The Atkins Diet Plan

The Atkins diet and its imitators are in fashion, but they are as controversial as they are popular. Would eating the low carbohydrate/high protein way work for you, and is it safe?

I know lots of people who swear by his methods and say their lives have been changed, but there are many doctors, nutritionists and other health professionals who have rubbished his views. Other health gurus the things have taken his ideas and refined them. Atkins maintains that traditional low-fat diet recommendations have led to diets high in carbohydrate instead, which are all wrong for our metabolisms. He also says that fat isn't the baddie it is made out to be - at least, not all fats. Is this a case of the mainstream being slow to catch on? After all, Atkins pointed out that it took us centuries to accept that the world was not flat!

It is beyond the scope of this chapter to go into all his ideas in detail, but let's look at some of the main premises:

THE ATKINS THEORY

We should be concentrating our efforts on our insulin levels, which control sugar levels in the body and how the body stores fat. If you eat a lot of carbohydrates, insulin is released which encourages the body to store the energy from food as fat. You can be 'insulin resistant', which means your body releases very high levels of insulin just to maintain normal blood sugar levels, encouraging more fat to be stored.

Switching to low levels of carbohydrate intake leads your body to burn fat as its energy source, rather than glucose from carbohydrates. Eating fat doesn't affect your blood sugar and, contrary to popular opinion, can be good for your health. Fat also helps you to feel satisfied after eating.

IN PRACTICE

The Atkins diet requires you to start on an induction plan that lasts a minimum of fourteen days. It's pretty strict, including rules such as eating no more than 20 g of carbohydrates a day, which should come from salad greens and certain other 'acceptable' vegetables; no fruit, bread, grains or dairy foods other than cheese, cream and butter; plenty of poultry, fish and meat; no caffeine, processed foods and refined sugars. As you progress, you move through another three phases, culminating in your lifetime maintenance plan. Each phase changes what you can and can't eat; for instance, later on you eat less fat than in the beginning.

You have to follow the diet to the letter or it won't work, and it's not for the short term - it's a way of eating for life.

WHAT'S THE VERDICT?

Critics have raised concerns about high fat intakes because of the risk of heart disease, but there are studies that show that the diet can have a beneficial effect on cholesterol levels and fats in the blood in the longer term. Kidney damage is another charge levelled at the diet, but there's no real proof. Atkins makes it clear that the diet is not for those who have kidney disease, or for pregnant women and nursing mothers. If you're diabetic, speak to your doctor about the diet. Diabetics can follow the Atkins diet, but only under very careful medical supervision.

Would I recommend it? Despite the fact that it flies in the face of most mainstream thinking, if you're fit and healthy, give it a try. It's down to personal experience in the end, and whether you can stick to it. I couldn't, although I still try to keep my carbohydrate intake controlled. I have also noticed that men seem to get on better with it than women. It must be the lure of all that meat!


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