Does the Atkins Diet Work for Weight Loss and Overall Health?

The Atkins diet was released some years back by Dr Robert Atkins, and since then many people have chosen to follow its guidance in the hope of losing weight and improving their health. In fact many notable celebrities joined the bandwagon and claimed to shed great amounts of weight as a result of the low carbohydrate approach.

But what is this diet really all about and does it actually help people lose weight, and if so is it safe or does it increase the risk of heart disease and other health issues as many skeptics claim.

Conventional wisdom states that if you wish to lose weight then you need to control the number of calories you eat. That is, that if the number of calories you eat is less than the number of calories you burn in any given day then you should lose weight. In other words eat less and move more and you will lose weight. Conventional wisdom also states that in order to protect your body from cardiovascular disease which may lead to heart attack or stroke that you should also adhere to a low fat diet which includes lots of complex carbohydrates such as grains.

After a scientific review on metabolism Dr Atkins proposed that this wisdom was actually fundamentally flawed. He developed a diet where calorie counting was completely removed from the process and that instead the dieter should count their daily intake of carbohydrates and restrict this to a minimal level. By restricting intake of carbohydrates the person's body will have insufficient simple sugars entering their blood stream through their diet and their body would be forced to convert its energy supply for the most part to lipolysis (or fat burning). Also by restricting carbohydrate intake your body will also release less insulin after every meal.

High levels on insulin release have been proposed to lead to NIDDM (non insulin dependent diabetes mellitus) or glucose intolerance which is often associated with obesity and heart disease. Dr Atkins essentially proposed that even if your diet is high in protein and fats (but low in carbohydrates) that if you eat sufficiently few carbohydrates to push your metabolism into lipolysis that you will lose weight and even improve your blood lipid profile and risk of cardiovascular disease. This goes against all conventional wisdom but if the diet is actually followed properly with the right information the results do seem to speak for themselves.

For people considering the Atkins diet they should ensure they have a proper plan provided by a nutritional expert and should see their Dr first (as with any new diet plan) for baseline blood tests and proper review.