It also claimed to not only help a person lose weight but do so without having him/ her suffer any hunger pangs. This low carbohydrate diet also promised to result in a healthier heart and better memory function as well as providing a host of other wellness benefits.

The Idea

Atkins diet is a high-protein, high-fat and low-carbohydrate weight-loss diet made famous by Dr. Robert C. Atkins. It is basically a weight loss program that helps overweight people lose extra weight by cutting down drastically on their carbohydrate intake while upping their protein and fat ingestion.

It all started when in the 1960s; Dr. Atkins stumbled on an article in a medical journal and treated his own overweight problem using the article’s approach. After treating innumerable patients through this program, in 1972 he started writing a series of books, expounding his revolutionary ideas.

What is it about

The basic notion of Dr. Atkins’ Diet theory is that people are overweight due to their tendency to over eat and of their hypersensitivity to carbohydrates. According to him it is not only how much a person eats but the way that the body processes the carbohydrates that they eat that causes them to become overweight.

Then again, Dr. Atkins theorizes that most overweight people are insulin resistant i.e. their body does not properly convert carbohydrates into glucose. According to Dr. Atkins, the remedy to the disorder is to restrict the amount of carbohydrate intake particularly the bad ones that are found in processed pre-packaged and junk foods like cookies, sodas, chips etc.

Atkins suggests that by bringing down carbohydrate intake to less than 40 grams a day the body begins to burn fat as fuel. This process is called Ketosis. Atkins further theorizes that Ketosis also prevents more fat formation in the body. As a result, a person’s craving for carbohydrates also comes down resulting in a fitter body.

The Diet

The Atkins diet is a departure from many of the diets out there. Atkins believed that the main cause of Western obesity by eating refined carbohydrates, like sugar, flour and high fructose corn syrup. He believed that saturated fat is not that bad of a health problem and that only trans fats need to be avoided. He, therefore, rejects the food pyramid guide and emphasizes the use of meats in higher quantities than other diets. Insulin-inducing foods are rejected in the place of proteins, which don’t trigger insulin.

Dr. Atkins believes that the process of fat loss or lypolysis begins only when the body enters ketosis as a consequence of not having excess carbohydrates to burn. Preferred foods involve anything whole or unprocessed that has a low glycemic load.

Dr. Robert Atkins

The force behind the Atkins diet was Dr. Robert Atkins, an American physician and cardiologist. He began studying the effects of diet on his heart patients and came to believe that a high protein, low carbohydrate diet would prevent obesity and would therefore improve heart disease. He became very famous for his ideas and the diet became very popular.

Around the year 2000, Atkins himself, who abided by the diet, suffered from a heart condition known as cardiomyopathy which he stated was unrelated to his diet. He suffered a cardiac arrest in 2002 but recovered in time to return to work. He died in April of 2003 after slipping and falling on the ice.