Stay Healthy

Diets will never be a thing of the past. How many diets have we heard and tried. There’s the slim-fast diet, the Jenny Craig diet, even tv dinners are trying to sell us a diet. It’s a known fact that everyone jumps on the diet band wagon. And for some people it acctually works.

One of the most common diet to try these days is the Atkins diet. The Atkins diet is quite an unusual one that when you first hear about it you think that it is never going to work. It tells you to eat foods such as bacon, chunks of cheese, coffee, and even fried steaks. Sounds great doesn’t it? You can use a diet that doesn’t make you eat crazy sounding foods and tons of veggies. However, don’t think you can’t give anything up.

In exchange for eating these foods Atkins tells you that you need to stop eating foods such as bread, pasta, chocolate, milk, juice, and would you beleive it veggies. Now while some of that doesn’t sound to bad a part of you might be thinking how odd and unusual this is. I mean does this diet really work or is it just another thing that someone came up with?

If you were to ask nutrionists then they would tell you to stay away and not even think about it. However, if you were to ask people who have tried it then most of them would give their praise and gratitude to this great diet. Some of those who have tried it include Jennifer Aniston, and Rene Zellweger.

The way this diet works is that by eating alot of high-protein foods and less of the carbohydrate foods forces your body to burn the fat that is stored up in your body, which will in turn give you energy that you need. One of the good things about this diet is that you want be craving as much food during the day.

There are four phases that people go through in this diet. The first phase, called induction, takes two weeks. This phase requires you to eat only 20g of carbs a day. Since most of us eat at least 250g a day it can be a hard thing for people to get used to. This phase allows your body to start burning the required fat.

The ongoing weight loss is the second phase. In this phase you can increase your intake of carbs until you are at the point where it is your level for losing weight. When you get to that level you could lose up to 1-3lb. a week.

You slip into the pre-maintenance phase, level three, when you have only 5-10lbs. left to lose. At this point you raise your carb intake to about 10g a day. This will slow your weight loss to 1lb. a week and will prepare your body for the last phase.

The last and final phase, lifetime maintenance, is exactly what it sounds like. This phase will help you to keep those pounds off for the rest of your life. Your carb intake will be higher, but compared to the normal intake it will still be very low.

So does this diet work? Well there’s always room to try something new. It sounds like a great plan that someone can only do if they are incredibly disciplined for it. Only you can make the decision if it is right for you.