Atkins diet is most probably the most popular diet in the world, he smashed no-bread diet, rice diet, cabbage soup diet, cake diet, or any other diet. Why ? Probably because all other diets failed, and they failed because they are strict to one type of food, and no one can do that for more than few weeks. Other good diets are having moderate success because they are well made, but they are not as popular as atkins diet is. Maybe one factor is the name of this diet which was easy branded and people remembered the name.
Atkins diet consist of eating low or none carbohydrates, meaning that you can eat proteins and fats. You can take the proteins from meat, cheese, and some vegetables with high protein level. You have to eat lot of vegetable fats, like the ones you get from nuts, almonds, seeds, etc. Food with high level of carbohydrates that you cannot eat are many, but the most important are: bread, anything with flour, fruits, sugar, cakes, etc.
Judging from outside, the diet is very reliable, you have many foods to choose from, the diet is not strict, but, you can’t eat as much nuts as you would like, you have to keep the level very low to lose some fat. The first aspect of atkins diet is to reduce the number of carbohydrates so your body will get used to burn more fats and to get it in a state that more fats will be burned than usual, but if you keep eating a lot of them so the body will burn them, not from your deposits.
You can read many many things about atkins diet, food types, advices, suggestion, you can read books there are a lot of them about this diet. About that, I strongly recommend to digg more about this diet if you step up to use it. But, what is most important and what I want to make clear is if the Atkins diet is right for YOU.
Important thing to know about Atkins diet, or any other diet, is that your body will change, this will take some time and it will act and burn fat differently. Different diets has different effect on that, the Atkins diet diet get your body used with high fat and low carbs. His main fuel will become fat and he will almost forgot that he was used to burn carbs before the diet began.
First of all, it is bad to lose more than 2 pounds/week, it is dangerous. 2 pounds per week is realistic and safe, do some maths, let’s say that to loose 40 pounds, you need 20 weeks, and 5 months. In these 5 months you have to strictly keep carbs very low, to about max 20-30/day, which is very very low. Think about an 200g apple, has 20 carbs, so an apple a day and your diet is lost. Keeping in mind that you have to eat vegetables yo keep your stomach full, and they have low amounts of carbohydrates but they are still counting. So if you want to do that, make your plan for 5 months. Here someone is asking if he can lose 100 pounds with atkins diet in 6 months. I will first ask him if he can resist so long without bread, fruits, soda, cakes, sugar, that is the question, if he can do that, maybe he can reach his goal in about a year, which is good, why that hurry, if he can lose 50 pounds he will feel much better, but probably now is a little desperate.
The second important thing is what you will do after you reach your goal ? Are you going back to bread, soda, cakes ? If you think that Atkins diet is not right for you. If you can’t live without cakes then forget about Atkins. After 5 months of no carbohydrates, your body will be changed, and every carbohydrate you swallow counts double, until your body gets used back to carbs, and you need maybe another 5 months to eat very very low to get again used with carbs, but in 5 months your body gets used with very very low food, and then if you eat more food, you will get fat again. This is called the yo-yo effect, you can read more about it How to avoid yo-yo trap .
So, if you want to try out something for long term, and you want to lose that lbs forever, think to change something FOREVER. To do that, make a plan to eat less and you can eat some bad things but don’t eat crap on a regular basis. So if you are used now to eat pizza every 3 days, drink 1 l of soda every day just lower that amounts and you will see changes. I think that is something that you can do forever, eating 1 pizza every month is not that bad, there are also awesome foods that can take place.
If you are asking if atkins diet works for you, that think long term, think for whole your lifetime, else it will not work. If you think doing this for long term you should read a good article i found about living low carb . You can also try atkins diet starting kit .
I don’t want to talk too much about Atkins side effects or problems that can appear, but if you deprive your body from some types of food i’m sure some minor problems will occur. So think about getting some vitamins and minerals to compensate that. This is not a good start for a long term thing, having to take pills for long term, even if they are vitamins is not a good idea. You can read about atkins side effects here and here.
In the end, a funny think that i found: an article about “Atkins diet makes you sad” . I remember few years ago i read a study about chocolate, they concluded that chocolate make you happy. At that time i made a connection between cocoa, sugar and hapiness, but nothing to prove by my side. The explanations is simple, deprive body from things that he like the most, he will not help you. Your mood is complex, he has many factors that can change it. For example, your brain, if you do something funny, if you like what you are doing, if you are not stressed you are happy either you eat chocolate or not. But if you have a chest pain, or you eat something bad, your stomach hurts, you can’t be happy whatever you do or think. Those factors are summed up and then results the happiness level.