Atkins Diet Facts: How Atkins Works

Since its launch, Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution has sold millions of copies. The promise of rapid weight loss without having to go through the low-fat, low-calorie, low-flavor, low-calorie diet that overweight people were used to generated great appeal. However, that appeal wouldn’t have lasted for years if the diet hadn’t worked. The fact is, the Atkins diet works. However, how and why it works is not as magical as it sounds.

History of the Atkins Diet: Millions of Dieters Say It Works and Lose Hundreds of Pounds

When Dr. Atkins’ book first hit bookstores across the country, many people bought it. It seemed like any new diet fad that came along was attracting a million desperate people to try it. Unfortunately, most of the diets didn’t work. Fad diets had a way of creating yo-yo dieters who lost a lot of weight at first, then put it all back once they stopped the extreme diet regimen that was prescribed. But there was something different about the Atkins diet. It worked; and it kept working. People who had never been able to lose weight before were suddenly losing ten, twenty, or even a hundred pounds, all thanks to the Atkins Diet.

The Atkins diet created a whole new industry. It spawned thousands of Atkins diet foods, Atkins cookbooks, guides, and more. The legions of Atkins fans seeking carb-free meals even changed the restaurant industry. Everything from fast food places to chain restaurants to fine dining establishments began offering low-carb or no-carb meals to meet the demands of diners who got tired of ordering their bunless burger.

The diet created by Dr. Atkins also generated a lot of controversy. Nutritionists stated that it was difficult or impossible to obtain the required daily nutrition from the diet prescribed by Dr. Atkins. Cardiologists and medical researchers worried that huge waves of Americans eating even more red meat was a recipe for heart disease, high cholesterol and heart attacks. There were even rumors that Atkins himself was getting fatter and less healthy until he became extremely obese at the time of his death.

Despite these urgent, and sometimes exaggerated warnings, people continued to use the Atkins diet and its low-carb derivatives such as the Zone diet, the Mediterranean diet, and the South Beach diet, for one simple reason: the diet worked and people lost. weight.

How Atkins Works: Why Low Carb Diets Shed The Pounds When Nothing Else Works

The most incredible thing about the Atkins diet was its success rate. People who were never able to lose weight before were able to lose pounds like water. Even people who weren’t overweight could use Atkins to drop those last 5 or 10 pounds. Even Hollywood celebrities began to admit that they were using the Atkins diet and then later other forms of low-carb or no-carb diets.

What Makes Low Carb Diets So Powerful As Weight Loss Tools?

Is there an internal biology at work, as its authors claim? Is there any truth in the fact that people in Mediterranean areas are rarely obese despite eating a very high-fat diet? Was science wrong before? Was there a national conspiracy to force people to eat boring, healthy food?

If any of the above is true it is open to an important debate. Ironically, none of them have anything to do with why Atkins works and why all other low carb diets work.

Low Carb Diets The Ultimate Marketing Twist

If a low carb diet is not a superior biological way of eating, then why do people who use the Atkins diet or the South Beach diet or the Zone diet lose so much weight?

In a word, marketing. Or, to be more specific, very clever twists and turns.

All the diets that came before Atkins suffered from the same thing, they told people what they could NOT eat. Where the Atkins diet was successful was that it changed this paradigm. Instead of telling people what they couldn’t eat, he told them what they COULD eat and told them they could eat bacon.

If you’ve ever talked to someone who was on the Atkins diet, inevitably everyone told you the same thing. They said that with this new diet they were on, they could eat bacon! It was as if they were quoting the book. They may have mentioned other foods that they could eat as well, foods like fried chicken, meatballs, and all kinds of delicious foods that had been banned before. Then at the end, as if it were an afterthought, they said the only thing they couldn’t eat was carbohydrates.

Ironically, the reason that low-carb diets like Atkins are so successful is that cutting carbs actually has the effect of eliminating all of the same things that are forbidden on a regular diet. It just does it in a much better way, and then throws a bone at dieters – don’t worry, you can still eat bacon.

Most diets are too strict. They try to eliminate all foods that could somehow lead to weight gain, no matter how small the contributing factor. The fact is, few overweight people are obese because they eat too much steak or too much chicken. They are overweight because they eat too many French fries, candy, donuts, muffins, and desserts, all of which are clearly prohibited on regular AND low-carb diets.

It turns out that virtually all of the excessively consumed empty calorie foods that have made Americans the fattest nation on the planet have one simple thing in common: They are all high in carbohydrates. That’s not surprising considering that sugar has carbohydrates. Goodbye sweets. Also high in carbs are those empty calorie snacks and snacks that everyone forgets when counting calories, things like breadsticks, muffins, and even those low-nutritional starches like potatoes and rice.

In the end, the Atkins diet was not a new revolution after all. It was the same advice that was always given to fat people. All that changed was the wording. Instead of being told to cut out sweets, candy, dessert, sodas, juices, coffee creamer, muffins, donuts, etc., the “new revolution” told them exactly the same thing, but with the most scientific sounding phrase: “Cut out the carbs..”

The only real difference is that the New Atkins Diet Revolution didn’t go overboard in trying to outlaw those other diet-destroying things like bacon, beef, and pork as well. This was the genius behind low carb diets. It turns out that things like meat are self-regulating. It is simply not desirable to eat 5 steaks, even if you can. But all those “sneaky” things that keep people fat when they try so hard to lose weight get caught up in the web of “carb stuff.”

Instead of having to tell people to look at the fine print on the label and avoid foods with high fructose corn syrup, they just had to look at the numbers in bold at the top of the required nutrition facts label. legally. Since high fructose corn syrup is high in carbohydrates, the foods it is in are automatically eliminated. The same goes for sneaky thinners like fruit juices (healthy, but only in smaller amounts), muffins (just because someone brought them to the meeting doesn’t mean they don’t count), butter (carbs, carbs, carbs), and even a lot of those fats that nutritionists worried about (olive oil has no carbs, but most deep fryer oil has tons).

In the end, it seems that the secret to the diet’s success was simplicity. No points, no calculators, no long lists of dos and don’ts, just a simple line to guide dieters toward weight loss. Do not eat carbohydrates.