Tuesday, December 2, 2008

The Truth About Fast Fat Loss And Atkins Diet

By Christine G. Shannon

Most people have heard about the Atkins diet but who exactly was Atkins? He was a doctor called Robert Atkins, who was overweight himself. He revised a diet he found in the Journal of the American Medical Association to suit his needs and called it the Atkins diet. Robert Atkins wrote several diet books about his success in the nineteen seventies.

The Atkins diet is high in protein and low in carbohydrates. The permitted foods on the Atkins diet include poultry such as duck, goose, chicken and quail, unprocessed meats including lamb, beef, pork, mutton, veal, venison and ham and unprocessed fish such as trout, catfish and tuna. You are also allowed to eat unprocessed shellfish like shrimp, clams and oysters.

Fats and some dairy products are accepted, you mainly are watching carbohydrates, which the body converts to sugar and stores as fat. Because most fruits contain natural sugar, these are restricted except for unsweetened berries, cherries and grapefruit. You have to watch salad dressings and condiments, normally sugar free are fine. The same is true of beverages and sweeteners. Basically, anything containing sugar or carbohydrates that can be converted to sugar are restricted on the Atkins diet.

If you can afford them, the Atkins diet has its own brand name products, such as low carbohydrate breakfast bars, quick and easy mixes, sugar free syrup and diet shake mixtures. They also offer a fourteen day starter kit to support your weight loss. If you are thinking of starting the Atkins diet for weight loss, you need to read the Atkins diet books and understand the diet fully. This can be a problem if you are short of time or hate reading.

With the Adkins diet you do not count calories rather you count carbohydrates. The diet involves various stages or phases. The first is the induction phase. In this phase you severely restrict your consumption of many foods. After passing into the next phase you can slowly but surely begin to add more carbohydrates back into your diet plan.

There are online support, chat groups, recipes, menus and frequently asked questions from the Atkins diet support team. Of course, it also involves gaining the support of those around you, as well.

This diet does seem to work for a lot of people who want to shift extra pounds but the Atkins diet is not for everyone. If you have tried the Atkins diet already and either not lost any weight or put back on all the weight you did lose, it might be time to try another diet.

No matter which diet you may chose to use the hardest aspect is maintaining a healthy weight. That means keeping it off. This is especially true when you already have a predisposition to be overweight. The only means to success when it comes to maintaining your weight loss is by simply committing yourself to actively changing your habits of eating and your lifestyle. Fat Loss 4 Idiots at the link below may be just what you are searching for. - 15995

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