Review – Atkins Diet
Atkins is as a very low carb diet plan. The idea is that your body will metabolize fat instead of sugar. The main advantage to the Atkins diet for some people is that you can eat plenty of fat, so it does not seem like a diet, and this makes it easy for some people to stick to it. For people who can deal with the carb cravings, this can be a very effective and quick way to take off excess weight. There are some problems with the Atkins diet though that may not make it right for everyone.
The first issue is that if you cheat, then the Atkins diet can become unhealthy so you must follow it very strictly. In other programs, occasional cheating just delays your progress; in this program where you are consuming so much fat, there can also be health issues. The Atkins diet plan forces your body to metabolize fat a certain way, and this generally prevents the ill health effects of all the fat you are consuming. However, the moment you cheat and eat a lot of carbs, your body switches back to metabolizing sugar instead of the fat, and you can be left with an unhealthy level of fat in your blood stream.
Another issue is that while some diet programs are designed to promote a new healthy lifestyle, the Atkins program would not be that conducive to it since giving up carbs forever is not that attractive of lifestyle for many people. For many it is simply a program to fairly quickly lose some weight then to abandon once the goals are met. This leads to another issue – you have to ease out of the program and slowly introduce carbs back into your diet. Otherwise the weight will come back on very fast if you consume too many carbs too quickly after ending the diet. The common disadvantage to any temporary diet is putting the weight back on once the diet is over, but Atkins has a particular problem with this.
This diet does work very well for some people, but it is not for everybody. You will have to gage for yourself how well you think you can follow the plan.
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July 14th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
My personal experience with Atkins has varied. The first time I used it I just needed to lose 15 to 20 pounds, and I did so pretty quickly – about 3 pounds per week. I was tired a lot and had a lot of carb cravings, but it worked. Other times I tried it, it never really got off to a good start, and I gave up.