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.

Most of the controversy surrounding the Atkins Diet comes from the weight loss program’s requirement of lower carbohydrate consumption. Many health experts denounced the program because of that requirement, saying that a good amount of carbohydrates are required to properly keep body functions running. Is the Atkins Diet really dangerous to your health?

Over three decades after the first publication of Dr Atkins’ diet, most physicians and experts remain skeptical, saying that the program requires more testing in order to be officially seen as an effective diet. Some are saying that the amount of carbohydrates allowed by the diet – as little as 40 g – is potentially harmful because the human body needs about 150 g for all functions to work properly.

The amount of protein that the diet contains also worries some scientists. Under the Atkins Diet, you’ll be taking out one entire dietary chunk and replacing it with proteins and fats. Some see this as increasing the risk factors for conditions like heart disease and stroke. Others see a risk for people with kidney or liver problems because they’ll be the organs that will handle all the additional protein.

Even mental ability is believed to be affected by the Atkins Diet. Glucose is a kind of sugar that the brain uses for fuel when it’s working. Although glucose can be had from meats and other proteins, it takes a lot longer to harvest glucose from them than it is from carbohydrates.

It’s true that the Atkins Diet can give you some pretty amazing and quick weight loss. However, most health experts would advise you to be wary about the diets you start, and to consult your physician before starting on any diet.

It’s that diet that got people all over the world swearing off bread and pasta by the millions. Although its most recent popularity surge happened between 2003 and 2004 when almost a tenth of the United States was on the weight loss program, the Atkins Diet has actually been around since the 1970’s.

Ever since Dr. Robert Atkins published his book in 1972, there’s been a love-it-or-hate-it response from the public. There were those who claimed that Atkins’ diet was the best that they’d ever seen, while there were also those who went as far as saying that it was potentially fatal. Because the weight loss diet uses a low-carbohydrate nutritional plan, there’s still a lot of heated debate about its effects, both good and bad.

The short explanation of the Atkins Diet is that you should refrain from eating almost all kinds of carbohydrates, while at the same time satisfying your hunger primarily with proteins like meats. This low-carbohydrate principle was the source of much of the Atkins Diet’s controversy, especially since Dr. Atkins promised that it would be more effective than low-fat diets for quick weight loss.

The weight loss program itself is done in four phases: induction, ongoing weight loss, pre-maintenance and lifetime maintenance. Each stage is less restrictive in terms of allowed food items than the one before it. The program also recommends that you return to an earlier phase should you begin regaining weight. Adherents say that the Atkins Diet is like marriage – it’s a lifelong commitment if you want it to work.

Are you interested in trying the Atkins Diet? Stay tuned here for more details on the science, the controversy and the myths behind this weight loss program.