It's no secret that there are various remedies on the market that are prescribed to lose weight. Fortunately or unfortunately many cannot be followed or trusted. In fact, a large number of researchers are now beginning to accept the Atkins diet and how one can lose weight and still eat plenty of fats and meat.



The Atkins diet is centered around the principle that the body burns both carbohydrates and fats for calories so weight loss is much more rapid because fat burns more calories than carbohydrates.

The Atkins diet was started by Dr. Atkins in the 1970s and is based upon the philosophy that if you switched to a low-carb diet your body's metabolism would adjust and start to burn its stores of fat. It's no secret that millions of people have tried and succeeded using the Atkins diet. Many however in the medical profession remained unconvinced because traditionally low fat diets had been touted as the regime to help reduce excess weight for many years prior.

In fact the American Medical Association went so far as to describe the Atkins low carbohydrate diet as a rather "bizarre regime." This is understandable when you consider that all the available medical technology at that time and since has keyed upon the importance of losing fat not burning it.

The idea is by drastically reducing the consumption of carbohydrates and increasing the intake of protein and fat, what happens is the body begins to shift gears and start using body fat to fuel the activities of the body. Simply put, if your body burned fat for energy instead of using carbohydrates you'll increase your uric acid and ketosis. This sends a signal to your body that it is starving. In fact when someone reduces their carbohydrate intake to around the 30 to 40 grams a day level, their body starts burning fat instead of carbohydrates. And that's an ideal situation for weight loss.

That's actually the entire idea that made the Atkins diet so tempting because it gets your body to burn fat instead of carbohydrates for the fuel that it needs. Atkins says that you can eat at least 8 calories per pound of body weight.

The Atkins diet is basically a multi-step process. The first step is the induction stage where you are allowed about 20 grams of carbohydrate intake daily. In phase 2 or a second phase, the Atkins Diet concentrates on the ongoing weight loss or what's called OWL.

It's interesting that Dr. Atkins was not the first promoter of the low-carb diet. In fact, it was written about in the late 1800s and essentially low-carb dieting again became fashionable in the 1970s. And while there are still many detractors and disbelievers in the Atkins method of dieting, there are thousands upon thousands of people, men and women who swear by its effectiveness.