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The Atkins diet: What it is

What it is

Steak with Bearnaise sauce, eggs, and bacon; cheddar cheese omelettes -- don't hold the yolks; Blue cheese dressing and silky smooth avocado cream soup made with real cream? These rich foods are allowed as part of the controversial diet described in Dr Atkins' New Diet Revolution, a phenomenal best seller, and several follow-up books.




What you can eat

By restricting carbohydrates drastically to a mere fraction of that found in the typical diet, the body goes into a state of “ketosis”, which means it burns its own fat for fuel. A person in ketosis is getting energy from ketones, little carbon fragments that are the fuel created by the breakdown of fat stores. When the body is in ketosis, you tend to feel less hungry, and thus you're likely to eat less than you might otherwise. However, ketosis can also cause a variety of unpleasant effects (such as bad breath and constipation) in a small number of people.

As a result, your body changes from a carbohydrate-burning engine into a fat-burning engine. So instead of relying on the carbohydrate-rich items you might typically consume for energy, and leaving your fat stores just where they were before (the hips, abdomen and thighs), your fat stores become a primary energy source. The purported result: weight loss.


According to the Atkins theory, if the body keeps on making "too much" insulin -- as it tries to deal with the "excess" sugar -- it may become less responsive to insulin and eventually may develop the metabolic disorder, diabetes. The Atkins theory states that this should properly be called "unstable blood sugar" since the blood sugar level rises and then drops quickly.

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