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Diet Breakdown: What's The Atkins Diet?

Information is the key to understanding which eating plan will work for you and lead to the results you desire. With so many dieting options available, knowledge really is power. In this article, we’ll focus on the Atkins diet.

What’s The Atkins Diet?

The Atkins diet is a plan that requires eating foods high in protein and fat while avoiding high-carb foods. It works in phases, cutting out all bad carbs at first and then gradually adding certain carb-rich foods back into your diet. This method is thought to assist the process of ketosis, during which your body switches from burning carbs to burning fat.    

Benefits Of The Atkins Diet

The Atkins diet is a good eating plan for those looking to drastically change their eating habits and lose a significant amount of weight. It is also beneficial in providing a leveled structure that allows you to easily continue healthy habits even after your weight loss goals have been reached.

You don’t need to exercise to lose weight with the Atkins diet. However, once that initial weight loss is obtained and you begin to add more carbs into your diet, you’ll need to keep portions small and start exercising (or increase your efforts) to prevent yourself from gaining that weight back.

Other benefits of the Paleo diet include:

  • Simple, easy-to-follow phases;
  • No counting calories;
  • The ability to lose weight and not feel deprived.

Key Elements Of The Atkins Diet

As mentioned earlier, the Atkins diet is made up of four phases. In the first phase, you’ll eat protein, fat, and only 20 grams of carbs (in veggie form). You should quickly notice weight loss during this phase.

Phase two consists of adding certain foods back into your diet until you figure out how many carbs you can consume while continuing to lose weight. In phase three, you’ll learn to maintain your weight loss efforts and those last few pounds will go. (Note: This phase shouldn’t be entered until you’re down to approximately 10 pounds left to lose.)

Finally, phase four is the one in which you begin eating a healthy variety of all food groups once again, maintaining control of your carb intake and keeping the weight off.

Tips and Tricks

Take a look at these tips for making the Atkins diet a success:

  1. Check with your doctor before starting this diet if you have heart disease, kidney disease, high cholesterol, or diabetes.
  2. Online support tools are available at no cost.
  3. It’s best to make meals from scratch.

Check out these printable meal plans for the Atkins diet.

To learn more about the Atkins diet or other healthy eating options, reach out to the pros at Matrix Age Management today.  

Tags: Nutrition

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