My thoughts on the Atkins diet
There are many diets for weight loss. One of them is the Atkins diet, officially called the Atkins Nutritional Approach, is a low-carbohydrate diet created by Dr Robert Atkins from a diet he read in the Journal of the American Medical Association and used to resolve his own overweight condition.
He later popularized the Atkins diet in a series of books, starting with Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution in 1972. In his revised book, Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution, he modified or changed parts of the diet but remained faithful to the original concepts.
The Atkins Diet involves restriction of carbohydrates to more frequently switch the body’s metabolism from burning glucose as fuel to burning stored body fat. This process, called ketosis, begins when insulin levels are low; in normal humans, insulin is lowest when blood glucose levels are low (mostly before eating).
In his book Dr Atkins’ New Diet Revolution, Dr. Atkins made the controversial argument that the low-carbohydrate diet produces a metabolic advantage in which the body burns more calories, overall, than on normal diets, and also expels some unused calories. He cited one study where he estimated this advantage to be 950 calories (4.0 MJ) a day. However, a review study published in the Lancet concluded that there was no such metabolic advantage and dieters were simply eating fewer calories because of boredom. Professor Astrup stated, “The monotony and simplicity of the diet could inhibit appetite and food intake”.
Atkins franchise, a business formed to provide products to those individuals on the diet, was highly successful because of the popularity of the diet, and is considered the driving entity of the larger “low-carb craze” during the early millennium. However its success dwindled and Atkins Nutritionals of Ronkonkoma, New York, the company founded by Dr. Atkins in 1989, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January 2005, two years after his death. The company re-emerged in January 2006, and the Atkins logo is still highly visible through licensed-proprietary branding for food products and related merchandise.
As far I am concerned I am sure the Atkins diet is bullshit. It is destined for business only. I suppose d-r Atkins made a mistake. But that mistake turned out to be gold mine.
Don’t use the Atkins diet. Particularly if you are diabetic. The human can not live without carbohydrates, because Carbon forms the backbone of biology for all life on Earth. You can not live off meat and fish.
We’ll talk about other diets in my next posts for sure.
Some materials are from Wikipedia.org
