Now that you’ve gotten quite an in-depth look into the ins and outs of the Atkins Diet, you come to a very crucial question. Is the Atkins Diet worth following?

As with most other questions, the answer will depend on you.

The Atkins Diet promises quick weight loss, yes, but you have to undergo a major shift in your diet. You’ll have to drastically reduce your intake of carbohydrates, a group of food that’s considered a staple in every meal. Unless you’re fine with making that big change, the Atkins Diet probably isn’t for you, especially if you’re trying to raise cereal-hungry kids at home.

You also have to be ready for the risk of the more unpleasant side effects of the Atkins Diet. For example, bad breath is a common complaint for the Atkins Diet. All that bad breath comes from the extra ketones produced by ketosis, which harvests energy from proteins instead of carbohydrates. Constipation is also a frequently heard complaint, so you have to be ready to deal with all that on a daily basis.

On the other hand, the essential parts of the Atkins Diet are actually ‘tastier’ than the programs of other companies because the former contain fats. It’s also fairly simple to follow, especially on a long-term basis. If you’re a veteran of several unsuccessful diet programs, you might want to try the Atkins Diet, simply because it’s a bit unique in terms of what you’re allowed to eat.

At the end of the day, taking on the Atkins Diet is still your choice. No matter what you end up picking, your choice had better be well-informed and reasonable so that you’re sure that you made the right one.

No diet can survive without at least some science backing it up. In fact, there are some weight loss programs like the Atkins Diet that the medical community refuses to consider an official diet because their scientific background is shaky or lacking. Even today, the complete mechanisms of the Atkins Diet are not completely known or understood. Here are some of the science fundamentals that Dr. Atkins used to create his program.

The most controversial part of the Atkins Diet is that fact that it promises quick weight loss by restricting carbohydrate consumption to an extreme extent. Dr. Atkins himself pointed out that carbs are one of the primary culprits for making people fat. This is true, to some extent.

Carbohydrates are nutritionally your biggest source of energy. When you eat carbs like bread or pasta, your body breaks the food down into simpler sugars like glucose and glycogen (right). Glycogen, in turn, is the primary source of energy for your brain and muscle cells. The only problem is that the reservoirs for glycogen stores are quickly filled up, and anything that isn’t used immediately has to be stored as fat.

By following the Atkins Diet, you minimize the amount of available carbohydrates, thus minimizing their risk of getting converted into fat. Once your body realizes that it’s out of carbohydrates, it’ll begin harvesting energy from proteins (found in foodstuff like meat and milk) through a process known as ketosis. It’s this process that produces the ketones which cause chronic bad breath in dieters.

Every weight loss program has its own pros and cons, and you owe it to yourself and your health to at least know both lists before you start any diet. With all the controversy surrounding the Atkins diet, there are two opposing factions, each one promoting the pros or capitalizing the cons of the program. Here’s some of what each camp has to say.

Pros of the Atkins Diet

The Atkins diet is unlike most other programs because it promises fast results and quick weight loss without your having to give up fats and meats – two things that other diets would require you to abstain from. It doesn’t give much more variety than other diets, but it’ll end up a lot tastier.

Quite a number of people are also willing to endorse the diet as effective. Countless have seen good weight loss results, while some even say that they owe their long-term weight loss to adherence to the program.

Cons of the Atkins Diet

Many doctors and medical professionals have already declared negative effects and risks associated with following the Atkins Diet. First and foremost, you have to be really fit and healthy if you’re going to try the program. Because it forces you to switch energy sources, it triggers biochemical processes that could be deadly to people with long-term conditions like heart problems or diabetes.

Unpleasant or uncomfortable side effects such as bad breath and constipation have also been reported by some dieters. These results are most likely due to the nutritional imbalance that the program creates by restricting your intake of important things like the fiber in carbohydrates.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of the possible side effects of the Atkins Diet. It’s just a sample of the kind of things you’ll have to consider if you’re planning to take on the program.