The Atkins diet, often misspelled “the Adkins diet,” is the original low carb diet plan. The goal of all low carb diets is to achieve and maintain a state of ketosis. In ketosis, your body is not surviving on carbohydrates the way it usually would, but instead is burning your stored energy reserves: your fat. To "do Atkins," you modify your diet in four phases: induction, on-going weight loss (OWL), pre-maintenance, and lifetime maintenance.
Similar to the Atkins Diet but somewhat less difficult is the South Beach Diet plan, which tries to eliminate foods that are high in glycemic index. Regardless of which low carb diet plan you choose, research indicates that you can expect to enjoy an array of surprising health benefits aside from weight loss, including a reduced risk of diabetes, reduced levels of harmful HDL cholesterol, and improved kidney and liver function.
However, as with any diet program, both the Atkins diet and the South Beach diet open you up to the risk of backsliding, ending up more unhealthy and with even more unwanted weight than before the diet. What's more, even if you stick with the diet, neither the Atkins diet nor the South Beach diet will do anything to help convert your leftover flab into healthy lean muscle mass! For these reason, we encourage you to explore our alternatives to doing Atkins diet or South Beach diet programs by will-power and exercise alone. A diet pill that works for low carb diets can help you lose more weight more quickly than with the Atkins diet or the South Beach Diet alone.
During the Atkins Diet induction phase, all significant sources of carbohydrates are cut out for two weeks. During induction, you are essentially allowed nothing but meat and low carb leafy greens. Starchy vegetables like carrots and peas are not allowed, nor are fruits. When most people think of Atkins, they think of the Atkins induction, and have the general impression that doing Atkins would mean they had to eat nothing but bacon, eggs, and steak for the rest of their lives. In reality, the Atkins diet will only require that you live on those types of foods for a couple of weeks.
If the Atkins Diet consisted of nothing but an extended induction period the way most people think it does, then doing Atkins would pose significant health risks. Fortunately, this phase is meant to last only a short period of time, in order to reset your metabolism, and ‘induct’ your system into a state of ketosis. The Atkins Diet induction phase is a difficult and drastic change in diet, but it is also the phase in which you will see the most immediate and drastic results.
This is the phase of the Atkins Diet in which you gradually get to start eating like a real, live, red-blooded hunter-gatherer again. You may increase your portions of low carb vegetables and gradually add in nuts, seeds, and berries, increasing your daily number of carbohydrates by about 5 grams per week. This part of the Atkins diet involves a lot of trial and error in discovering how many carbohydrates your body can take before you stop shedding excess pounds.
Also, after spending two weeks in the heavily regimented Atkins Induction phase, this new phase of the Atkins Diet can make it seem all too easy to slide back out of a low carb diet entirely. To succeed in the Atkins Diet On-going Weight Loss phase, you’ll have to do something that will remind you of all those other diets you’ve tried: counting.
You’ve counted calories, you’ve counted fat grams, you’ve counted exchange points; now, in the Atkins Diet On-going Weight Loss phase, you’ll have to count your carbs religiously. If you don’t, you could not only regain the weight you’ve lost, but also have no idea what amount of carbohydrates caused you to start gaining weight. Then, says the Atkins Diet, it’s back to Induction for you. But, if you make it this far into the Atkins Diet without backsliding, you’ll likely see very impressive results. This phase of Atkins lasts until you are within 5-10 pounds of your goal weight.
In the Pre-maintenance phase of the Atkins Diet, you continue to gradually increase the amount of carbohydrates you consume, but at a faster rate. Now you’ll add starchy vegetables, legumes, fruits, and whole grains, increasing your daily number of carbohydrates by about 5 grams per week. When you reach a level of carbohydrate consumption at which you are no longer losing any weight, you’ll stay at that level for about a month. Finally, before moving on to the full-fledged Atkins Diet Lifetime Maintenance phase, you’ll play around with your daily or weekly average carb counts for a few months until you’ve found the maximum number of carbs that you can eat before you start gaining weight. When you’ve found it, your Atkins Diet Pre-maintenance phase is over.
As the name implies, this phase of the Atkins Diet is intended to last for the rest of your life. In this phase, you simply stick with the carb counts you discovered for yourself during the Atkins Diet Pre-maintenance phase, and, if all goes well, never gain any weight for the rest of your life.
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