Popular Fad Diets The Atkins Exposed

The Atkins Diet is one of the most popular fad diets ever to be introduced, and it has millions of people who swear it works. Yet, sit most of these supporters down for a talk and you will find that the majority of them are still overweight after years of trying to stick with the program. Some of them are even larger today than they were when they first started the Atkins Diet.

How can this be true? How can so many people stay faithful to a diet plan and fail to lose their weight years later?

It is quite simple. Most Atkins Diet followers are actually on-and-off again followers. They do lose some of their weight while they faithfully stick to the extremely restrictive guidelines Dr. Atkins recommends in his numerous bestselling books, but they can not stay with the program for very long so they slip into a pattern of following along for awhile and losing weight, then going off plan for awhile and gaining most of it back.

When these Atkins Diet supporters say it really works, what they mean is it really works when I can make myself do it. It may be the popular fad diet that gets the most attention from overweight people desperate to take off their excess pounds and live better lives, but it does no good for the majority of these people because it is too restrictive for them to reasonably stick with in the long run. A diet that fails to keep the weight off for years to come is a failure, simple as that.

Beyond the disappointment that comes from repeatedly failing at a diet and regaining the weight, the Atkins diet comes with a high price tag for the body. It is based on the idea that carbohydrates are mostly stored as fat in the body, so it is better to take in calories from fat and protein instead. Dr. Atkins maintained while he was alive that high fat foods such as bacon, steak, and cheeses can be eaten as desired, and you will lose weight as long as you severely restrict carbs.

The problem with this theory is that it does not make sense with how the human body actually processes carbohydrates and fat. Carbs take more energy to break down and store, so they are more likely to be burned off as fuel. Fat takes less energy to break down so when the body is presented with a mix of carbs and fat it will store the fat and burn the carbs.

The high fat foods Dr. Atkins maintained were acceptable on a regular basis are more likely to clog the arteries going to your heart than they are to make you skinny a year from now. If you remain on the program long enough to go into the ketosis phase you will actually start to burn away your stored fat, but you will break down your muscle and burn that off as energy as well! Your metabolism will be slower than ever by the time you can no longer stand the deprivation and go back to your old eating habits, ensuring you nothing but rapid weight gain once again.

The Atkins Diet may very well be the most talked about popular fad diet years after it was first introduced into the market. It is a sad thing that so many of us are willing to put out the extreme efforts to follow this restrictive plan but at the same time will not try a healthy mix of diet and exercise because it seems like too much work.