A diet plan just is not appealing unless one can see that it has promise in achieving the desired weight loss. This is one of the things that are great about the Atkins Diet Plan in that you can see its promise very quickly in the way of quick weight loss. Yes, it's true that this diet offers the benefits of better health due to once again attaining a healthy weight but the promise of rapid initial weight loss seems to be the big appeal to this diet.



The Atkins Diet is known as the diet that initially cuts out those bad carbohydrates and replaces the diet with high-protein / high-fat foods. It's that diet where one "can eat all the bacon he or she wants." The science behind the Atkins Diet is when your body no longer has these carbohydrates it will switch to burning stored fat during a stage called Ketosis. The tough part about the diet is that initially in the first two weeks there are no carbohydrates—practically none at all.

Those first two weeks are a period of eating a lot of high-protein, fatty, and oily foods. Most think it's a great eating a lot of this type of food because it is tasty too. But as we all know, too much fat of this nature in our diets can be bad for us in a different way. So you should eat what we would call "beneficial" fats and keep your intake low of the other type. Beneficial fats include those found in products such as nuts, butter (not margarine), canola oil, and olive oil. Foods containing omega-3 fatty acids such as fish are also beneficial. Avoid foods with polyunsaturated fats.

After the initial loss phase, the second beneficial part of the Atkins diet is the maintenance phase. During this phase, the goal is to identify the optimum level of carbohydrate intake a person can have and still maintain a healthy weight. That level should be one where the person neither gains weight nor loses weight. So, as mentioned before, some carbohydrates are allowed back into a person's diet and results are monitored to identify the optimum level of carbohydrate intake.

The Atkins diet is also beneficial in reducing the risk of a person developing diseases associated with being overweight like Type 2 Diabetes. In diseases like these, sugar is an enemy. The Atkins Diet is a high-fat and high-protein diet so there is nothing to affect a person's blood sugar and insulin levels in a detrimental way. By losing the weight now, people can avoid all the medical complications that could come later in life.

And what's really great about the Atkins Diet is that you as a person will start to look and feel better. Carrying around a lot of weight is hard. Often people who are overweight will complain about being tired all the time. Well, if your blood sugar is unstable and you have to carry around so many excess pounds, of course you are going to be tired. People with overweight conditions oftentimes have problems with bloating from gas and acid reflux disease. These tend to disappear as the person gets his or her weight going down because there is less tightness with internal organs of your body.

Copyright (c) 2007 Thomas Husnik