Health and Medical

We have heard of few popular diet plans today; diet plan that will call for us to eat low-fat, low-salt, all fruit, or all protein foods. One of the most famous diet programs is the Atkins approach on dieting. His methods is reducing carbohydrate intake to lose weight. In dieting, we just follow the measures like what are the dos and don’ts in these diet but we don’t think further about the whole program that make it possible for us to lose weight effectively.

Let us take the Atkins Diet for example, what are the bodily processes involved in this diet? What is happening to our system in order to burning the fats?

Fat-burning is a very complex procedure in our body. There are some components that will be broken down and there will be by-products that will be flushed out or will be stored by our body. The Atkins diet’s aim is to regulate that intake of carbohydrates to extend the use of some of the fatty by-products in our system.

The Atkins diet plans introducing four phases in the process. The first one is that the body will be given a very little amount of carbohydrates than the normal. The recommended time period is about two weeks. The amount of carbohydrates to be ingested in the body is no more than 20 grams per day and the intake must not be lower than this either. The body will be shaking up because of the low carbohydrate intake. Since usually carbohydrate is a source of energy, our body will find an alternative component at once that it can use to produce energy. With this state of shock, the body will take the body fats and ketene bodies as alternative source of energy in the body. This way, Atkins diet pushed our body to use and “maximizes” all resources from our body system. The procedure of looking for alternatives in finding a source of energy is called ketosis. In this phase, weight loss is very obvious because of the sudden change in carbohydrate intake. But even in this state of shock, the dieter will not feel “stripped” because he or she still has an amount of carbohydrate ingested in the body.

After the induction stage, the carbohydrate intake can be increased by 5 grams per week. There are some recommended foods in this stage. In the pre-maintenance stage, the carbohydrate intake is again increased by 10 grams and the last stage which is the lifetime maintenance stage is to maintain the learned food intake in the process to maintain the ideal weight. The main goal of the Atkins diet is to keep having a ketosis process in the long run so the body will continue burning the body fats for a lifetime.

This is the process behind the Atkins diet. It really sound very complex but with conditioning of the body with this diet plan, you will lose weight in the process. Just keep in mind to consult your physician for some advice before getting into Atkins diet plans.

Filed under: Diet