The Atkins Diet Plan, About the Author and the Four Phases

Obesity is a on growing problem throughout the world. And with the problem of overweight, diets are inevitable. But which diet is the correct one to follow?

One of the most popular diets out there is The Atkins Diet which Robert Atkins promoted in the early 70’ties.

The main goal with the Atkins Diet plan, is to switch your body’s metabolism from metabolizing carbohydrates, to metabolizing your excess fat.

Your body prefers to burn carbohydrates (bread, rice, pasta, sugar etc. Etc.). But if you strip your body from this energy source, it will look elsewhere for a source of energy. This other energy source is.. drum roll, please… fat! Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?

So in short, the Atkins diet plan is a low-Carbohydrate diet.

But before we get more into the Atkins diet. Who is Atkins?

Robert Coleman Atkins was born in 1930 and was a cardiologist and physician, born in the United States. He gained a lot of recognition and is mostly known for the “Atkins Nutritional Approach” or as we call it in this article “The Atkins Diet.”

Robert Atkins promoted the Atkins diet, based on a research paper he read in “the Journal of the American Medical Association”, which was published by a man named Dr. Alfred W. Pennington. The research paper was name “Weight Reduction.”

Atkins Diet Menu

At the time when Robert Atkins read this research paper, he was overweight himself. And with the knowledge he acquired from this research paper, he resolved his overweight. With his knowledge and his experience, he published some books. The first book was released in 1972 and was called “Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution”, and the second one was released in 2002, called “Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution”.

The Atkins Diet is divided into four phases, but before I get more into these, I want to explain a term called Ketosis.

When the glucose storage in your liver is used up, the body will proceed to burn fat for energy, in a process called lipolysis. When in prolonged periods without carbohydrates, the body will start to produce the chemicalcalled ketone-bodies, which makes the body enter the state of ketosis. These Ketone-bodies can pass through the blood-brain barrier in the brain, where others fatty acids can’t pass.